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A.F.E.S. of A.
I am thinking for a while now about a concept some have named the "Authoritarian Free-Enterprise State" of America and how to cope with it. Anna-missed has one possible answer.
by anna missed (lifted from a comment)
Our government has ceased to be a government, and has instead become a corporate "facilitator". It has shorn itself from any public responsibility or morality or even civility in to most elementary sense. Its "soul" purpose now is to act only in the capital interest of its elite shareholders. Morality and ethics are determined only by the legal perimeters which they define as in the "interests" of the "nation".
The Iraq war and the hurricane Katrina only serve to illustrate how far down the road we have come, and beyond the obvious violations of morality, and so within their radicalness, fissures in the veneer will often appear — when the blatant and glaring contradiction of the product being sold is seen with crystal clarity, as being fraudulent.
Unfortunately for the administration, their project of selling people their own demise, requires a major and risky advertising adventure that must continually be ratcheted up to contain ever greater lies. So as we see, in mats post, they must now create illusions of benevolence within a disaster, that mask, so obviously, their predictable corporate mentality, of opportunistic seizure of wealth without accountability.
Short of armed insurrection, or an epiphany within the press, or some miracle of renewed political representation, what we are left with is to channel our anger (within these fissures between product and advertising) into a culturally derived stake aimed at the heart of the beast — its credibility — because an illusion of America, is not America.
John Francis Lee – Wow! Dude! George Bush didn’t just suspend minimum wages. Re-read the second paragraph! He just suspended *prevailing wages*!
If you work in the trades, you know exactly what that means. A carpenter who usually makes between $18 to $25 an hour, depending on the state, can now be paid any amount, to “will work for food.”
Since the reconstruction also means its totally in the Federal government’s hands, and will go
as IDIQ to established Federal contractors like HAL-KBR, that means temp workers, for example, can be flown in from *outside the US* to work for $3.50 an hour on just shelter and food rations.
That means the local people’s chances to regain some of their lost wealth, by working on the Fed reconstruction projects for a prevailing wage, just blew a big fat tire as the wheels came off.
All the work will be work-for-hire chain-gangs!
All the profits will go to multinational corps!
I interviewed a guy who worked on the Columbia River dams during the Great Depression. He told me they paid him room, board, and 25c a *day*.
Under this declaration, that’s exactly what the New Orleans reconstruction program, not just Federal property, but anything paid by Federal aid, can become. A race to slavery wages, but
it’s with **our taxes as the charitable aid**!!
They are actually going to use *our* charitable
aid, which is what Congress’s $60B aid package is, to extract maximum profits for corporate
contractors, using this emergency declaration,
to pay reconstruction workers sub-minimum wage!
!!!!I just can’t believe what I’m reading!!!!
Like someone else here said, all that $60B is going to end up as 95% “administrative overhead”, and 5% to the people, working sub-minimum wage.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do by this proclamation suspend, as to all contracts entered into on or after the date of this proclamation and until otherwise provided, the provisions of subchapter IV of chapter 31 of title 40, United States Code, 40 U.S.C. 3141-3148, and the provisions of all other acts providing for the payment of wages, which provisions are dependent upon determinations by the Secretary of Labor under section 3142 of title 40, United States Code, as they apply to contracts to be performed in the following jurisdictions: the counties of Baldwin, Choctaw, Clarke…
http://www.globalnewsmatrix.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2503
CORPORATE-SOCIALISM JUST BECAME STALINISM USA!
Posted by: lash marks | Sep 10 2005 6:40 utc | 18
anna missed- But the ultimate insurance against market share erosion most likely involves being able to eliminate or limit the competition, as opposed to further innovation and R&D expeniture.
usa corporation concerns re market share erosion are addressed in the national security strategy (nss). buried w/i the economic disneyland rhetorical flourishes are the keys to the mission statement.
…the United States will work with individual nations, entire regions, and the entire global trading community to build a world that trades in freedom and therefore grows in prosperity.
…
We will use our economic engagement with other countries to underscore the benefits of policies that generate higher productivity and sustained economic growth, including:
* pro-growth legal and regulatory policies to encourage business investment, innovation, and entrepreneurial activity;
* tax policies—particularly lower marginal tax rates—that improve incentives for work and investment;
* strong financial systems that allow capital to be put to its most efficient use;
* sound fiscal policies to support business activity;
* investments in health and education that improve the well-being and skills of the labor force and population as a whole; and
* free trade that provides new avenues for growth and fosters the diffusion of technologies and ideas that increase productivity and opportunity.
…
* ignite a new era of global economic growth through free markets and free trade;
* expand the circle of development by opening societies and building the infrastructure of democracy;
as you state, the corporation is actively working against innovation, but then isn’t that what conservatism is all about – the preservation of capital?
it’s both interesting and alarming that, according to the nss, the corporation’s “gravest danger…lies at the crossroads of radicalism and technology.” the radical enemies refered to in the document consist of the much-touted, rarely defined, “terrorists”, the “embittered few”, who perpetrate violence against “innocents.” obviously this is directed at those who resist usa corporation’s “way of life” across the globe. what i find interesting is that radicals in this nation, the environmentalists, have been singled out over the more lethal right wing “pro-life” and hate groups, as the southern poverty law ctr’s recent intelligence report detailed. interesting in that a bunch of militant wackos who amass arms & make plans for invading army bases to stop un attempts to take over the nation, among other incidents that the rpt cites, are not considered a threat to the corporation’s “way of life”, whereas a movement of radicals – using the going to the root definition of the term – that point out the flaws in corporate societies’ logic, are. terrorism against innocent humans is allowable, in the case of the former; the latter sometimes, though infrequently, engages in the destruction of property. this is the machine protecting its own. the implications are alarming. the environmental movement is close to being the only true moral movement we have in this society. the civil rights movement finds its ideology, strategies & meaning in christian religious doctrines, a vision of universal brotherhood under the divine authoritarian father, a reality, of course, constrained by the limitations of the christian idea of history. its morals are saturated in an ideology that has brought us expansionism, conquest, war, abstraction, slavery & genocide. and, as you allude to, it has been used continuously to neuter people from their own interests. there was a witty comment, posted here a couple of months ago, that i found very funny: the meek shall inherit the earth…in six-foor plots.
anyway, i’ve started shifting tracks and taking another path (plus my fingers are getting tired). that earth is the only thing that unites us all & if we were to realize our inheritance now, we can defeat the machine/corporation. i believe it also provides a solid base against which to define examinations of morality.
Posted by: b real | Sep 13 2005 4:24 utc | 67
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