[CTC] Obama's Push for Corporate Rule: A Moment of Opportunity

[Manuel Perez Rocha]

Obama's Push for Corporate Rule: A Moment of Opportunity

http://livingeconomiesforum.org/Obama_and_Corporate_Rule


June 22, 2015
by David Korten

*The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.*
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

Only a few months ago, President Obama was at loggerheads with Republican
members of Congress intent on destroying his administration. With
bewildering speed, President Obama has since turned against his own
political base to form an alliance with those same Republican members of
Congress.

Obama’s most vigorous opposition now comes from progressives, including
most of the senators and representatives of his own party, who only a few
months ago were his most loyal political base. The few corporatist
Democratic members of Congress who still support Obama risk losing their
seats in 2016 primary elections as Democratic voters mobilize to defend
democracy, workers, and the environment.

The collective goal of Obama’s surprise alliance is to finalize a series of
international corporate rights agreements—the Trans Pacific Partnership
(TPP), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and the
Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA)—each of which will strengthen corporate
rights at the expense of human rights, democracy, economic justice, peace,
and the healing of Living Earth.

Leaked text from the secret negotiations that are crafting these agreements
reveals that contrary to the claims of proponents, virtually every
provision would weaken democracy and undermine the ability of nations,
people, and localities to shape their economic destinies. Americans from
across the political spectrum have been stunned by the sudden emergence of
this unholy alliance. In historical context, however, it may be less
unlikely that it seems.
*America’s Bipartisan Corporate Political Alliance*

U.S. corporations have been actively advancing an agenda of corporate rule
since at least 1971. That was when Lewis Powell, then soon to be a U.S.
Supreme Court Justice, submitted his infamous memo “Attack on the American
Free Enterprise System”
<http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/> outlining
a grand strategy for a corporate takeover of U.S. politics. The resulting
actions rapidly played out as a global corporate colonization of the
world’s people and resources.  I spell out this history in detail in *When
Corporations Rule the World*,
<https://store.yesmagazine.org/products/books/216/when-corporations-rule-the-world-3rd-edition/>
released
this month (June 2015) in a 20th anniversary edition.

As the corporate agenda unfolded, the Republican Party quite proudly
branded itself as the party of big business and, more deceptively, of small
government. The Democratic Party became the party of big government,
corporate restraint, and social programs for those the corporate state
excluded.

There has long been more cooperation between the two parties in support of
big business than either is inclined to acknowledge. Democratic President
Carter began the deregulation of the airline industry. Democratic President
Clinton rolled back welfare programs, expanded corporate rights with the
passage of the WTO and NAFTA agreements, and sponsored the Wall Street
deregulation that led to the financial collapse of 2008. Democratic
President Obama carried forward the bank bailouts started by Republican
President George W Bush, shielded senior bank managers from prosecution and
prison, and made no effort to restrict the continued growth and
consolidation of the biggest Wall Street banks. His campaign for fast track
authority to push through a series of new international corporate rights
agreements removes all ambiguity as to where his true loyalties lie.

The public, however, is catching on. Awareness of accelerating
consolidation of global corporate rule and their implications for peace,
equality, and the environment began to emerge in the mid-1990s about the
time that *When Corporations Rule the World*first launched. For many people
that book helped them connect what they were experiencing with what they
were beginning to suspect.
*The Issue a Bogus Debate Obscures*

For the past several decades, corporate interests have managed to define
the political choice in America as between small government Republicans and
big government Democrats. It was a clever misdirection. Because most
Americans are properly distrustful of big government, they easily buy into
the anti-big government argument. The result is to deflect attention away
from the sins of big business—and the implications for government size.

The idea that government is essential to the function of complex societies
should be immediately evident to any thinking person.  It is similarly
clear that letting money seeking transnational corporations rule as best
suits their financial interests has disastrous societal consequences.

Entirely missing from the debate is the extent to which it is the growth of
corporate size and influence that creates the need for big government to
limit corporate excesses, clean up their messes, subsidize their
operations, and field the military and police forces required to protect
their global and domestic properties. The subsidies include welfare for
underpaid employees, unemployment for those whose jobs they outsource
abroad or displace with robots and migrant workers, and medical insurance
for those they fail to insure.

Without the burden the monopolistic and predominately predatory
corporations place on society, government, particularly national
government, could be dramatically downsized and public debt largely
eliminated.

An abstract debate over the size government is a pointless distraction—as
those who promote it are likely aware. We should instead ask, “Does our
federal government represent the interest of the United States and its
people and is its size appropriate to that task?” Tragically, the answer
for the United State is no. Although the American people pay the bills, it
is a government of, by, and for the United Corporations of Planet Earth and
their needs, not a government designed to meet the needs of our people. We
could do nicely with a far smaller federal government, if we limited the
size of corporations and structured their ownership to assure that they are
accountable to the people of the communities in which they do business.
*The Essential Work of Our Time*

The institutional system of corporate rule is essentially a robotic system
programmed to use its economic and political power to extract limitless
short-term financial gain by whatever means available. It runs on autopilot
beyond human control. And it values life only for its market price. It
should be evident to any thinking adult not brain damaged by taking too
many economics courses that peace, economic justice, and ecological balance
will remain beyond humanity’s reach for so long as the rights of people are
subordinated to the rights of the corporations that populate this system.

Hope for humanity requires a successful transition to democracy grounded in
strong place-based communities and local economies. This transition is not
just an ideal. It is essential to human viability.

President Obama and the Republican and Democratic corporatists currently
allied with him have positioned themselves on the wrong side of history.

Fortunately, there may be a positive side to their betrayal of the human
interest. It reminds us that true transformational leadership depends less
on the empty promises of political leaders than on social movements of we
the people. The public outrage now focused on their betrayal of democracy
and the human interest lays the groundwork for what could be a seismic
political realignment.
*Possibilities of a Transpartisan Political Awakening*

Over the past 20 years, public awareness of the nature and consequences of
the expansion of corporate rule has grown significantly. This awareness
finds particularly visible expression in the public demand to overturn the
Citizen United decision of a corporatist Supreme Court that removes most
restraints on corporate funding of elections. And most recently, we are
seeing the broad based and increasingly vocal resistance to the current
betrayal of America as revealed in the Obama trade agenda.

Progressive voters are outraged by the assault on democracy, workers, the
environment, and local communities entailed in the Trans Pacific
Partnership. Conservative voters are outraged by the attack on national
sovereignty.

The resulting political shock is shining a public spotlight on the extent
to which corporate influence has corrupted our national government. It is a
short step from here to a recognition that the failures and burdens of our
national government are not inherent in government. Rather they are
inherent in corporate control of government.

Two highly intelligent, articulate national leaders—Bernie Sanders and
Elisabeth Warren—are articulating a new message with the potential to
redefine the debate and win broad support for steps to end corporate rule.
Even voters who may disagree with their politics, are drawn to their
courage and integrity—qualities otherwise far too rare in American politics.

The moment seems ripe for the foundational political realignment proposed
by Ralph Nader in his recent book *Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right
Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State *and outlined in a recent YES!
Magazine interview
<http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/together-with-earth/can-the-left-and-right-end-corporate-rule-an-interview-with-ralph-nader-and-daniel-mccarthy>
with
Ralph Nader and Daniel McCarthy, editor of *The American Conservative
*magazine.
Fran Korten, publisher of YES! Magazine [and my wife] suggests we are
experiencing a new populist moment
<http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/make-it-right/is-populism-making-a-comeback-what-you-need-to-know-about-its-history-and-its-future>
.

Call it populism vs. corporatism or democracy vs. corporate rule. Either
way it is a far more meaningful political division than the current
division between two big-government political parties debating big vs.
small while both compete aggressively for corporate money and pursue
variations on corporatist agendas.

The distinction between democracy and corporate rule is the issue that
underlies all other issues. The task before us is to recognize and act on
the potential for a momentous political realignment that can make our
government truly “of the people.”

___________

David Korten <http://livingeconomiesforum.org/> is co-founder and board
chair of YES!Magazine <http://yesmagazine.org/>, co-chair of the New
Economy Working Group <http://neweconomyworkinggroup.org/>, president of
the Living Economies Forum <http://livingeconomiesforum.org/>, an associate
fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, and a member of the Club of
Rome. His most recent books are *Change the Story, Change the Future: A
Living Economy for a Living Earth
<https://store.yesmagazine.org/products/books/206/change-the-story-change-the-future/>
*(January
2015) and the 20th anniversary reissue and update of his classic
international best seller *When Corporations Rule the World
<https://store.yesmagazine.org/products/books/216/when-corporations-rule-the-world-3rd-edition/>
*(June
2015). His other books include *Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom
Wealth to Real Wealth*
<https://store.yesmagazine.org/products/books/7/agenda-for-a-new-economy-2nd-edition/>
*;**The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism*
<https://store.yesmagazine.org/products/books/10/the-post-corporate-world/>
*; *and the international best seller *The Great Turning: From Empire to
Earth Communit*
<https://store.yesmagazine.org/products/books/9/the-great-turning/>


Manuel Pérez-Rocha
Associate Fellow
Institute for Policy Studies
*Celebrating 50 years of turning ideas into action! *
Cel. 240-838-6623
www.ips-dc.org
http://www.ips-dc.org/issues/trade/
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