Our Country is in Big Trouble
by Eva Knapp
Our country is in trouble. Big trouble! At some level most of us know it. A recent poll conducted by the World Public Opinion found that 80% of Americans have lost faith in their government - believing it serves powerful special interests and not the people. Yes, we’re getting it. While we were being served up manufactured lies, shouted clichés, and celebrity gossip, the great power was steadily becoming the corporate state we now live in - a system wholly incompatible with democracy.
Though corporate hijacking of our government has long been at work in various forms, the “War on Terror” has ushered it in on a scale beyond what Eisenhower could have wildly imagined fifty years ago when he warned of the dangers of the Military Industrial Complex. The seamless connection between the administration, the political Washington infrastructure, powerful companies and defense contractors now begs the question whose interests we’re serving when we go to war.
The truth is, war is becoming just another amoral corporate enterprise. While the government pours untold billions of our tax dollars into corporate coffers, the fighting and the dying are left to “black army” hired killers and the poor. (The number of U.S.-paid private contractors in Iraq now exceeds that of American combat troops.)
Of course self enrichment across the corporate spectrum knows no bounds. As they rake in obscene profits - from global crises to cosmetics - the corporations and government powers are busy hatching new schemes for keeping profits up and wages down.
Today, the richest 1 percent in our country has amassed more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined – a staggering disparity. This massive transfer of public wealth is destroying the middle class and eroding our democracy – violating the creeds and ideals upon which it was based. American workers, once secure and prosperous, now must compete for jobs with children and sweatshop workers around the world. They’re losing their homes, their savings, and worse still, their hopes and their dreams.
Our own state shows the pattern. Since countless jobs have left West Virginia for some “corporate friendly” place on the globe, our state’s economy is mainly dependent on the home boys’ multi-billion dollar natural resource industry – an industry that clearly has some 3rd world operation techniques down pat. It handsomely rewards the executives and the stock holders; it wreaks havoc on the environment, and it does nothing to improve the quality of life for the people.
West Virginia’s consistent ranking at or near the bottom in all poverty and income scales (including the number of children living in poverty) juxtaposed with Massey Coal’s record of growth and profit makes the point.
Massey reported a first quarter 2008 net income increase of 28.5%. (They modestly forecast a 2010 increase of up to 24 %.) As would be expected, Don Blankenship’s CEO compensation soared more than 35% last year. According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Blankenship’s 2007 salary, bonus and perks (including the use of a company owned house) topped $23.7 million.
Blankenship’s reputed skullduggery in West Virginia politics is our own sterling example of a corporate-government marriage. Imagine the stake he has in the outcome if he spends millions of his own money influencing government policy and bankrolling his favorite politicians.
Such is the story of Bush’s corporate America - we see it all around us. Cities that were once booming manufacturing centers are now centers of personal and economic despair. Globalization of the past twenty years has reached its heyday, and it’s safe to say, corporations control every federal agency in Washington.
Without question, we’re in a precarious place. Short-term profit as the driving force of power doesn’t bode well for the long term chances of humanity. The trajectory portends a destiny of tragic irony, one heading toward a (dare I use the word?) trifecta of our own making where we “melt down,” “blow up” and/or “starve to death.”
The goliath in charge is crazed – driven by avarice and raw power. We’d better start going for our slingshots.
