The website ReclaimDemocracy.org (scroll down slightly to flashing images) depicts the American flag with corporate logos replacing the stars(states). The symbolism speaks volumes about our corporate-run government. Huge international corporations, with help from the White House, Congress, and state and local politicians, using the tool of privatization, are insinuating themselves into all levels of government.

Their M.O. is to manufacture a “crisis”, to overstate and downright lie about the object of their takeover (turnpikes, for example) and to convince the public, with the assistance of “experts” and corporate talking heads on TV and radio, that the only solution is to privatize the government entity or function.

The privatizing corporations seek the steady stream of annuity-like income that only our tax dollars can supply. Of course they tell us they can do it better and cheaper. That’s lie #1. They benefit by government getting larger, not smaller. They see the cash cow of easy tax dollars filling their private cash registers as their last great growth sector. Sucking at the government teat is their goal and hidden agenda. Water privatization has shown that costs to taxpayers rise quickly and water quality (as in “boil water” advisories) and maintenance, declines.

If the corporation is a privatizer of our prisons, it actually benefits by having more crime and more prisons. It is in the corporate interest to enact more laws which a citizen can be discovered to have “broken”, leading to a larger, more profitable prison population. Citizen activists and other “insurgents” can see where this may be going! As my article in last month’s CommonSense2 “The Corporate Takeover of America” illustrates, fascism results when corporations and government become one!

The corporate/privatization agenda is not going unnoticed, however. Ordinary citizens such as myself are catching on, as are conservative and liberal commentators. Phyllis Schlafly, a well-known conservative, has blasted the idea of privatizing our highways. Former presidential candidate John Edwards routinely attacked corporate dominion over our lives and pointed out Blackwater’s privatized mercenaries (soldiers by any other name) are being paid 10x what our men and women in uniform get paid and all from our tax dollars!

Even the mainstream Reader’s Digest in January 2008 featured a Special Report called “You’ve Been Had! How the government wastes nearly $1trillion of your money every year.” The report points out that government could do things more cheaply itself, but instead overpays private companies to do them.

One example cited was the privatization of the Medicare program which continues to this day. “Rather than moving to trim fat, the government continues such questionable practices as paying private insurance companies that offer Medicare Advantage plans an average of 12 percent more per patient than traditional Medicare fee-for-service.” This costs us $15 billion per year on average, according to the report. See “The Death of Medicare” in the November 2007 issue of CommonSense2.

Reader’s Digest continues, “Another money-wasting bright idea was to create a giant class of middlemen:Private bureaucrats who administer the Medicare drug program are monitored by federal bureaucrats-and the public pays for both.”

When people say the government does this or that what they really need to do is remind themselves that it is really the corporate-government. Irrational behavior by “the government” actually is quite rational and purposeful when we remember that the profit-seeking corporations behind the scene are running the show for their own benefit. Conservatives especially need to acknowledge that government is now run by and for corporations.

THE CORPORATE GRAVY TRAIN EVEN TOUCHES THE IRS

I always thought of Lockheed Martin as a military contractor. Little did I know that this corporation sorts our mail, totals our taxes, cuts Social Security checks, and counts the United States census, according to The Fox in the Henhouse: How Privatization Threatens Democracy authors Si Kahn and Elizabeth Minnich. They cite a New York Times report that nearly 80% of Lockheed Martin’s revenue comes from the U.S. government. Good deal if you can get it, I suppose!

Finally, the Associated Press (AP) reported in December of 2007 that the IRS paid a contractor $188,000 to provide one person to do clerical work over 11 months and that the “work could have been done by an employee with a ranking of GS-7, eligible for a starting salary of around $38,000 plus benefits.” One can see why government by corporation costs taxpayers more than old-fashioned government employees, who, by the way, help maintain a healthy middle class. Outsourcing and contract work is another attack on the American middle class being perpetrated by our corporate rulers who have a short-term perspective and little loyalty to America.

Kahn and Minnich tell us that “of the 6.75 million people who worked directly or indirectly for the federal government in 2003, only 1.75 million were public employees. The remaining 5 million worked for corporations with federal contracts.”

Perhaps this explains the Reagan era legerdemain proclamation by conservatives that they reduced the size of government. Of course the riddle of the disappearing government worker can now be explained as well as the rising costs and inefficiencies of a corporate-run government.

As Mussolini explained, the merger of corporations and government equals fascism. We can patronize local businesses and avoid corporate chains but better yet we can inform ourselves and try to relay the information to fellow citizens and politicans at all levels. The corporate takeover is happening at local, state and national levels of government. It is real and is not in the best interests of democracy, freedom or liberty. It is only common sense that we inform ourselves and spread the word. And you have to decide to which flag you pledge your allegiance, the corporate flag of America or the flag of the United States of America.

RELATED BOOKS

Shock Doctrine:The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Naomi Klein

The Bush Agenda:Invading the World One Economy at a Time
Antonia Juhasz

Betraying Our Troops:The Destructive Results of Privatizing War
Dina Rasor

Note: This article by Ron Stouffer first appeared in CommonSense2 in February 2008. Since the Citizen’s United case, it seemed timely to reprint it for our readers.