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[Lloyd Marbet]

    To free a nation from error is to enlighten the individual and it is
    only to the degree that an individual is receptive of the truth that
    a nation can be free from that vanity which ends in national ruin.
    --  Homer Lee

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Gangs of America
The Rise of Corporate Power
And the Disabling Of Democracy

By Ted Nace

At times, those corporate efforts seemed almost transparently 
opportunistic-any national crisis provided the excuse for more PR.  An 
example is the corporate response to a speech by Franklin Roosevelt in 
early 1941 advocating increased American support for Britain against 
Nazi Germany.  To underlie his vision of what was at stake, Roosevelt 
outlined four freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom 
from want, and freedom from fear.  The speech inspired Norman Rockwell 
to paint a famous series of illustrations, one for each of the freedoms, 
and Rockwell's sentimental imagery eventually helped sell over $133 
million in U.S. war bonds.

But corporate executives also saw an opportunity to make headway in 
their private "war within a war" to defeat New Deal interference in the 
economy and align their interest with the country's aroused patriotic 
sentiments Moving quickly in response to Roosevelt's speech, public 
relations agencies launched an ad campaign that promoted a "fifth 
freedom"-free enterprise.  Armour and Company led the charge with a 
series of editorials explaining how the "modern corporation works for 
the nation as a whole-not merely for its own stockholder."  According to 
the ads, such a system "exalts the individual, recognizes that he is 
created in the image of God, and gives spiritual tone to the American 
system."  Other ads extolled "the simple economics of our American way 
of life."

Since World War II, this sort of attempt to link corporations with the 
imagery of American Patriotism has become virtually routine.  And it has 
been successful to such an extent that today its almost sounds absurd to 
say something like, "One of the basic reasons for the American 
Revolution was colonial opposition to corporate power."  (Bolded 
emphasis added, Chapter Four, pages 38-39)

***

So what was the lesson of the crime wave of 2002?  First, it should be 
clear what the lesson wasn't.  Personal corruption, conflicts of 
interest at accounting firms, the weakening of investor lawsuit 
remedies, the accounting standards applying to stock options, the 
definition of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or whether the 
Financial Standards Accounting Board should be independent or federally 
controlled-all these were merely symptoms.  The deeper problem was 
overwhelming corporate influence in democratic government, which had 
become so pervasive that the lines separating corporate power and 
government power had become blurred.

Consider the decision to go to war against Iraq.  In it public 
statements justifying the attack, the Bush Administration cited the 
heightened national security concerns since September 11, 2001.  Yet 
ideas such as "regime change" and "preemptive war" had actually been 
developed by corporate-supported policy development groups even before 
the 2000 election.  The founders of one such think tank, the Project for 
a New American Century (PNAC), included a number of men who later became 
top members of the Bush Administration:  Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, 
Paul Wolfowitz.  Indeed, former executives , consultants, and 
shareholders of top defense contractors fairly peppered the policymaking 
ranks.  Eight came from Northrop Grumman, the third largest defense 
contractor.  One investigator of the relationship between the Bush 
administration and the defense industry described it as a "seamless 
web."  Yet aside from a few allegations of conflict of interest, that 
web did not appear to depend on any actual illegalities.  In that 
regard, the defense industry followed a pattern that can be seen in any 
number of other areas where corporate influence has an overriding effect 
on public policy:  energy, finance, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, 
media, agriculture, tobacco, high tech, criminal justice, and many 
more.  (Bolded emphasis added, Chapter 15, pages 185-186)

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    And the cost of a thing is what I will call the amount of life that
    is required for it, either immediately or in the long run.
    -- Henry David Thoreau


ADDRESS:

Lloyd K. Marbet

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Boring, OR 97009

Phone: (503) 637-3549

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