Business, Lobby or Golden Parachute Factory?

One of the aspects that continues to amaze the posters and commentors I talk with is the public's inability to see and promote its own interests. I fear that the intensive deregulation of the recent maladministration has made it possible for corporations to disserve those not in the executive ranks - while using their own money to convince them it ought to be that way.

With the huge expenses the health insurers are incurring to advertise their own interests, paid for with our premiums, we are increasingly hearing that government shouldn't be involved in health care, often from recipients of medicare, and that President Obama is rushing through a program that has been under consideration for at least twenty years.

Pretenders to providing health insurance have turned into lobbyists against the services they advertise. We have no health care, we have profiteering under the guise of providing that care.

As Christy Hardin Smith pointed out earlier: I mean, they are willing to throw every lobbyist they can hire -- paid for with your premium dollars -- to weasel around the Hill and make certain their insurance industry profits interests are covered. (Imagine if they put that effort into encouraging preventative care, instead?)

The financial industry that has just distinguished itself for undermining the world's economy has provided an object lesson in eating its young. By substituting corporate profits for long-term health, U.S. corporations as a whole have undermined the health of our industry, and trust in our system.

... wealth disparity is the result of corporations squeezing more profits from workers.

"In the past corporations laid off workers because business was bad," Pizzigati says. "But over the past few decades, downsizing has been a corporate wealth generating strategy. Today, CEOs don't spend their time trying to make better products: they maneuver to take over other companies, steal their customers and fire their workers."

Progressive taxation used to prevent the rich from capturing a disproportionate share of national compensation, and the labor movement, which represented 35 percent of private sector employees and today represents 8 percent, once served as a political force to limit excessive executive pay. The Reagan backlash cut the top income tax rates, and saw the creation of right-wing think tanks that spent $30 billion over the past 30 years propagandizing for deregulation, privatization and wealth worship.

It's offensive to those who have been convinced by continuous propaganda from profiteers that they would prefer to do away with government, but it will take a large dose of control and regulation to make our economy healthy again. That saving grace of the Rule of Law has been resoundingly accused of being evil 'socialism' - as opposed to highway robbery, the dominant principle of our business community.

The interests of a healthy, functional economy are betrayed by the present CEO concentration on short term profits. The ability to suborn actual production for the purposes of lobbying the public, advertising against their interests, is giving the U.S. the world's least functional economy. The very public the businesses depend on is losing its ability to consume as its disposable wealth is drained away.

This country needs health care rushed through for its very survival, and its corporate profits put back to work for the health of the economy itself.

The insatiable hydra that our corporate executives have become is devouring itself.