What is a government? Not a regime, not an administration or a royal line like the Windsors or the Hapsburgs, but a government? It is an entity that controls ground, territory, land, an area between lines on a map and the people who live there. It enjoys a monopoly on military force in the area. It is immune from liability.

For instance, under the doctrine of sovereign immunity (the king can do no wrong) you can’t sue the U.S. government or its factotums without its permission. A government amasses enormous sums (in our case, funny money) taken from the people in taxes. And a government is immortal. It never dies, unless it is overthrown.

What is a corporation? It too has limited liability; indeed, a favored corporation has no liability. It amasses enormous investments. It is immortal. And in our country, favored corporations have gradually taken control of our government. It is not at all far fetched to say that the federal government today is a mere subsidiary of the monster corporations that control it.

Benito Mussolini called the form of government he imposed on Italy in 1922, "the corporate state," the political name for which was Fascism. As he put it, "The first stage of fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power." Fascism was one of the versions of Socialism and therefore left-wing. Before National Socialist Hitler, many Socialists in Washington adored Mussolini and tried to emulate him. He "made the trains run on time." There was even admiration for Hitler early in his reign (before the revelations about the Jews).

Notice that today, precisely because monster corporations have merged with government, they exercise governmental powers. So they not only enjoy the benefits of unlimited life, immortality, etc., they also are able to direct our military. See, for instance, War is a Racket, by Smedley Butler, a U.S. Marine Corps Major General, who was awarded not one, but two, Medals of Honor. In his book, Butler recalls what he did for corporations as a Marine.

But aren’t so many big corporations in trouble? Maybe, but is that trouble superficial? For instance, General Motors is closing down in the United States, but it is opening up in Communist-occupied China. It used to be an American company with foreign branches; now it is a Red Chinese company with American branches. Other big companies are "in trouble" for using their corporate clout to refuse payment of the pensions they promised, and they are getting away with the scam, something akin to being thrown into the briar patch.

Corporations were one of the things we fought in the War for Independence. Wasn’t the British East India Company a corporation of sorts, an expression of what the economists call Mercantilism? Remember the Tea Party in Boston? For decades after that, corporations did not amount to much. There were only a handful of them, created to perform specific tasks, and they were tightly controlled. If they got out of control, they were abolished. When they performed the task for which they had been created, they were abolished. They did not have perpetual life.

The War of Northern Aggression, conducted by our first Communist President, changed all that and set these united States on the path of empire. During the war, corporations became immensely wealthy. They persuaded legislators to give them limited liability. They gradually undermined citizen sovereignty. Soon we had the best government money could buy.

In 1886, the U.S. Supreme Court in effect amended the Constitution in the Santa Clara case. In Santa Clara, 118 U.S. 394, the Court ruled that corporations are "persons" however artificial, and have all the rights you and I do. It sounds like the basis of a Stephen King novel and has had the same effect. Why? Because real people die, but corporations do not. Immortality has allowed corporations the time to amass inconceivable fortunes and vast, political power.

Isn’t there a contradiction here? Real persons die. Corporations don’t by government mandate. If corporations are to enjoy the status of "personhood," with all the rights of that status, should they not also be required to die, as they did when the nation began? Either you live forever, or you are a person. You can’t have it both ways, but that is what they want.

Notice also that when real people die, they must pay death taxes. Because corporations are immortal, they don’t, just one of the reasons that corporations have more rights than real people do. We have installed a modern version of the same system the Founding Fathers, but much bigger and much worse.

Make a list of the world’s biggest nations. Aside from them, the biggest group of entities will no longer be countries, will not be governments, but will be corporations. That is correct; corporations have more wealth – and more power, via their control of the U.S. government – than most of the world’s nations.

Why are we presently in Iraq? Clear away the claptrap about Weapons of Mass Destruction, about Saddam’s dictatorship and "regime change," about the need for democracy, etc. When you do that, Smedley Butler remains. We are in Iraq because that is where the corporate state wants us. War is very profitable. The corporations are making buckets of money from the war. You know who they are, don’t we, Dick?

Today, corporations decide what you will see on television, what you will read, what you will eat, what you will wear and the kind of medical treatment you will receive. Corporations completely control this country. It would be extremely difficult to escape that control, even if you lived in the woods.

But are not corporations the very essence of conservative economics? By attacking them are we not attacking Free Enterprise? Remember that corporations do not exist in nature, despite the Supreme Court. Corporate status is a privilege, a favor, bestowed by government. Government – state or federal – creates a corporation, which could not exist without it. So corporate status is not at all the product of Free Enterprise.

Along these lines, don’t the Communists say something like this? Don’t they too attack corporations? They do, in the same way Chicago gang A attacks Chicago gang B, or Hitler attacked Stalin. They do not oppose the system. They just want to run it. They don’t want to replace the system with genuine Free Enterprise.

Notice that corporations eventually control the government agencies designed to regulate them. I cannot think of an exception to this. Can you? The monster pharmaceutical companies control the Food and Drug Administration. Searle hired Donnie Rumsfeld as Chairman and, mirabile dictu, Ronnie Reagan named Arthur Hull Hayes as FDA Commissioner.

Hayes overruled FDA’s own board of inquiry when he approved Searle’s deadly poison called aspartame (NutraSweet) for use in bottled soda. Hayes stayed just long enough to do that and then went to work for Searle’s public relations firm, Burson-Marsteller. Donnie of course went on to corporatize Iraq. By the way, Donnie, what happens to all that Iraqi oil?

What would American life look like were corporations controlled and legally restrained as they were before Lincoln’s Communist war? How would business be conducted? Most of us, including me, are probably too brainwashed by corporatocracy to remember. All I can do is speculate.

First, and probably most important, Federal Reserve Notes to doughnuts, we would probably not be in the war, for the obvious reason that the usual suspects behind it would be bound down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution. The foreign adventures they routinely sent Smedley Butler to enforce no longer would be possible. They would not be conspiring, as they are right now, to attack Iran.

Speaking of the Federal Reserve, would it not be abolished? From the beginning, it has represented illegal, corporate control of the nation’s money. The restoration of Free Enterprise I propose would include the revival of honest American money, without which no other solution could work.

Mom and Pop would make a triumphant return. There still would be big companies, of course, but Mom and Pop stores would proliferate. You would see more signs reading, "Joe Shmo from Kokomo & Sons." Supermarkets would remain, but food would be more local. Six monster companies no longer would control most of what you eat. Corporate farms receiving lavish federal handouts would go into eclipse. Family farms would revive. Farmers would run them and would sell where they grow. Tomatoes would taste like tomatoes.

The solution lies in the state legislatures, which, taken together, have at least as much power as Congress, because that is what the Founding Fathers wanted. No constitutional amendment is required. The legislatures already have the power. Most are too browbeaten to know it. But there are thrilling signs that legislative somnolescence is wearing off and the states are reviving.

"Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact."

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