The Stalemated State

Lobbies, and the corporations behind them, block almost all change in the US.

Back in the 1830's, de Tocqueville rhapsodized about how the new United States had groups organized wherever he went. He saw it as the blossoming of democracy.

Now, however, organization itself is big business. Lobbyists in the thousands insure that the powers-that-be maintain their monopoly-oligopoly, their stifling of innovation that might threaten a lock on their markets--as well as a government that caters to their interests and therefore discriminates against smaller, more nimble competitors.

The IMF recently held that subsidies for traditional energy companies (oil, coal, gas) were holding back the move to non-traditional sources (wind, solar, bio-fuels). Still, even the elite-led demand for reducing government expenditures hardly touches on those subsidies: billions a year to companies making billions in profits. In addition, thanks to people like VP Cheney, drilling companies are largely free of regulation. We still don't know what poisons frackers inject into the earth in order to force out oil or gas, because that's a "proprietary secret." Pennsylvania even gives frackers powers of eminent domain!

Chemical companies (mostly petroleum based) are also protected. Smaller competitors attempting to replace toxic materials like styrene with bio-based non-toxic materials are stymied: the EPA is not allowed to declare styrene's known carcinogenicity, let alone ban it, and similar hands off treatment is SOP for a whole raft of other chemicals. In addition, Monsanto succeeded in inserting language in the new food law that virtually exempts GMO's from regulation. Meanwhile, the FDA can't require them to be labeled as GMO's, either.

Big Pharma protects its monopoly patents world-wide, but especially in the US, and Medicare/Medicaid is required to buy drugs at inflated prices (often 10 times a possible generic); no negotiated prices are permitted.

So, it's not surprising that Congress, after much effort on the part of gun victims families, gun control advocates, governors and even the President, may or may not pass the most minimal of gun control measures: universal background checks, despite 90% support for it in most polls. Gun manufacturers have organized the NRA and now the even more militantly "pro-gun" Gun Buyers of America, to lobby all their captive Congressmen against any regulation except for militarizing the schools with subsidized armed guards (creating another subsidized market).

The ultimate subsidized market is Defense. Corporate contractors still get cost-plus contracts, still get reimbursed even for hotel taxes in Maryland--and then, Lockheed has the chutzpah to demand that Maryland reimburse it, too! And that's in addition to the huge subsidy derived from US insistence on maintaining hegemony worldwide.

The US is truly a corporate state wedded to outdated technologies, corporate behemoths and the greedy class, our Roman Senators, who own them. Stalemate will doom it, unless it and the corporations are able to transfer their dominance worldwide. That's why the Indian decision against Novartis is so important: the sclerotic American Empire is losing control.

Who's More Corrupt?

Did you know that the "oil spill" in Arkansas over the weekend was actually tar sands (the stuff to be piped through the proposed Keystone XL pipeline)? Tar sands are probably exempt from the taxes that fund the clean up of such spills, yet this sludge is more toxic and more difficult to clean up than conventional crude.

Some interesting facts: the first, for me, was Oil Change's report, identifying the spill with Canadian tar sands. It wasn't reported that way in the New York Times, which used the euphemism "heavy crude from western Canada," nor on NPR, which simply reported it as a major oil spill until the following day.

Tar sands aren't oil. After much processing (requiring much heat, polluting more than coal), this "bitumen" sludge can be converted into an oil feedstock for further refining, but to call it "heavy crude" conceals what it really is and why a spill is much worse than conventional oil.

Toxicity is one of the reasons for blocking the XL Pipeline, which may be why even supposedly "objective" media outlets misled. Tar sands money has corrupted Canada's politics, and is adding to the endemic, legal corruption here. It may inspire right-wing billionaires, like the Kochs, to purchase media outlets like the LA Times.

Look at the contrast between India and the US: here the courts are influenced by major corporations, especially after Citizens United, and demand outrageous privileges, like patent monopolies indefinitely extended.

India is famous for its petty and not so petty corruption, personally observed when I lived there 33 years ago. Contemporary accounts imply it's as bad now. However, in some ways it might be less corrupt than the US, where corporations get anything they want, like Novartis' minor tweaking of an AIDS drug allowing indefinite monopoly protection. An Indian judge did something our Congress and courts have rarely managed: he stood up to Big Pharma, striking down Novartis' claim that its minor modification justified a new patent (monopoly protection) for the 20 years the Indian patent law permits.

In the US, regulators, courts and Congress bend over backwards to give corporations what they want--like the covert insertion of the "Monsanto protection act" into the Food bill.

The US may have fewer officials and politicians with their hands out, but the powerful use legal corruption. Their bribes are more lucrative: campaign funds, insider info, high paying jobs, and promotions when they recycle back from private to public sectors.

They are in service to our ultimate Roman Senators--the Koch brothers, Murdoch or Lockheed Martin--who know that control of the media is key.

Outside the US, people get freer news: in the US, Congress is writing a law to more strictly control the Internet, our best remaining source for a free flow of information.

Are we already a corporate state, a plutocracy like the later Roman Empire? Hard to tell with the managed information we're fed.