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How Big Business Subverts Democracy
Defendants had a common plan to engage in acts … that deceived the press and public … These infringing and fraudulent acts are antithetical to public debate on important issues, because they prevent the public and the press from knowing the true position … In short, such conduct is destructive of public discourse, and cannot be tolerated under the law. – Chamber of Commerce lawsuit against the Yes Men and "John and Jane Does 1 through 20", November 2009
Just a couple of years ago, most people had no idea what the Chamber of Commerce did. Aren't they mom and pop's small-business lobby in Washington? Now, thanks in large part to the work of Chamber opponents, we've come to learn that the biggest business lobby in the world is also one of the biggest impediments to real democracy in the US, and that they're a huge force in opposing healthcare reform, employee free choice and other labour legislation, veterans' rights, banking regulations and, of course, transparency.
The US Chamber of Commerce is the public face of a corporatism that is hijacking our democracy – and so dramatically limits any chances of meaningful reform. Even local chambers, fed up, have been leaving the US Chamber en masse. But what might it take for the "Facebook generation" in the US to topple, Tunisia- or Egypt-style, this arrogant and destructive force in American politics?
Late last week, another, still-unfolding leak story revealed the anti-democratic activities of private security firms, apparently hoping to sell their services to the US Chamber of Commerce as a means to silence its critics. Despite reports on the Centre for American Progress blog suggesting that contacts took place between representatives of the Chamber of Commerce where such proposals were made, the Chamber has denied all knowledge of them and has described such reports as a "smear campaign".
In 2009, the Chamber sued members of the Yes Men, an activist group that satirises powerful corporate foes, for posing as Chamber reps and announcing, to a room of reporters, that the Chamber was doing an about-face on their dangerous opposition to climate-change legislation. The media had a good laugh at the Chamber's expense (thanks in large part to a real Chamber representative who barged into the press conference in a rage), but the Chamber found the whole thing distinctly unfunny, and promptly filed suit. (Incidentally, the same law firm involved in the "Chamberleaks" affair, Hunton and Williams, is retained by the Chamber as its attorney in this suit against the Yes Men.)
Nutty indeed. But last week's spectacular series of leaks, counter-leaks and counter-counter-leaks revealed (and continues revealing) a disdain for free speech that shocked even us. It turns out that a consortium of private "cyber-security" firms were developing a $2m proposal to use a variety of sophisticated disinformation techniques to destroy the reputations of Chamber opponents, including public-interest, consumer-advocate and worker-rights groups such as US Chamber Watch and Change to Win. (The same firm was reportedly also proposing, in a presentation for Bank of America, a plot to destroy WikiLeaks, and to "neutralise" constitutional scholar Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com.) Like the Chamber of Commerce, Bank of America has denied knowledge of these plans.
More specifically, the firm proposed to (according to a leaked document) "create a false document, perhaps highlighting periodical financial information, and monitor to see if US Chamber Watch acquires it". To help make this happen, they'd "create a fake insider persona and generate communications" with Change to Win, a labour group the firm theorised might be allied to Chamber Watch. Maybe they'd even "create two fake insider personas, using one as leverage to discredit the other while confirming the legitimacy of the second". But it didn't stop there: the security firms proposed passing off the faked documents they'd created as the fabrication of Change to Win.
We wish we could credit these jokesters with some originality – especially given the fees they were planning to charge – but there's actually nothing new here. These dirty tricks are straight out of the playbook of COINTELPRO, the FBI's notorious 1960s programme of psychological warfare that, among other things, planted false reports and forged letters to destroy reputations. Lately, COINTELPRO tactics have been making a comeback on the right, inspiring a whole new generation of "dirty tricks" operators, along with their patrons in the rightwing media and their sponsors in Congress. But it isn't just "gross and offensive" kids (Andrew Breitbart's words) who are taking up old rightwing techniques. It's actually a very big business.
According to a security expert quoted in a recent New York Times article, "the 'competitive intelligence' industry had 9,700 companies offering these services, with an annual market of more than $2bn." What that industry does is (in the own words of one firm) to "discredit, confuse, shame, combat, infiltrate, fracture" opponents, whether those opponents are rival businesses or, as in this case, groups standing up for democracy, free speech and government transparency.
Why now? Dirty tricks aren't new, so why have they only now hit the corporate mainstream? Why might firms that specialise in such tactics consider that the most cashed-up big-business lobby in the world, with a daily budget nearing $400,000, might be a potential customer? After all, it has the funds at its disposal to enable it just to buy much of the media, not to mention a good chunk of Congress.
What this affair highlights is the crass, anti-democratic and increasingly desperate quality of our current version of corporate influence on politics. With the department of justice showing no signs of investigating, perhaps the Facebook generation in the US can learn a thing or two from the brave citizens in the Middle East.
Maybe we, too, have just been waiting for the right leak.
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42 Comments so far
Show AllAt this point it ought to be bloody obvious that the Bankster/Corporate Oligarchy controls the puppet politicians. Democracy is only superficial window-dressing in order to attempt to legitimize the criminality.
Kleptocratic oligarchic, corporatist neo-fascism is a more accurate term than "democracy"
socialist, you are being deadly serious when you say that it's "bloody obvious", and just plain bloody that our facade of "democracy is only superficial window-dressing in order to attempt to legitimize the criminality."
I just this minute discovered some very incriminating evidence of the 'unspeakable' levels that this global corporate/financial/militarist Empire posing as American democracy will go to subvert and literally 'kill-off' even the highest level attempts to replace its hegemony with real democracy.
In reading James W. Douglass's amazing and heavily documented "JFK and the Unspeakable", about the assassination of a president, I learned something I had never seen, despite the fact that I am very well informed on the topic, having read widely including Fletcher Prouty's "Secret Team", Tim Weiner's "Legacy of Ashes", understand Vasili Arkhipov's role in the Cuban missile crisis, and the import of JFK's American University commencement address, etc.
Douglass exposes that not only was JFK a problem for the Eisenhower revealed MIC, but that the April 1962 steel price confrontation reveals how much and how badly the then nascent corporate/financial/militarist Empire wanted JFK gone --- implying (and carrying out) a threat more directly than the Smedley Butler coup planning did to FDR.
Immediately after JFK was challenged by US Steel's Roger Blough and Kennedy responded with government and public 'democratic' pressure to reverse the business empire's will, Henry Luce's 'Fortune' ran an editorial rhetorically asking, why the financial interests behind USS, including; Morgan, First National NY (now Citi), Prudential, Ford, ATT, et al "provoke the President of the US into a vitriolic and demagogic assault?". But with a clear sense of the answer and threat of their intent, 'Fortune' titled the editorial, "The Ides of April" --- which, of course, is a targeted and 'unspeakable' reference to the soothsayers warning to Caesar on his forthcoming assassination, "Beware the Ides of March".
Clearly a nice touch, which even the mob would not have had the Ivy League education of history to so coyly signal!
And, remember, that was the state of the early corporate/financial/militarist Empire way back in its infancy --- when performing abortions on democracy's highest office was primitive compared to their current surgical skills.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
"Democracy over Empire" party headquarters
Alan,
I enjoy your posts more than I can convey. I learn something from every one of them.
Please, kind sir, keep them up (for my sanity's sake).
Cheers,
TJ
(You and others at CD are "keepers of the sacred progressive knowledge", as far as I am concerned; imho.)
100% on the nose!
We have the US Chamber of Commerce, the Fed, the War Machine, ALL politicians, ALL lobbyists, the Pentagon and the WH, all in charge of this country. We, the People have been shut out completely! They only need our tax money. Shut off the tap and watch them scream!
In order to restore sanity We, the Taxpayers, should demand to have where our tax dollars go on the ballots, every two years!!! Our tax dollar destination is many times more important than which politician we put in office, particularly in this obscene pyramid scheme they created where we are right at the bottom keeping everyone else rich while we drown in their dept!
We need a real American-style Revolution! To the Courts, I say!!! We need to sue the hell out of those bastards and get all our money back plus interest and I don't care if we make some attorneys a lot more wealthy in the process, do you???
Josh, not so sure they need your/my tax money either.
As said in the superb Sydney Pollack film "Havana" about the Ivy League CIAers and others from Washington, "they fuck each other".
The whole game is collapsing now, and most wealth transfer has been sent up the line already, with little left in our hands.
Production of the most innovative products amounts to no more than production of faux profits by more ethereal schemes for dumping negative externality costs on the few here and abroad who have any money left for amateur investments in scams like ETFs.
Best,
Alan
I think you're right amacd,
These phucks are always three steps ahead of us. They don't care what happens to DOMESTIC America; they've already moved off shore. Wall Street goes up because all it's investments are exclusively in Labor-busting India and China. They willing damned us (domestic America) into becoming a Banana Republic as they pledge allegiance to transnational globalization mafias.
We are as expendable to them as the American Indian was to the Colonists.
Egypt is a very valuable lesson for the non-union wage-slaves trapped in America.
At least that's what I think.
TJ
The fake-document ploy sounds suspiciously familiar. The scenario sounds strikingly similar to what happened to CBS News reporter Dan Rather a few years ago after he uncovered some documents about W Bush's military-service records.
If memory serves, the documents showed that he was AWOL during his father's presidential campaign. Junior worked on that campaign during times when he was supposed to be flying jets for the Texas National Guard.
It turned out that the documents Rather used in his investigation were proven forgeries. The evidence was that the font used for creating the documents did not exist during W's military service.
At the time I wondered if Rather wasn't set up. The result had two benefits for the fascist-right wing. First, it ended any discussion of W's military service and secondly, it discredited a constant "liberal" critic.
The plan proposed by the Chamber of Commerce thugs, seems very similar. These sons-of-bitches will stop at nothing to squash any opposition to their evil.
Setup, like Helen Thomas.
Unfortunately ,Ms. Thomas set herself up. I trust she is enjoying her retirement.
The documents were never proven as forgeries. One of the first places that broke the "forgery" story was Free Republic. The right-wing blogosphere was instrumental in pushing the idea that the docs were forged in the public mind. Now it is taken as gospel. They may have been forgeries indeed, though the real gist of Rather's story, that Bush went AWOL, was never confronted. CBS certainly threw Rather under the bus once it became apparent that they had breached a line by even broaching the idea that Bush may have been amongst those pinko draft-dodgers so disdained by the right wing.
I see it more as one of the last gasps of real journalism on mainstream networks. The forgery story was probably more damage control than deliberately planting a false story.
"Yes men" hoax campaigns are pretty funny. I guess they just don't like them when someone else does it....
Apples and oranges.
Had the chamber, done some similar type stunt, to make a political point, that would be a completely different situation.
You honestly can't distinguish those differences?
The difference is between lying to a handful of people for 20 minutes - after which they get it, and everyone who hears about it learns something too - and perpetuating a lie ad infinitum. The former is what the Yes Men do, the latter what's done by these con men.
You see this as the exact reverse of the truth - or rather you claim to - because you are on the side of the predators and oppressors. It does not matter how clever your various arguments here are. The important thing is which side you are on, not how well you are able to shill for your side. You are on the side of the few with all of the wealth and power, and will say anything that you think might advance their interests or that might confuse or distract the rest of us.
You, Mubarak - what's the difference? Same bosses, same agenda. Even if your arguments were persuasive and intelligent - which they are not - still, you are fighting for the other side.
I wouldn't call what they're doing desperate though. These are just what they are a bunch of wealthy PUNKS being punks and the assholes they all are. I know more then a few of these fascist minded jerks and to know them is to understand that they enjoy doing this shit, in fact they live for it.
Excellent article from Matt Taibbi about why the Banksters are not in prison, or not facing criminal charges. Clearly, the oligarchy is above the law.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-20110216?page=1
socialist, thanks for the Taibbi article --- although it makes one somewhat angry about the fucking Empire we do not see but live in:
They should have had more planes. Cargo planes to avoid the innocent, but enough to clear out Wall Street, the core of the tumor of Empire.
The old Bush saying of "never waste a good crisis" should apply to Obama and the Empire's crimes with 'toxic assets' (which are provably 'fraudulent assets', because there are NO HOMES behind most CDOs). And some dopes still say that Obama could have avoided "wasting a good crisis" and used this one when he came in to do what FDR failed to do --- kill-off the vampire Empire. But then, Obama didn't really "waste a good crisis" --- he milked it for his short lived chance to play faux-Emperor, from which he is even now being removed.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
"Democracy over Empire" party headquarters
Once Obama's famous talking lost its magic to quell the crowds, as it did in Egypt, and the Empire sent in the Clinton/Wisner 'secret team', the world's most famous talker became a walker.
Cheers Alan!
We obviously agree on just about every political issue. The Empire is destroying itself. The the current QE bubble is unsustainable. The US dollar as world reserve currency is coming to an end, when the coming 2nd collapse happens, costs are going to rise even faster here and we are going to see some real ugliness here; the first collapse was artificially propped up by the US govt. This time no one will be able to stop the market and currency crisis. Although I might sound alarmist, I would recommend folks that have any savings to buy silver/gold as a hedge. It would never hurt to have at least 20% of one's savings in gold/silver anyway.
Folks like Catherine Austin Fitts have said that the US dollar (fiat currrency since the USD was taken off gold in 1971 by Nixon) confidence is propped up by the power of the US military. This military/dollar system is a self-financing debt feedback loop. However, the Chinese, Russians, Iranians, Venezuelans and others are slowly but surely moving out of the dollar to minimize their losses on a declining dollar. Once a tipping point is reached, and a crisis of confidence ensues, I don't believe that the US military (which is stretched thin already) can prop it up any longer. That will trigger a world-wide renegotiations of payments, trade and reserve currency. Talk of this was already evident at the WEC at Davos.
.
Man, that is the $64,000 Question. When will the dollar die (not if). My guess is it's a slow slow slow bleed; where it dissolves slowly month by month, and soon the American people are no different than Russians, and cannot even afford common bread to eat.
That's why I moved off shore a long time ago. Unfortunately, I'm paid in dollars and every year I have less and less. But off shore property in some places in the third world doubles in value every few years and it's not because it's going up. It's simply inflation if the local currency is in any way tied to the US dollar.
We are phucked thanks to the Federal Reserve Board and their bailout/theft policy of screwing the American Taxpayer. They hand out money to everyone but you.
TJ
Exactly TJ,
That's exaclty why physical gold/silver (not ETFs) has historically been proven to be a great protector from currency debasing. What you describe is a great example of how Fed policy exports inflation.
socialist, clearly Nixon had it wrong when he infamously said, "If the President does it, it's legal".
Now we know that far above political pawns like Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Obama, that phrase only applies as such, "If the Empire does it, it's legal".
What service the big corporate/financial law firms have done for Wall Street and the Empire that it represents reminds me of Ralph Nader's 15 year old book, "No Contest; Corporate Lawyers and the Perversion of Justice in America".
However, now that the veiled Empire of 'inverted totalitarianism' (Wolin) is coming out of its shell, so to speak, and will have little need for political disguise or legal advice, I suspect that those who know where the bodies are buried from both political and legal services are going to be 'going underground' in one way or the other.
Best,
Alan
No argument there VP, I can only guess why Taibbi would stop there; judging from other articles of his, he is aware, yet did not take us all the way:
This is exactly the kind of "thing" I - and many others I know - have felt all along is what's going on behind many issues.
Take those documents that "killed" Dan Rather, about GWBush's military service that turned out to be faked (though maybe not, after all, faked fact based). What really happened there?
The antrax letters? - Still not quite solved. (The fed-lab employee perp supposedly committed suicide).
Etc.
*
Something's happening in the world these days: it's getting more transparent. Wikileaks is just one case in point. And the internet enables and causes cross-referencing of the appearing real conditions at literally lightspeed. We live in interesting times... The cover-up is breaking up. And the new and unknown, feeling strangely well-known, is thundering over us and glittering forth. Lightning strikes all the time.
When I was a kid, conflict of interest was a death sentence for a position or an office. Now, it is a job requirement
The American tragedy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9P5A9n2LfM
One more way corporations subvert democracy is in its dealings with customers/us. Want phone or internet service sign a contract that requires that the customer take any problems or complaints to mediation. This is a direction assault on our right of due process. The right to take to court a party that has done you damage.
Tell them FU I do not want to buy services that remove my constitutional rights. Look elsewhere or do without.
Yea I completely agree with you. Our votes don't count for much any more but our money does, if we act together. I get my internet and phone through a local co-op, and Im moving my money from the big banks to local credit union co-ops too. Don't buy crap from companies like GE, or members of the companies that the Koch brothers own. That's Dixy cups, Brawny paper towels, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Lycra, and Stainmaster carpet.
Oh and don't buy Coors beer, they'll just use your money to fund right wing causes, and that will literally have you pissing your your own best interests! Research into what your money does after it leaves your hands.
Many accurate appraisals of the subverted democratic government under which we live .
Far too few suggestions as to what can be done about it. Here are a couple of rather elementary steps. Granted there will be no instant solutions offered here but it took us a rather long time to get to this point and one must expect it to take a long time to rescue our nation from its slide into fascism.
1. Work to elect candidates pledged to accept no corporate funding whatsoever. All Green Party candidates make this pledge.
2. Work to make campaigns free of the power of money by insisting upon free air and print for all legitimate candidates. It is little enough to expect from our media.
3. Insist that the Justice Dept. actually investigate instances of possible criminality, such as that of the financial community, which, as they got away scott free for crashing our economy, are up to the same damn tricks yet again.
4. March until torture and rendition end. it is the least a human being can do.
With the model of Egypt fresh in our minds we can never again say that the people have no power. We have abdicated our power by refusing to get involved, refusing to take to the streets with very legitimate issues and proof of so many heinous actions.
In my view there is only one option: To the Courts! Sue, sue, sue! Sue these bastards! Sue them all! Get our tax destination on the ballots every two years. Make us responsible for where our taxes go, not politicians from any party! It's our money, our decision! This is the piece that's missing to fix this broken system. We decide where our taxes go no matter how dumb, stupid and idiotic we may be presently. This will make us smarter and completely involved in the process. No more money going to these for-profit wars that are killing our kids, no more support for dictators so they can buy more stuff from the War Machine and create more animosity to sell even more guns! No more support for Israel! Let them figure things out by themselves! No more factory food!
Anyone for this?
Hey, we can even continue hating each other. We can continue as selfish and arrogant as always. So long as we get this on track. There is no rioting, no getting beat up, arrested, nothing like that! Leave it all up to the lawyers! They are likely to make millions in the end and from the ones that have been robbing us. I don't really care, do you??? Fight money with money without putting a penny down, just like we love it: free of charge! It will be fun to watch in HD! On Fox if you wish! Sue them also!!! It will make us feel so good! Let's do this! C'mon?!!!
Suing is certainly an option in what should be a multi-pronged effort to restore our nation to its proper path.
The system is not broken. It is working very well and producing exactly the results that it is designed to produce. You seem to be under some illusion that it is supposed to be doing something different than what it is doing, or that it could do something different or could produce different results.
These are not serious recommendations for things "to do," nor is your implication that others have "too few suggestions as to what can be done about it" true.
The debate is not, as you would have us believe, between those who have "a plan" as you claim to, and those who do not have a plan. Rather, it is between those who are agitating for the purpose of helping people see that the entire system is corrupt - including the elections, justice department and other government agencies that you suggest we work with - and those who want to put a lid on things, who are promoting using the same thinking and the same approaches that have so miserably failed, who want to convince people that the system can be made work.
Odd that you hold up the example of Egypt, and then contradict the obvious lessons from it. No, it does not take a long time, and no, it is not a good idea to work within the system. You say that "with the model of Egypt fresh in our minds we can never again say that the people have no power" and then suggest a course of action and a set of expectations that are the opposite of what the people in Egypt are doing. They did not work for a Green party or some such tame and weak approach, they did not tell each other to be patient and dig in for the long haul, and they did not try to work within the system, work with the government and within the electoral system.
You may say that those things are all possible here and were impossible in Egypt. That is an illusion. The tyranny is much worse here. This is the home occupation zone for the empire, the same empire that the people of Egypt are resisting and rebelling against. The reason it seems milder here is because people are more intimidated and neutered and represent little or no threat to the empire. Talk of campaigning for third party candidates is symptomatic of that weakness and intimidation.
I am positively thrilled by these inevitable achievements and envision further possibilities for humane progress by direct electronic democracy.
Yes, finally. Business is being shown to use psy-ops in the marketplace. We know what we know, even before proof. How long are we going to sit on our laurels while they tear it all down?
I see that this article is from the Guardian and not from any US paper...
Honest, progressive, and truly brilliant business consultants, like Michael Porter of HBS/Monitor Group, understand the positive value of 'business clusters' where many interrelated businesses support and reinforce each other to achieve world class excellence --- and generate privately profitable AND socially positive externalities --- such as high education/high tech or medical clusters like Silicon Valley, Boston, Research Triangle.
However, the reverse is true about the Wall Street/Washington nexus of investment bankers, corporate K-street lawyers, fascist think-tanks, hedge fund owners, and crooked politicians, etc. which have succeeded in creating the world's largest interrelated imperial "cluster of sociopaths".
The reality of the Wall Street/DC model corporate/financial and political/militarist influence and democracy perverting Empire "cluster of sociopaths" clearly demonstrates what happens when a coven of elitist "empire-thinkers" are allowed to get together to reinforce each others sociopathy and conspire to pervert both capitalism and politics toward the "Unspeakable" goal of "tearing off the face" of our world.
A similar sociopathic "Empire cluster" built up in Berlin over 70 years ago and was centered around the 'unspeakable' evil of a powerful and centralized psychopath equally willing of unleashing massive negative externality costs (social costs) with no concern that this could destroy the world but only based on his demented "Empire-thinking".
Such "Empire-thinking" whether for an individual psychopath or a business "cluster of sociopaths" seeking unlimited power and money, and regardless of 'unspeakable' social destruction, up to and beyond existential extinction, is the seminal danger of a single 20th century nation-state, or this 21st century global Empire (posing as one).
The vast majority of sane, 'democracy-thinking', and empathetic "ordinary Americans" are ultimately responsible, and the only ones who can, right the 'unspeakable' wrong, the 'unspeakable ' evil, of the global Empire that happens, like the first presentation of a cancer, to have exposed itself and started metastasizing in our political economic body.
Unlike "ordinary Germans" 70 years ago, there is no external corrective power to ride in like the cavalry to save our small fragile world from Empire this time.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
"Democracy over Empire" party headquarters
The day will come when the ruling sociopaths begin to turn on each pther, paranoia grows in sociopathy.
"Supreme Court becoming a tool for corporate interests: study"
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/supreme-court-tool-corporate-interests/
Court now sides with Chamber of Commerce two-thirds of the time
Those who have been arguing that the Supreme Court is growing more friendly to corporate interests while becoming less friendly to everyone else will now have statistical ammunition for their arguments.
A study has found that the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has undergone a fundamental shift in its outlook, ruling in favor of businesses much more often than previous courts.
According to the Northwestern University study, commissioned for the New York Times, the Roberts court has sided with business interests in 61 percent of relevant cases, compared to 46 percent in the last five years of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who passed away in 2005.
[...]
According to the study, the Roberts Supreme Court has sided with the Chamber 68 percent of the time, up from 56 percent under the Rehnquist court, and noticeably higher than the 43 percent during the relevant part of Chief Justice Warren Burger's court, which ended in 1986.
[...]