Economic crises represent social and political transition points, times of great difficulty but also times of great opportunity - We now stand at the edge of one those rare windows in time
Well that quote from President Cleveland says it all by describing corporations as " creatures of the law". That's what they are and always have been, a legal construct, in some cases no more than an idea.
The history of how all these awful decisions get reinforced layer by layer simply to serve the rich and powerful is always mind-blowing.
So is the concept that humanity must put itself through 80 years of repression to get to a turning. There is no arguing with the evidence that it's true. It's a privilege to live through one?
Good grief, the stuff I have learned from "taking your classes", Thom!
Once again, thanks for a great Report. I'm in awe at your ability to access the historical records and to present your argument in such a readable, logical and heartfelt manner.
One thing about democracy, even more so than other forms of government, is that it seems to rely on human civility -- people who'll work together towards an ideal, even if it means they don't always get their way; there's a fragile balancing act in that, which elevates the importance of the scales of justice. What the people want, ideally, is the "promised land" of peace and prosperity. Judging by what's going on today, that's no longer the case, neither economically or justly.
You're right in saying that democracy appeals to the spirit of the people. That makes it a target for the forces in our world who manipulate people to get what they want. Your mention of China and Russia as representatives of these forces is correct.
I am happy to be part of the campaign to denounce corporate personhood. The role of banks and money must be re-evaluated. You might want to interview Dr. Delton Chen while he's in the US, visiting from Brisbane, Australia. His proposal (featured in the sci fi novel The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson) is called the Global Carbon Reward and has a beautiful description on his website (you can google it). His idea is to create a parallel currency which has a value based on reversing global warming not debt. The central banks would have to get involved. I think you'll get it, Thom.
From a paper I wrote in 1984. "Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer (England) whose policies of money and taxation led to the American Revolution hired Adam Smith to tutor his stepson, Henry the young 3rd Duke of Buccleuch, because of his work "The Theory of Moral Sentiment 81. Smith penned "The Wealth of Nations" at a time when the mercantilist policies of England had proven antiquated and were no longer profitable. The Sovereign of England by this time was the Bank of England for whom the Chancellor of the Exchequer was employed. Sovereignty having passed during the reign of Charles II,who bankrupted himself to bestow favors on an unscrupulous Barbara Villiers, first to the Bullioneers and the India Company and subsequently to the Bank of England when it acquired that company 82. Charles also sired,illegitimately, James Duke of Monmouth and Buccleuch whose grandson was the above mentioned 3rd Duke. Smith wandered the continent, especially France, spending much time with the "physiocrats" with young Henry in tow. Henry, 13 years later, paid his friend and tutor to write "Wealth of Nations" thus intellectually justifying a new era and a new philosophy to justify the change in methodology."
The Bank of England came about, because the aforesaid Charles II, was a man of wanton vices, besides his mistresses, he was a poor gambler.And in debt up to his eyeballs he went crawling to the East India Company for a loan, they granted the loan on the proviso that they be given a monopoly charter as the Bank of England. He squandered that loon, went crawling back, this time they demanded collateral in the form of the crown jewels, including the symbols of sovereignty, the crown, the globe and sceptre. He also betowed on his mistress, Barbara Villiers, a cousin of George Viliiers a favorite and possible lover of James I, the castle that Henry VIII built for Catherine Howard (Nonsuch), which she promptly sold off stone by stone.
A note on the Bank of England, no sooner than it set up shop, that there was a run on the bank's gold. To prevent bankruptcy, the Bank reached out to the foremost alchemist of the realm, and made him the 1st Warden of the Mint. The public's fears were assuaged when the alchemist Isaac Newton, subsequently knighted by the crown, assumed the position/
Elon was collecting big moolah from big money bros, I recall, none of whom I trust. Rumors asserted that he talked with Putin. About what, again, with the purported richest man in the world ?
Is there a verifiable record of whose money is invested in this ‘private’ company? ( incorporated with powerful protections and indemnifications from US )
Whether it's poisoning the environment, carbonizing our ecosphere, or extracting the wealth and destroying the health of Earthlings, the powers of corporate personhood wielded by morbidly wealthy sociopaths are the root cause of the really bad things that humans have caused, and must be nullified. The only proven method of making that happen is with the persistent nonviolent resistance of 3.5% of our citizens. Not coincidentally, the ultra-wealthy grifters who control a critical mass of our public sector decision-makers have been employing a version of this strategy for decades by exploiting their propaganda power to bamboozle enough poorly educated citizens into voting for corporate whores. They use fear, anger, and hate to manipulate their marks and it works. We need to use facts and evidence to motivate 3.5% of us to engage in a strategic campaign of making our elected officials do two things. First, we need them to acknowledge that their Constitutional purpose consists of the six objectives in the Preamble (or at least a pithier version of those objectives made by Alexander Hamilton when he said that the purpose was to abolish factions and unite for the general welfare of our citizens). Second, our elected and appointed decision-makers need to acknowledge that the reason our democracy is backsliding is that money is speech and corporations are people (i.e., those two SCOTUS spawned “legal” fictions). Any elected officials who don’t agree with their Constitutional purpose or that the powers of corporate personhood are the reason our government is failing need to be labeled as the toadies they are and voted out of office.
The eighty year cycle is a very real human and psychological phenomena: It's the limit of our personal, human ability to remember in a very personal way the causes and pains of past historical events. Anything further into our personal pasts, beyond 70-80 years, become unreal, almost fantasy and irrelevant.
This, of course means that the 2020-30 decade is in for a repeat of history that will probably repeat many of the pre-and-post event to the 1920-30 decade:
1. A huge and growing wave of inflation
2. A rise is loud autocratic behavior in politics
3. An increase in the acceptance of violence and blame of people we disagree with
4. An increase in corporate buy-backs and take overs of smaller companies
5. An increase in bank instability
And, of course, an escalation of wars.
Looks like we are still on up-curve, waiting for the crashes, curfews and travel limits. Or did that already happen courtesy of CDC, Biden, Bill Gates, WHO and the Urban parties?
America was the the Golden child for most of the years post WWII, but we have been in civil and economic decline since the 1980s. Our schools are no longer producing high literacy rates, or excellent Math and Science students. We are now 'the Germany' of pre-WWII with an intense wave of corporatism rolling over all of America's civil institutions - very much as it happened in Germany and Italy. America is no longer able to stand as a high moral ground inspiring the world.
No wonder that the Saudis, the North Koreans, the Chinese and the Iranians are pushing back; but they are pushing back against the Biggest Military history has ever created- the US Military-Industrial Complex with its hired hands. They know the US is bankrupt, and they are counting on America running out of money and volunteers. It's a terribly frightening gamble for all of us.
The children of the Baby Boomers are at middle age, and their grand children have not shown much interest in voting, let alone serving their country in the Endless Wars the US and its Military Industrial Complex has orchestrated for the last 50 years. Thus, historically, we may have some wars where the young are running for 'Canada.' Much as the young Russian males are already running away from Putin.
Maybe it will be a new kind of war where the corporations and their on-loan-executives in our regulatory bodies will be creating enough straight-jacket systems to fund their bottom lines. Maybe it will be an avalanche of large pharmaceutical mandates that will keep us sick and doped up?
The voting behavior in America during the November 1, 2022 - November 1, 2024 will prepare us for the remainder of the 2020-2030 and the likelihood, or not, that history will repeat the 1920-30-40 scenario. It's very informative to keep looking at the pulse beating at www.commondreams.com, and to pray for all of us: May our children have enough Courage to fight for all of us.
Hartman citations:
1. Eighty years later the Great Depression bottomed out as Hitler rose to power and again America experienced war and upheaval, on a greater scale than ever before, accompanied by dramatic transformations in the role and nature of our federal government.
Today we’re approaching that same interval — it’s been 77 years since the end of World War II — and people are nervous about another worldwide economic crisis, with good reason.
Even beyond the immediate consequences, economic crises have led to huge and long-term political changes. They have ushered in the rise of fascism, the consolidation of communism, the overthrow of monarchy (the American and French revolutions, for example), and the creation of the new and experimental democratic republic of the United States of America
2. But while much of the world tries to emulate the American experiment, contemporary America is moving in the direction of the corporate-state partnership.
Executives from regulated industries are heading up the agencies that regulate them. Other symptoms of increasing corporate control of the nation include widespread privatization and so-called public-private partnerships: euphemisms for shifting control of a commons’ resources (like water or electricity) from government agencies to corporations.
3. The concern is not corporations per se; the bludgeon of corporate personhood is rarely used by small or medium companies; it’s used almost exclusively by a handful of the world’s largest, to force their will on governments and communities.
This means a very small number of parties (the biggest corporations) are all that stand in the way of reform, which suggests the corporate personhood doctrine is the weakest link in the chain of corporate power.
And it’s a link that can be broken by alert and activist citizens, thus steering America away from Mussolini’s view of government and back on course toward that of our nation’s Founders. What is required is that we undo that 1886 court reporter’s incorrect headnote, by any of the various means people are beginning to try.
Once again in America, we must do what the author of the Declaration of Independence always hoped we would:
“[T]he people, being the only safe depository of power, should exercise in person every function which their qualifications enable them to exercise, consistently with the order and security of society.” (emphasis added)
We must seize this moment to take back from corporations the power to govern, for the world our children and our children’s children will inherit.
4. We’ve reached the point in the United States where corporatism has nearly triumphed over democracy.
If events continue on their current trajectory, the ability of our government to respond to the needs and desires of humans — things like fresh water, clean air, uncontaminated food, independent local media, secure retirement, and accessible medical care — may vanish forever, effectively ending the world’s second experiment with democracy.
5. We will have gone too far down Mussolini’s road, and most likely will encounter similar consequences, at least over the short term as we saw beginning to emerge during the Trump presidency: a militarized police state, a government unresponsive to its citizens and obsessed with secrecy, a ruling elite drawn from the senior ranks of the nation’s largest corporations, and the threat of war
Well that quote from President Cleveland says it all by describing corporations as " creatures of the law". That's what they are and always have been, a legal construct, in some cases no more than an idea.
The history of how all these awful decisions get reinforced layer by layer simply to serve the rich and powerful is always mind-blowing.
So is the concept that humanity must put itself through 80 years of repression to get to a turning. There is no arguing with the evidence that it's true. It's a privilege to live through one?
Good grief, the stuff I have learned from "taking your classes", Thom!
Once again, thanks for a great Report. I'm in awe at your ability to access the historical records and to present your argument in such a readable, logical and heartfelt manner.
One thing about democracy, even more so than other forms of government, is that it seems to rely on human civility -- people who'll work together towards an ideal, even if it means they don't always get their way; there's a fragile balancing act in that, which elevates the importance of the scales of justice. What the people want, ideally, is the "promised land" of peace and prosperity. Judging by what's going on today, that's no longer the case, neither economically or justly.
You're right in saying that democracy appeals to the spirit of the people. That makes it a target for the forces in our world who manipulate people to get what they want. Your mention of China and Russia as representatives of these forces is correct.
I am happy to be part of the campaign to denounce corporate personhood. The role of banks and money must be re-evaluated. You might want to interview Dr. Delton Chen while he's in the US, visiting from Brisbane, Australia. His proposal (featured in the sci fi novel The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson) is called the Global Carbon Reward and has a beautiful description on his website (you can google it). His idea is to create a parallel currency which has a value based on reversing global warming not debt. The central banks would have to get involved. I think you'll get it, Thom.
Wow, I had no idea it was all a fraud and not based on case law.
Another tour de force. Thanks, Thom.
From a paper I wrote in 1984. "Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer (England) whose policies of money and taxation led to the American Revolution hired Adam Smith to tutor his stepson, Henry the young 3rd Duke of Buccleuch, because of his work "The Theory of Moral Sentiment 81. Smith penned "The Wealth of Nations" at a time when the mercantilist policies of England had proven antiquated and were no longer profitable. The Sovereign of England by this time was the Bank of England for whom the Chancellor of the Exchequer was employed. Sovereignty having passed during the reign of Charles II,who bankrupted himself to bestow favors on an unscrupulous Barbara Villiers, first to the Bullioneers and the India Company and subsequently to the Bank of England when it acquired that company 82. Charles also sired,illegitimately, James Duke of Monmouth and Buccleuch whose grandson was the above mentioned 3rd Duke. Smith wandered the continent, especially France, spending much time with the "physiocrats" with young Henry in tow. Henry, 13 years later, paid his friend and tutor to write "Wealth of Nations" thus intellectually justifying a new era and a new philosophy to justify the change in methodology."
The Bank of England came about, because the aforesaid Charles II, was a man of wanton vices, besides his mistresses, he was a poor gambler.And in debt up to his eyeballs he went crawling to the East India Company for a loan, they granted the loan on the proviso that they be given a monopoly charter as the Bank of England. He squandered that loon, went crawling back, this time they demanded collateral in the form of the crown jewels, including the symbols of sovereignty, the crown, the globe and sceptre. He also betowed on his mistress, Barbara Villiers, a cousin of George Viliiers a favorite and possible lover of James I, the castle that Henry VIII built for Catherine Howard (Nonsuch), which she promptly sold off stone by stone.
A note on the Bank of England, no sooner than it set up shop, that there was a run on the bank's gold. To prevent bankruptcy, the Bank reached out to the foremost alchemist of the realm, and made him the 1st Warden of the Mint. The public's fears were assuaged when the alchemist Isaac Newton, subsequently knighted by the crown, assumed the position/
Here's a thought experiment for you:
What if, in a spirit of compromise, we offered fetal personhood in trade for corporate personhood?
The response would be telling. No?
Whose money bought the Twit show, again, exactly?
Elon was collecting big moolah from big money bros, I recall, none of whom I trust. Rumors asserted that he talked with Putin. About what, again, with the purported richest man in the world ?
Is there a verifiable record of whose money is invested in this ‘private’ company? ( incorporated with powerful protections and indemnifications from US )
best luck to US — b.rad
Whether it's poisoning the environment, carbonizing our ecosphere, or extracting the wealth and destroying the health of Earthlings, the powers of corporate personhood wielded by morbidly wealthy sociopaths are the root cause of the really bad things that humans have caused, and must be nullified. The only proven method of making that happen is with the persistent nonviolent resistance of 3.5% of our citizens. Not coincidentally, the ultra-wealthy grifters who control a critical mass of our public sector decision-makers have been employing a version of this strategy for decades by exploiting their propaganda power to bamboozle enough poorly educated citizens into voting for corporate whores. They use fear, anger, and hate to manipulate their marks and it works. We need to use facts and evidence to motivate 3.5% of us to engage in a strategic campaign of making our elected officials do two things. First, we need them to acknowledge that their Constitutional purpose consists of the six objectives in the Preamble (or at least a pithier version of those objectives made by Alexander Hamilton when he said that the purpose was to abolish factions and unite for the general welfare of our citizens). Second, our elected and appointed decision-makers need to acknowledge that the reason our democracy is backsliding is that money is speech and corporations are people (i.e., those two SCOTUS spawned “legal” fictions). Any elected officials who don’t agree with their Constitutional purpose or that the powers of corporate personhood are the reason our government is failing need to be labeled as the toadies they are and voted out of office.
The eighty year cycle is a very real human and psychological phenomena: It's the limit of our personal, human ability to remember in a very personal way the causes and pains of past historical events. Anything further into our personal pasts, beyond 70-80 years, become unreal, almost fantasy and irrelevant.
This, of course means that the 2020-30 decade is in for a repeat of history that will probably repeat many of the pre-and-post event to the 1920-30 decade:
1. A huge and growing wave of inflation
2. A rise is loud autocratic behavior in politics
3. An increase in the acceptance of violence and blame of people we disagree with
4. An increase in corporate buy-backs and take overs of smaller companies
5. An increase in bank instability
And, of course, an escalation of wars.
Looks like we are still on up-curve, waiting for the crashes, curfews and travel limits. Or did that already happen courtesy of CDC, Biden, Bill Gates, WHO and the Urban parties?
America was the the Golden child for most of the years post WWII, but we have been in civil and economic decline since the 1980s. Our schools are no longer producing high literacy rates, or excellent Math and Science students. We are now 'the Germany' of pre-WWII with an intense wave of corporatism rolling over all of America's civil institutions - very much as it happened in Germany and Italy. America is no longer able to stand as a high moral ground inspiring the world.
No wonder that the Saudis, the North Koreans, the Chinese and the Iranians are pushing back; but they are pushing back against the Biggest Military history has ever created- the US Military-Industrial Complex with its hired hands. They know the US is bankrupt, and they are counting on America running out of money and volunteers. It's a terribly frightening gamble for all of us.
The children of the Baby Boomers are at middle age, and their grand children have not shown much interest in voting, let alone serving their country in the Endless Wars the US and its Military Industrial Complex has orchestrated for the last 50 years. Thus, historically, we may have some wars where the young are running for 'Canada.' Much as the young Russian males are already running away from Putin.
Maybe it will be a new kind of war where the corporations and their on-loan-executives in our regulatory bodies will be creating enough straight-jacket systems to fund their bottom lines. Maybe it will be an avalanche of large pharmaceutical mandates that will keep us sick and doped up?
The voting behavior in America during the November 1, 2022 - November 1, 2024 will prepare us for the remainder of the 2020-2030 and the likelihood, or not, that history will repeat the 1920-30-40 scenario. It's very informative to keep looking at the pulse beating at www.commondreams.com, and to pray for all of us: May our children have enough Courage to fight for all of us.
Hartman citations:
1. Eighty years later the Great Depression bottomed out as Hitler rose to power and again America experienced war and upheaval, on a greater scale than ever before, accompanied by dramatic transformations in the role and nature of our federal government.
Today we’re approaching that same interval — it’s been 77 years since the end of World War II — and people are nervous about another worldwide economic crisis, with good reason.
Even beyond the immediate consequences, economic crises have led to huge and long-term political changes. They have ushered in the rise of fascism, the consolidation of communism, the overthrow of monarchy (the American and French revolutions, for example), and the creation of the new and experimental democratic republic of the United States of America
2. But while much of the world tries to emulate the American experiment, contemporary America is moving in the direction of the corporate-state partnership.
Executives from regulated industries are heading up the agencies that regulate them. Other symptoms of increasing corporate control of the nation include widespread privatization and so-called public-private partnerships: euphemisms for shifting control of a commons’ resources (like water or electricity) from government agencies to corporations.
3. The concern is not corporations per se; the bludgeon of corporate personhood is rarely used by small or medium companies; it’s used almost exclusively by a handful of the world’s largest, to force their will on governments and communities.
This means a very small number of parties (the biggest corporations) are all that stand in the way of reform, which suggests the corporate personhood doctrine is the weakest link in the chain of corporate power.
And it’s a link that can be broken by alert and activist citizens, thus steering America away from Mussolini’s view of government and back on course toward that of our nation’s Founders. What is required is that we undo that 1886 court reporter’s incorrect headnote, by any of the various means people are beginning to try.
Once again in America, we must do what the author of the Declaration of Independence always hoped we would:
“[T]he people, being the only safe depository of power, should exercise in person every function which their qualifications enable them to exercise, consistently with the order and security of society.” (emphasis added)
We must seize this moment to take back from corporations the power to govern, for the world our children and our children’s children will inherit.
4. We’ve reached the point in the United States where corporatism has nearly triumphed over democracy.
If events continue on their current trajectory, the ability of our government to respond to the needs and desires of humans — things like fresh water, clean air, uncontaminated food, independent local media, secure retirement, and accessible medical care — may vanish forever, effectively ending the world’s second experiment with democracy.
5. We will have gone too far down Mussolini’s road, and most likely will encounter similar consequences, at least over the short term as we saw beginning to emerge during the Trump presidency: a militarized police state, a government unresponsive to its citizens and obsessed with secrecy, a ruling elite drawn from the senior ranks of the nation’s largest corporations, and the threat of war