Questions for those who hate large corporations

Floridatexan wrote:  

We need a major shift in policy in this country, or we're headed for a "New World Order".

Ah, I'll always remember the "New World Order" speech from GHW Bush. Always stuck with me as sinister. And we've been headed in that direction since tha time.

Don't mean to sound like a conspiracy theory whacko but there has to be "power to be" that move and shake beyond any US government administration whether Dem or Rep.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/31/that-old-time-inequality-denial/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

That Old-Time Inequality Denial

Brad DeLong links to the now extensive list of pieces debunking the FT’s attempted debunking of Thomas Piketty, and pronounces himself puzzled:

I still do not understand what Chris Giles of the Financial Times thinks he is doing here…

OK, I don’t know what Giles thought he was doing — but I do know what he was actually doing, and it’s the same old same old. Ever since it became obvious that inequality was rising — way back in the 1980s — there has been a fairly substantial industry on the right of inequality denial. This denial didn’t rely on any one argument, nor did it involve consistent objections. Instead, it involved throwing many different arguments against the wall, hoping that something would stick. Inequality isn’t rising; it is rising, but it’s offset by social mobility; it’s cancelled by greater aid to the poor (which we’re trying to destroy, but never mind that); anyway, inequality is good. All these arguments have been made at the same time; none of them ever gets abandoned in the face of evidence — they just keep coming back.

Look at my old article from 1992: every single bogus argument I identified there is still being made today. And we know perfectly well why: it’s all about defending the 1 percent from the threat of higher taxes and other actions that might limit top incomes.

What’s new in the latest round is the venue. Traditionally, inequality denial has been carried out on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and like-minded venues. Seeing it expand to the Financial Times is something new, and is a sign that the FT may be suffering from creeping Murdochization.

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SheWrites wrote:

Floridatexan wrote:  

We need a major shift in policy in this country, or we're headed for a "New World Order".

Ah, I'll always remember the "New World Order" speech from GHW Bush.  Always stuck with me as sinister.  And we've been headed in that direction since tha time.

Don't mean to sound like a conspiracy theory whacko but there has to be "power to be" that move and shake beyond any US government administration whether Dem or Rep.

I'm a proud "conspiracy theorist". I don't know how the propagandists (like Markle) managed to make those who believe in conspiracies into pariahs. A "conspiracy" takes only 2...that's all...so wherever 2 or more are working to the detriment of society...that's a conspiracy.

And Poppy Bush is just as or more evil than his idiot son. See FAMILY OF SECRETS by Russ Baker.

http://www.911truth.org/family-of-secrets-the-bush-dynasty-the-powerful-forces-that-put-it-in-the-white-house-and-what-their-influence-means-for-america/

BLOOMSBURY PRESS

FAMILY OF SECRETS: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America

By award-winning investigative journalist Russ Baker

ISBN: 1-59691-557-9; $30.00; Pub January 2009, familyofsecrets.com

Contact: Gene Taft, GeneTaftPR@aol.com, m: 917/701-4072, p: 301/593-0766 Peter Miller, Peter.Miller@bloomsburyusa.com, 646-307-5579

Revelatory new book on Bush family

publishing January 2009

How did Bush happen? How did George W. Bush, of all people, rise to the most powerful position in the world? This simple question sparked a five-year investigative odyssey by Russ Baker. What he found will force us to rethink virtually everything we thought we knew about the Bush family and its role in shaping recent American history.

In FAMILY OF SECRETS, Baker reveals that Bush, the people around him, and his policies are but an extreme, very public manifestation of what his family and its circle have always been about: an interlocking web of covert and overt machinations on behalf of a small cluster of elites-social, financial, industrial, military, intelligence-that enabled the Bush dynasty and propelled George W. Bush to the top.

Russ Baker’s deep background profile of the Bushes reveals a family with ongoing connections to the shadow world of intelligence, utilizing the dark arts of the trade to achieve their positions at the pinnacle of America’s political elite. Baker lays bare the stealth substructure that created the Bush dynasty, powered its rise, and brought America to its current state of crisis. Given the disastrous results of the last eight years, the story Baker has uncovered is must reading today-because the forces that shaped the Bush dynasty remain powerful and capable of exerting enormous influence on the fate of the country and the world

FAMILY OF SECRETS reads like a spy thriller. At the center stands George W.’s father, George H.W. “Poppy” Bush, whose public persona has always been that of a bland, patrician “genial bumbler.” In chapter after chapter, Baker unveils another “Poppy,” this one a ruthless master of elaborate covert operations and perception-management campaigns. Although the Bushes went to great lengths to create the notion of a substantial divide between father and son, the truth is that W. was essentially a bumptious and indiscreet version of his father.



Editor’s Note:
Amazing book!
I’ve just received a review copy and can tell you all, even having just begun to dig in to this massive volume, this is a serious piece of journalism! Not just a deep investigation into the Bush’s themselves, but a peak into present and historical power structures of the nation (and thus the world).


Baker’s meticulously researched investigative history includes these revelations:

* George H.W. “Poppy” Bush’s role in covert operations that profoundly affected America’s history long before he became CIA Director or President. * Personal secrets that George W. Bush and his handlers worked for decades to suppress. * The untold story behind George W. Bush’s religious “awakening.” * Why Bush Sr. cannot recall where he was the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. * The little-known Russian émigré who was linked to Bush Sr., the CIA, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the Kennedy assassination and who met an untimely demise. * The most authoritative case ever presented that George W. Bush walked away from his US military obligations, an act with potentially serious legal consequences and no statute of limitations. * How the CIA monitors the White House and its occupants. * The story of the Bush family operative who graduated from babysitting an adult W. to fronting for a vast Saudi money pipeline into Texas. * The hidden connections between the investment funds of America’s most prestigious universities and covert intelligence operations connected to Bush family businesses.
Baker systematically follows previously invisible threads that reveal Watergate to be a bloodless coup in three parts: creating the crime, implicating Nixon, and then ensuring that an aggressive effort would be mounted to use the ‘facts’ of the case to force him from office. Baker provides gripping new information about how Poppy Bush, Bob Woodward and White House counsel John Dean were connected to this still-mysterious American epic.

Baker’s research led him into even deeper waters. While reporting on Bush Sr.’s activities in the early 60′s, Baker discovered curious inconsistencies in Poppy’s account of his activities on the day John F. Kennedy was shot. “At 1:45 pm on November 22,” Baker reports, Bush Sr. “called the FBI to identify James Parrott as a possible suspect in the president’s murder, and to mention that he, George H.W. Bush, happened to be in Tyler, Texas.” As Poppy was making the call, Baker writes, Poppy’s own assistant was visiting Mr. Parrott at home. Baker goes on to describe what appears to be a virtuoso performance on Bush Sr.’s part at the time, creating a misleading paper trail regarding his own whereabouts that day while protecting his business interests and political future.

But Bush Sr.’s biggest operation was engineering his son’s rise to the presidency. Baker’s reporting presents Bush Jr. as an unruly scion who nevertheless relied heavily on his father’s extensive contacts and CIA expertise to erase all records of his misdoings and build a resume befitting a future president. Digging deep into Bush Jr.’s still-murky National Guard service record, Baker provides the most thorough account yet of what really happened. He also documents how W’s long track record as a womanizer and party animal was sanitized via a carefully calculated born-again Christian conversion that few dared question. Baker interviews the man who wrote the memos to the Bush family on how to gain the vast evangelical vote that put him in the White House.

When George W. Bush decided to invade Iraq in 2003, one Texas journalist, Mickey Herskowitz, was not surprised. “He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” Herskowitz told Baker. “He said to me, ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander in chief… My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait, and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade… I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed, and I’m going to have a successful presidency.’”

Combining gripping stories, explosive revelations and trenchant analysis, Family of Secrets is nothing less than a secret history of the elites that have shaped American politics over the last century.

Russ Baker

Russ Baker is an award-winning investigative reporter with a track record for making sense of complex and little understood matters. He has written for the New Yorker, Vanity Fair , the Nation , the New York Times , the Washington Post , the Village Voice and Esquire . He has also served as a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review . Baker received a 2005 Deadline Club award for his exclusive reporting on George W. Bush’s military record. He is the founder of WhoWhatWhy/the Real News Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organization, operating at whowhatwhy.com .

Praise for Family of Secrets “Shocking in its disclosures, elegantly crafted, and faultlessly measured in its judgments, Family of Secrets is nothing less than a first historic portrait in full of the Bush dynasty and the era it shaped. From revelation to revelation, insight to insight-from the Kennedy assassination to Watergate to the oil and financial intrigues that lie behind today’s headlines-this is a sweeping drama of money and power, unseen forces, and the emblematic triumph of a lineage that sowed national tragedy. Russ Baker’s Family of Secrets is sure to take its place as one of the most startling and influential works of American history and journalism.” –Roger Morris, author of Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician and Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America

——————————————————————-

Praise for Russ Baker “In an era dominated by corporate journalism and an ideological right-wing media, Russ Baker’s work stands out for its fierce independence, fact-based reporting, and concern for what matters most to our democracy… A lot of us look to Russ to tell us what we didn’t know.” –Bill Moyers, author and host, Bill Moyers’ Journal (PBS)

“If Russ Baker’s proposed book does nothing more than catalog, analyze, amplify, and contextualize the bewildering array of Bush II crimes and misdemeanors that we already know about, it will perform a needed and valuable service. I’m betting that it will show us a good deal more than that-that what we’ve seen so far is smoke, and that Baker will expose the fire.” –Hendrik Hertzberg, senior editor, the New Yorker

“Russ Baker has the three most important attributes of any great investigative reporter: He is skeptical, he is fearless, and he is indefatigable. Whenever he examines anything-including the most allegedly wellcovered topics-he breaks important new ground.” –David Margolick, author and contributing editor, Vanity Fair

“This is the right moment for just such a project, I think. The country is waking up asking itself who is this Bush guy and how did he do this number on us. It seems to me that we need a book that narrates what happened and how. As to Russ Baker, he doesn’t need me to say that he is not only among the best at his craft but also a man of rock-solid integrity. I look forward to reading this book.” –Nicholas von Hoffman, author, columnist, and former Washington Post journalist

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I wonder what all the stupid assed people living off the gov will do when they run all of the corporations out of the country? Who's gonna pay for those foodstamps and gov checks when tax revenue from jobs or corp.....


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Chrissy wrote:I wonder what all the stupid assed people living off the gov will do when they run all of the corporations out of the country? Who's gonna pay for those foodstamps and gov checks when tax revenue from jobs or corp.....


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The only corporations that should be terminated or exiled (in your lingo) are those whose greedy pursuit of profits harms America's economy and accelerates the demise of our middle class.

What you seem to be advocating here, is that corporations have a right to steal and cheat, and if we don't let them do so, they'll go out of business or leave.

I hope the swinging door doesn't hit them too hard in the ass.

For the record, I don't hate corporations per se. I hate corporations like Enron, Goldman Sachs, Koch Industries, et al, who lie and cheat the public and their own employees to fatten their bottom lines and pay their executives outrageous salaries, benefits and perks. I hate leveraged buyout artists who exploit pension plans and effectively kill good, solid companies just for profit...moving operations out of the country (if applicable), firing good employees, making a mockery of the capitalist system. I hate corporations who destroy the environment for profits they don't even pass down to their own workers...who bribe corrupt officials in other countries; who use disaster capitalism to allow US industry to take over profit centers and resources abroad. I'm all for corporations who give back to the community, and many do, but (having been a part of public relations for many corporations...either directly or as an agent)...sometimes those PR efforts are a pittance compared to the destruction their operations cause.

Some of my best memories are of working for large corporations...and those have to do with the people I worked with...a few bad apples...absolutely...but overall I loved the camaraderie and the teamwork. It's good to be a part of worthwhile endeavors...it's good to see a project come to fruition. But any corporation is the product of the people who run it. I couldn't work for a company, for instance, that sold chemicals that had been banned in the US to other countries...I quit.

The reverse Robin Hood days are coming to an end. We can't allow our country to become a complete oligarchy. We are not slaves.