Libertarian Wet Dream...One World Government?
The
New York Times is out with a new story today on WPP - a London-based
corporation that is buying up most of the big lobbying shops here
in Washington, DC. The Times refers to the company as a
"consolidating force at work in the influence-peddling
industry." WPP is a $72 billion dollar foreign corporation - running
more than 150 public relations, advertising, and lobbying companies employing
nearly 160,000 people. And K. Street is getting devoured by WPP - as more
and more lobbying boutiques join up with the massive one-stop shop of
influence. As the Times writes, "WPP has become, in effect, a
special interest mega-firm, with offerings for conservatives and liberals, environmentalists
and polluters, gun lovers and gun haters, Tea Party die-hards and public sector
unions, old guard media and their high tech competitors - the entire gamut
from left to right, top to bottom."
So if you're a Texas energy baron - and you want to blow up EPA regulations on
toxic coal ash - then reach out to WPP - where you'll have... First,
access to their public relations team to promote your corporation and give it a
good name in the community. Second, access to their advertising team to run
smears against the EPA and "job-killing" regulations. And third,
access to a lobbyist to whip up support for your anti-EPA agenda on Capitol
Hill. Mitt Romney's Bain Capital did just that in 2011 - giving WPP
$320,000 to monitor "tax reform development." And here's what's
most troubling - WPP runs operations in 107 different nations including the
United States - it's like an unofficial branch of government that knows no
national boundaries. This is a Libertarian's wet-dream - a one-world,
corporate government that answers to profits instead of principles. And it
shows that those of us who want restore true democracy - represented by
"we the people" and not corporations - still have a lot of work to
left to do.
This is not democracy in action - it's the death of democracy at the hand of big corporations like Bain Financial and JP Morgan Chase. We need our lawmakers to ban the practice of corporations writing laws, giving those laws to legislators along with big campaign checks, and running massive advertising and PR campaigns to ensure public acceptance of those laws. But for now, it's illegal for our legislators to enact such a ban, because the Supreme Court says they'd be trampling the free speech rights - the use of money - of the corporations the Supreme Court recognizes as "people." It's time to put an end to the subversion of democracy in America by a British corporation. But before that can be done, we need to stop the Supreme Court from pushing their bizarre doctrine that corporations are people and money is speech. For that, go to movetoamend.org and join in the movement to amend the Constitution to end this corruption of democracy by the Supreme Court.