Death by Corporation: America's Corporate Deathstar

Death by Corporation: America's Corporate Deathstar

Monday, 12 August 2013 09:28
By Dr Brian Moench, Truthout | Op-Ed

Instead of protecting US citizens, the Obama administration is enabling the ultimate corporate "Deathstar." The TransPacific Partnership will allow corporations "virtually unchecked control of our food supply, our land, air, water, wallets and our future."

A few days ago I was contacted by someone in the EPA and told that I had been nominated to be a potential recipient of an award from the White House, a "Champion of Change" on the issue of the public health consequences of global warming. To find out if I had received one of the awards, which sounded like the Heisman Trophy of public health/environmental do-gooderism, I was asked to fly back to Washington - at my own expense, thank you "Sequester" - with other nominees to attend a ceremony/panel discussion on the issue. I bought my plane ticket, attended the conference, but did not receive the "Climate Heisman." In fact, ironically, because of extreme (global warming) weather disrupting plane flights throughout the Midwest, the whole experience degenerated into a travel nightmare.

The White House staffers who ran the conference seemed like sincere people, trying to work within the system to back us away from the cliff of a climate crisis. But key here is "within the system." It turns out the clean break that must be made from the dirty energy corporations, including those fracking for natural gas, won't happen in time, or perhaps ever, because "within the system" refers to a state where the profitability of those powerful corporations has supremacy over a livable climate and the survival of much of the human race.

In Parts I and II of Mankind: Death by Corporation, we looked briefly at what amounts to ruthless, psychopathic behavior of our largest corporations spanning most major industries. But aided and abetted by "sincere" government officials, corporations are working behind the scenes, rapidly assembling the corporate "Death Star" to be unleashed upon citizens throughout the world, allowing them virtually unchecked control of our food supply, our land, air, water, wallets and our future.

An in-house editorial in the New York Times on July 5, began, "For all its rabid partisanship, Congress has shown time and again that it is willing to come together to deregulate corporate America." This new corporate giveaway is a bill in the Senate sponsored by Democrats and Republicans that would, for all intents and purposes, end the "independence" of independent regulatory agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the National Labor Relations Board. These independent agencies were established to be accountable to Congress - not the White House - with the goal of insulating them from political arm-twisting. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/18115-mankind-death-by-corporation-part-iii-the-tpp-as-corporate-deathstar