Corporate Takeover of US Govt: Mirrors the Kiwis from late 80s [View All]

***I ran across an interesting few posts in a Guardian talk group in the international forum under a thread entitled Calling All Americans VIII.

There is a chap (or lassie?) named mmuskin who is posting some important notes from a thread on DU from mid-October. I think we ALL need to read it. So I copy it here. (or the parts that mmuskin has already posted thus far).

This info is written by a New Zealander, and I wonder if that person is still posting here? I would SURE like to talk to him/her! The similarities in NZ’s handling of the corporate takeover of THEIR govt in the late 80s and what we see here are ASTOUNDING! And, to be fair to the dems (esp GBNC!) who say they will NOT vote for any bushlite dem even if that bushlite got the nomination, well……after reading about how NZ eradicated their cancerous corporate takeover, I tend to agree. It’s time we got radical and cleaned house in our govt and do it NOW. Not just elect some dems to do it for us sometime after Nov 2004!

To be fair, mmuskin lists some of the responders as: in a thread started by hedda_foil. Other posters' names included Mr_SmokesTooMuch, NewYorkerFromMass, jiacinto, ithacan, nothingshocksmeanymore, charlie, KoKo01, NYC, TahitiNut, bornskeptic, StlMo, Armstead, Classical_Liberal, Tinoire, WhoDoYouTrust, Merlin, TheSocialist2002, Tigermoose, LiberalLibra, BeHereNow, Pocho, Tigerlily, David Zephyr, and bpilgrim. I wish I knew who the (New Zealander) author was but I saved the entire thread and am only now attempting to render it readable from the saved HTML.

The most chilling quote in the WHOLE thing is this one, which I excerpted:

“So my only connection to the US is the knowledge that the US is the most powerful nation on the planet, and if these corporates get control of its military then we will ALL be screwed.”

BY MMUSKIN on Guardian Talk:

The preceeding four posts are quotes from the talkboards of DemocraticUnderground.com (DU, not to be confused with Depleted Uranium) posted late last year. Many people found them interesting, as did I. I will post more from my collection of those posts as I get time.

Notes from the (Democratic) Underground, Part 1

Sit back, and really think about it; and while you're at it, think about the Clinton presidency too (i.e. Welfare "Reform", NAFTA, WTO, for starters). Here in New Zealand in the late eighties, our left-wing party, Labour, underwent the same right-wing transformation that has taken a hold in the US and the UK. Privatisation, union busting and all the rest of the typically right-wing policies subtly became the policies of Labour and much damage was done because of it.

Most of our national industries that provided tens of thousands of jobs, and much needed revenue for the government, were mismanaged and run into the ground, before being sold off at fire-sale prices to overseas corporations.

We were told that by selling these loss-making enterprises, the government would be able to reduce our national debt considerably, and that they would be run better and be cheaper for the public. What we got, was basically enough money to cover a few years interest repayments on the debt, and huge amounts of revenue lost overseas, revenue that could not only have covered those few years of interest payments, but many more years, and we would still own our assets.

Legislation was also brought in that basically killed the unions. It gave far too much power to the corporate employers, while taking power away from their employees. Unemployment skyrocketed, and although it eventually stabilised, it still remains relatively high, and real wages came down significantly, so much so, that people earning over US $16,000 per year are considered wealthy.

Now comes the part that most of the pro-Dem posters would probably NOT like to hear: The people in our Labour party who brought about these changes, have since admitted that they were basically right-wing plants all along. As far as we can tell, those people in the Labour party were matched by similar people in the National party (the right-wing party) so that at that time, no matter who we voted for, these changes would have occured.

Those crypto-rightists in the Labour party eventually broke away to form a new party called the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers (ACT) which is a misnomer. They are in fact the most right-wing pro-Corporate party in New Zealand, they are in fact more right-wing than the right-wing National party of today.

Here is a partial listing of some of these people and what they are doing today: Mike Moore (head of the WTO), Roger Douglas (founder of ACT, and World Bank consultant), Richard Prebble (leader of ACT).

These three men and their supporters brought New Zealand to its knees and sold us down the river in order to put massive profits in the hands of their corporate masters. To give you an idea of how popular these peoples policies are, the ACT party garnered 7% of the party vote (New Zealanders have two votes: one for a party, and one for an electorate. Half the seats in Parliament are electorate seats, filled by a straight vote for a candidate by voters in each electorate, and the other half filled by the percentage gained in the party vote), which was the same percentage as the New Zealand Green party.

What I described above is essentially a corporate coup. These corporates bought politicians in ALL parties at the time to ensure that their preferred policies would be enacted, and they were. Now, the Labour party has mostly been taken back from these people, and we have a new electoral system (the one I described above) that allows us to have a greater say in how our Government operates by empowering the smaller parties as a means of tempering the larger ones. That new system stopped the corporate takeover, and that is why the crypto-rightists eventually formed their own party. They still have a say, but it is nowehere near as large as it used to be, and it is out in the open. When ACT says it, we the people know that it is the corporate party line, and the major parties try to distance themselves from it.

This is what I believe is happening in both the US and the UK. The corporations have subverted your democratic system, and have bought both sides of the debate. In fact I would not be surprised if they have bought out the Greens as well as the Democrats and Republicans.

Remember, they don't have to own the whole party, they just have to control a few key people who can make their policies stick. That is why the pro-Dems should be really cautious about supporting people like Daschle and Gephardt. As individuals they have the most power within the Democrats to make changes to the Democrats' policies to suit the corporates, yet their unbought collegues take the heat unjustly because they themselves have no power to stop it.

Could that be why Gephardt apparently did not inform anyone except Daschle that he was going to support Bush in that Rose Garden PR stunt?

I am sorry this took so long to explain, but I could go on forever about this, and I can not stress how important it is that Americans understand how this works. This is not a New Zealand thing or even a US thing. It is a corporate thing, promoted by the multinational trade organisations and corporations around the world. Remember that two of the people involved in our corporate coup went on to high positions at the World Bank and the WTO. This is what is in store for the US, and the more the pro-Democrats ignore it, the more likely it is to destroy your wonderful nation.

The reason I am so concerned about what happens in the US in this regard, is because here they took our assets, but with control of the US military, they can take everyone's assets as well as their freedom. The US is the frontline in this war, and it can only be fought by you. We in the rest of the world have no way of stopping the juggernaut once it controls the US military without another World War, and no-one wants that (except perhaps the corporates: they would make a killing, figuratively and literally).

The pro-Democrat people have to cast aside their loyalty and demand that the Democratic party get rid of the traitors within. That's what we did here in New Zealand, and trust me, the damage done in the few years the right had control, was nowhere near as bad as if we let the right control both the government AND the opposition. The New Zealand public learned a valuable lesson, and our nation is all the better for it.

Notes from the (Democratic) Underground, Part 2

You're right, DANZ, it IS happening here. In the past few days, one of our (DU) researchers, cosmicdot, discovered that Lieberman, (the Democratic VP candidate, and sponsor of the war resolution, along with the homeland security resolution) is a member of the board of directors of the Nixon Library Foundation. If any of you missed the thread, it is critical that you read it now. His cohorts on this board are the worst of the worst, and interestingly enough, include John McCain.

Lieberman is a plant. Unearthing the others will be easier in some cases than others. But many of them have scarcely been hiding. Breaux, Miller and who else? Is Hillary one of them or not? Gephardt?

The great problem is that the corporatists here are about to take over the world. I don't think that we have the luxury of cleaning house first. Because of our system, we can only slow down the onslaught, which means we have to support the Democrats in THIS election in order to limit the damage to the world to whatever extent is possible now. Our hope in doing this is that we will buy the time to expose and replace them for the next primary cycle. If we can't do this, we will have no way of doing it later as you in NZ did.

Notes from the (Democratic) Underground, Part 3

That is what is so frustrating watching the DLC Democrats of the last 15 years. Whether intentionally or not they have sold us all down the river and supported a system that increasingly makes it impossible to challenge excessive corporate power and to assert traditional democratic goals.

One need look no further than the current state of the media to see where the corporate Democrats have taken us, and will continue to take us unless the party's liberal and progressive wings reassert themselves.

Notes from the (Democratic) Underground, Part 4

When Bush junior's name was put forward as the Republican candidate for president, I knew the corporate coup was moving to the US. It had already started in the UK, so the next logical step had to be a takeover of the US government.

When I saw just how stupid Bush junior really was (that interview where he was grilled on his knowledge of global issues was the clincher) I immediately understood that the only way this man could have even won nomination was because he had some immensely powerful and wealthy backing, which by definition means the corporates.

Then the coup happened, and it was confirmed in my mind that the corporate coup of America had begun. The fact that the Democrats just rolled over and allowed Bush to steal the election showed that both sides had been bought and that the world was in for a very bad time. In fact I had been telling everyone I knew here in New Zealand that if Bush won we were in trouble, and when he won in the way he did, I changed that to "the world is fucked". I knew that it would be every bit as bad as it has been, because the corporates have no conscience. They will do ANYTHING to control EVERYTHING, and they will do it repeatedly until they get their way.

So I started following US politics very closely, trying to see which way the corporates would move first. The power crisis in California was one move I expected, because we in New Zealand had had our own "power crisis" where we were told that a drought had reduced our capacity to generate power to dangerously low levels, and prices skyrocketed. But the drought was soon broken and generation capacity returned to normal levels and above, but prices hardly dropped.

The power corporations (recently privatised under the coup I talked about in my previous post) began to demand that they be allowed to build more plants (sound familiar?) while the distribution networks did everything in their power to ensure that even in areas with adequate supplies, brown outs became common.

Finally, there was a break in a major cable supplying power to the city of Auckland, our largest city. This cut power to the Central Business District in Auckland, and took months to repair, during which time many small businesses were driven into the ground, while large corporations installed temporary generators so that they could continue trading.

Can you imagine a modern western city without power FOR MONTHS? That is what happened in Auckland, and it was all because of the privatisation of our power supply.

It was only when the Government threatened re-regulation that these brown-outs stopped, and there has only been one more attempt to use the drought excuse again, but this time the Government (Labour, which was once again in the hands of true centre-left people) was ready, and made it clear that re-regulation would occur if the industry couldn't sort out the problem, and at the same time led a national campaign to reduce power usage. I would bet the corporates were pissed off big time, because they not only did not get to increase prices, but usage went down and thus so did their profits.

Anyway, that was my first indication that the corporates had succeeded in taking over the US government. The US is different from New Zealand in many respects and its major industries have long been private, so I knew that privatisation wouldn't be the same there as here. What I was looking for was issues such as ANWAR, where public lands were basically given away for private exploitation. I also was looking for massive tax breaks for the rich.

This had happened here in more ways than one: along with a legal tax reduction for the wealthy, came a loosening of the enforcement regime that allowed HUGE tax ripoffs to be carried out by the corporations at the same time that the individual was harshly treated in order to cover the lost revenue. Many Kiwi's commited suicide because of the IRD - our IRS - putting fines on them for minor tax errors that were absolutely huge. In one instance a family who were accused of making an error in the hundreds of dollars were fined hundreds of thousands of dollars, only to eventually prove after something like 6 years that it was in fact the IRD that made the error and that they not only did not owe any tax, but they had deserved a rebate all along.

One of these many ripoffs resulted in a major scandal when it was finally exposed, and during a commision of inquiry evidence came forth to show that both Government politicians, IRD offcials and officials of the Serious Fraud Office were implicated in the coverup of a huge tax evasion running into the hundreds of millions of dollars ON A SINGLE DEAL. There where many such deals, but both of the major parties were implicated, and nothing was ever done to punish anyone responsible. The only thing that happened is one of New Zealand's richest men, who was deeply involved in the scandal renounced his New Zealand citizenship and moved to Ireland, a nation we do not have an extradition treaty with.

During the inquiry, a woman was charged with lying to the inquiry because she had said she was filming it on behalf of the National Archive, when in fact she had been hired by the man I talked about above in order to gain information against his opponents. That woman is now the president of the National party, so you can see that this corporate domination of the right in New Zealand still continues.

So at this stage I had started searching around the web for somewhere that I could share what I knew, and where I could learn more about what was going on in the US. And then Sept 11 happened, and I knew we were at war, and that this was no longer just about power and money, but also life and death. I began posting in many places talking about Sept 11, and it was through one of these sites that I discovered DU. Since then I have not posted anywhere else.

To me, the right in the US is gone, there can be no arguing with them, but the left is on the brink. It is here where I think I can have the greatest effect on how this all goes down. I believe the left in the US needs to understand that this is NOT politics, but a fight for survival, and party loyalty is NOT going to win it. You have to kill the cancer within before it spreads, and that fight is going on right here on DU.

I am not a Green supporter, although many of the pro-Democrats may think I am. I am in fact a Democratic supporter, but I can see the cancer and I am trying to fight it. Just pretending it doesn't exist will only make it spread more quickly.

So my only connection to the US is the knowledge that the US is the most powerful nation on the planet, and if these corporates get control of its military then we will ALL be screwed.
Here is what has happened in New Zealand because of this fight. Once the crypto-rightists were removed from Labour, and once our electoral system was changed to Mixed Member Proportional, the right lost much of its support.

In the most recent election held this year, Labour gained 41% of the Party Vote, National 21%, New Zealand First (a centrist party) 10%, ACT 7%, Greens 7%, United Future (a centre right party) 7% and the remainder was shared among smaller parties that due to their small support did not receive any Parliamentary seats (to gain a seat in New Zealand you must win an electorate seat, or more than 5% of the party vote).

So the left is once again in control of the New Zealand Parliament (as they were for the 3 years beforehand) and the National party got the least amount of support it has ever had.
This only happened because we cleared house before trying to win elections, rather than trying to win elections before clearing house. Once again, sorry for the length of this post, but I feel it is important to fully understand how New Zealand's experience is being mirrored in the US, and to show that only by following the example of the Left in New Zealand can the Left in the US fight this coup in the US.