Simple Missions That Morphed Into Monsters

An income greedy financial sector, corrupt political parties, and bean counter corporations are all having lethal effects on the countries welfare.

All three areas once had a specific limited service to contribute to the country. Over the years, however, they have been allowed to expand their activities and boundaries to the point where they have become self serving and are now harmful to the economy, our democracy and our welfare  They have done this by abandoning service to the country and its citizens and focusing instead on creating in-house benefits. This has been accomplished with the full complicity of our elected government. All of these activities have been gained through expansion of their activities outside of constitutional requirements.

The Constitution granted Congress responsibility for the fiscal activities of the country. The Congress utilized private sources to assist it to perform specific functions and to assist in ensuring that funding was available to companies and citizens for productive use. Because they are managing national funds their focus should not be maximizing their own profits. This situation has reversed itself and these functions are now managed by central banks that are corporations focused on creating revenue for themselves, not for the productive sectors of our economy. Combine this with lax overview by the Government and we have hugh misallocation of funds misdirection of national goals, and financial disasters.

The Constitution does not mention political parties. Their potential for doing harm was warned by several founding fathers, including Thomas Jefferson, Geoge Washington, and John Adams. This was done on the fear that it would create primary loyalties to the party instead of the general welfare. This has proven to be true. There is a natural tendency of citizens to start groups that would organize to jointly advocate their position for pending legislation. Now, however we have only two parties that have been jointly untouchable in power for over 150 years. They have become a major anti-democracy factor by their tight control of the selection process that determines the candidates that are finally presented to the citizens. Their control of the elected government has allowed them to define an election process that greatly favors the current system. The result is that our election process is governed by two private organizations that have their primary loyalty to themselves rather than the nation

Reflecting the feelings that English corporations had been exploiting the colonies in the days before independence corporations in early America were rare, They were treated as unique organizations formed for a special business activity, such as building a canal. They are not mentioned in the Constitution and were initially solely a state responsibility. They were forbidden to become involved in politics. Over 200 years of mainly Supreme Court decisions have reversed this to give them all rights of a natural person and the right to use their profits `to exert enormous power over our legislative and electoral processes. To restore our democracy all three institutions must be put back into their proper position in relation to national governance.

The financial sector must be put back in the position of a service to the productive elements of the economy and not focused on non productive attempts to increase its own revenues.

Political parties must be reduced to equality as one of many organizations promoting candites and have no special advantages over unaffiliated candidates.

Corporations likewise must be focused on producing useful services and products, not on government and electoral process manipulation for special privileges.

These corrections will be difficult and take time. All three institutions will fight strongly to preserve their positions. It will only happen with an overwhelming demand from the citizens. It will require a drastic reduction of the funds that can be applied to influencing the government and elections.

Harmful Developments Not Covered by the Constitution

One of the inspiring thoughts that drove the framers of America was that after thousands of years of governments by despotism the United States experience would prove that free men can govern themselves. They carefully crafted the Constitution to guide America through a life expectancy of many years. It was hoped that with continual improvements made through a careful process the vision would be protected and passed forward from generation to generation.

While the Constitution was being drafted neither political parties or corporations were of major significance. They therefore were not mentioned in the Constitution.

We were, however, given vocal warnings against a future controlled by political parties from many of the Founding Fathers. Washington even included a warning in his farewell address. Jefferson also warned against corporations assuming power (see earlier post “Founding Father Warnings on Current Issues, Oct 3, 2010).

Each generation of Americans has been a critical link in preserving the vision of a government that is controlled by its free citizens. Although some may disagree, I believe that in general we have performed well in that part of the vision protected explicitly by the Constitution.

But time has taken its toll in areas not specifically covered by the Constitution. We have allowed a two party system to gain control of our electoral process. In addition we have given corporations many of the rights previously reserved for citizens. This has allowed them to use their vast financial resources to influence our political processes. Both of these events have reduced the ability of the citizens to govern themselves.

The Democrats claim roots back to early post revolutionary war, while the Republicans emerged just prior to the civil war. Since then, although competitors for specific offices, they have jointly beaten down any attempts for a third party. This has greatly limited the choices in candidates and policies available to the citizens.

The two parties now essentially limit our choice of candidates to those from either one party or the other, meaning either a far left or far right agenda. There is no moderate agenda available. Further, as predicted by many of the Founding Fathers the party members have developed stronger loyalties to their party than to the country. Thus each party spends most of its energy sabotaging the other. Finally, the two parties have legislated themselves elite rights and privileges to a level that would really have distressed the Founders. The record of the Congress has been so bad that a recent Gallop poll showed that only 17% of the voters approve of its performance.

The direct solution rests on the efforts of the citizens to take advantage of the ability given by the Constitution to replace a large portion of the Congress. There is some evidence from the mid-term elections that this is starting to happen.

The solution to excessive corporate political power is more difficult. Corporations have become irreplaceable engines in the global economic system. The legal shield that allows investors in a corporation to only risk their corporate investment as opposed to risking their total owned assets is the most powerful incentive for capitalization of companies. An overwhelming portion of the countries economic and technical strength rests with corporations.

In their formative years corporations were engines of commerce only and forbidden to participate in politics. Over the last 100 years this has evolved to the point that corporations now enjoy rights previously reserved for citizens. This has been generally affirmed by the courts. Vast sums are now spent by corporations and their organizations to influence legislatures. The critical task ahead is to formulate an industrial program which strengthens American corporations competing in the global economy while preventing them from acquiring such strength in the political process that they harm the creativity or well being of the citizens.

These are both fixable issues. They do require an aware and determined citizenry to keep the parties and the corporations from taking over ownership of our vision.