Dollar-Weight Swings Congressional Scales On Order.
(EUGENE, Ore.) - History overflows with lessons-learned and many more ignored. American history, reflected from the prescient words of our Founders, can guide us well in this First Decade of the 21st Century.
Dollar-seeking greed even then was applied to take over control of budding government, distorting its functions in favor of “the few” and preventing or perverting what government could and should do for “the many”.
Serious academics and their students have long sought solid evidence for these situations, mirroring multiple issues closely paralleling those we face today.
Any citizen now can find a burgeoning flood of new books, studies, reports --and the published papers of many patriots who performed spectacularly in the American Revolution of 1776. Those patriots stuck out the course of continuing struggle for several decades.
We may find ourselves forced to do likewise --lacking action-NOW--with their experience a strong resource if we will but use it. Here’s what Jefferson, historical leader of one-oftwo of our political parties developed over these two centuries, told all concerned early-on: "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ---
Thomas Jefferson The pivotal point for many seeking strong guidance today from seminal events following “the Revolution” will be close focus on the Presidential election of 1800.
Significant struggles set off then are pregnant with both positive and negative consequences still shaping our two-party political “system” today. Healthcare was a sometime thing in Colonial days: Painful illness, early-aging and too-sudden death were seen as only natural, relating to the common lot.
We find ourselves today fighting for modern access to healthcare as a human right. It can no longer to be denied to descendants of those early pioneers. That right is now universally recognized around the whole world, already reflected in every other advanced nation --while we suffer under a broken system driven primarily by profit-seeking corporate interest.
That may once have been “the American way” but surely we have now grown, matured by the intermittent recycling of economic crisis, driven further into stilldeeper crisis, as we have undeniably encountered ever since the “Great Depression”.
We still face that same determined, dogged and deathly-if-necessary denial --in more ways than one-- by the same monied elite making dollar-pursuit their God, that brought such scathing statements from the Founders as that one from Jefferson. At the very root of evil today is the consequence of an ironic, contemptuous --and both contrived and clearly corrupted-- odd “precedent” by the Supreme Court; allowing human right to free speech for non-human “legal fiction” business groups.
Irony arises since that “precedent” proceeds from the Fourteenth Amendment, designed to provide human rights to our slavery-captured Americans-then. It was perverted to provide special protection for the rapidly-advancing railroad corporations --already gifted with millions of acres of Western domain.
A longtime railroad attorney, serving as clerk for “the Court”, recorded as if it were a true precedent a preliminary statement from the Chief Justice. That has long been seized upon by other legaleagles to preserve and project unprecedented opportunity.
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Ever since, protective actions for corporate political speech rights have far outrun what the Fourteenth was provided to do; by multiple numbers and massive further dollar-and legal/drive expenditures to protect and preserve that perverted opportunity.
One overwhelming result is the rapid, costly, and surely perverting development of the lobbying industry, now providing an army outnumbering our representatives elected in our bicameral system by more than 100-to-1 --each managing massive bales of cash “contributions” delivered in diverse, but always dollar/efficient ways.
Corporations were long allowed to operate only by state charter --special agreements setting out their responsibilities as well as their operational rights.
For many years those charters demanded a public purpose from any group seeking such protection and its benefits.
That wise policy arose from early painful, clearly destructive experience with the British East India Tea Corporation --one part of the Boston Tea Party-- reflecting the principle of consent-of-the governed, an original driving-force for a glorious American Revolution.
That clear demand for corporate responsibility was eroded away over decades, until the only purpose left was pursuit of profit; to be protected at any cost -- in no way barred by clearly negative consequences for the very society providing the charter.
Think “tobacco industry” --long “the unmentionable invisible”, masking major consequential Colonial political moves. Madison’s complete reversal of basic “principles” first enunciated to win approval of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, shows the massive impacts involved: He joined with Jefferson to prevail in the interests of early Virginia and other planters, whose labor force was provided primarily by slave-holdings.
Recent action on tobacco depredations vs millions - --still the slaves of the same industry-- precisely mirrors the same forces at work, seeking still further corporate profits in uncannily similar circumstances.
Strikingly-parallel is the tremendous penalty-total extracted from that industry in recent years by long delayed federal/state action, now providing huge sums for preventive practices in every state.
That forced-action by government for the safety of the commonweal --clearly threatened by unconscionable corporate behavior in remorselessly marketing a known deadly poison-- in itself mirrors much of the closely similar situation we now face for essential healthcare reform.
Just so we see again in the even higher-piled and still growing “contributions” now being clearly paradeline/ assembled, to provide horrendous, intentionallyhurtful ammunition by similar corporations in the healthcare industry.
Those massive negatively-intended bales totalling billions come from both service and meds-supply providers-- backed still further by the insurance industry --whose products are most threatened by the probable arrival of some form of federal-force reform.
Clearly what they fear is public understanding of the proven facts provided by experience with Medicare showing effective management costs of two/three percent vs ten to fifteen percent on the private profitproducing side --NOT counting another ten percent at least for the profit itself. From WHERE ELSE but product-generated cashflow can such provocative totals come ??
That’s the origin of President Obama’s comment in his recent press conference: “If privae insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality healthcare...then why is it that the government, which they say can’t run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business ?”
Somehow that sounds more than slightly familiar, especially for anyone studying statements by those solid Founders whose prescience has been so fundamentally proven over more than 250 years since the original “76 Revolution.
Healthcare reform NOW, resulting in clear and unavoidable standards for both care and costs, may well be one of the most seminal and certainly essential of the major reforms within our faltering systems --not only economic but also social and certainly political-- that this 21st Century generation of pioneers must face.
Will we NEVER LEARN?
It is becoming essentially clear --even non-controversial !-- on what we must DO NOW --just as it was for the Founders-then. Let’s “get on with the inevitable”, as many of the Founders found themselves declaring in 1776.
At 21, Henry Clay Ruark was Aroostook Editor for the Bango, Maine DAILY NEWS, covering upper 1/4 of the state. In the ‘40s, he was Staff Correspondent, then New England Wires Editor at United Press-Boston; later Editor for the Burlington, Vermont 3-daily group owned by Wm. Loeb, later notorious at Manchester, New Hampshire UNION LEADER for attacks on Democratic Presidential candidates.
Hank returned to Oregon to complete M. Ed degree at OSU, went on to Indiana University for Ed.D. (abd) and special other course-work; was selected as first Information Director for NAVA in Washington, D.C.; helped write sections of NDEA, first Act to supply math, science, foreign language consultants to state depts. of education; joined Oregon Dept. of Education as NDEA administrator/Learning Media Consultant for tenyears.
He joined Dr. Amo DeBernardis at PCC, helping establish, extend programs, facilities, Oregon/national public relations; moved to Chicago as Editor/Publisher of oldest educational-AV journal, reformed as AV GUIDE Magazine; then established and operated Learning Media Associates as general communications consultant group. Due to wife’s illness, he returned to Oregon in 1981, semi-retired, and has continued writing intermittently ever since, joining S-N in 2004. His Op Eds now total over 560 written since then.
Op Ed: Corporate FundsSalem-News.com