The War On Bullshit

There is an idea that is pervasive in American capitalism that entrepreneurs are the great producers, great men who move the Earth through intelligence, perseverance, and creativity. You can hear it echoed from Ayn Rand to Ted Nugent: the executives are the people who produce and keep the world moving, while the knuckle-draggers shuffling to work at 6 in the morning and don’t make enough money to pay taxes are, in fact, parasites.

This is bullshit.

The fact is, those corporations often didn’t get to their billions through wisdom or creativity, or even good luck. They got there through criminal activity, inherited wealth, and ruthless disregard for the value of anything but the stockholders and the corporation’s profit.

Case #1: duPont Chemicals

The duPont corporation is the perfect example of why these global companies think something like a whipping boy is a damn good idea. It’s because these are the same assholes who had whipping boys in feudal Europe. We have this silly idea in America that we are no longer controlled by the monarchs and scoundrels of medieval Europe, but is that really true?

It’s hard to believe that is true when I look at a family like duPont, who were Burgundian nobility who emigrated to the United States to escape the guillotine for their injustices to the lower class during the French Revolution.

If that’s not enough, they were one of the biggest companies accused by Smedley Butler of trying to overthrow the U.S. government to install a fascist dictator, as fascists tend to be more friendly to big, ruthless business. Now, you might not believe in Major General Smedley Butler’s accusations, but that doesn’t clear duPont of dirt. They’ve also been accused of having hemp made illegal to destroy the competition against their new product - Nylon - and they are also responsible for the lovely carcinogen probably in your kitchen right now: Teflon. They’re not even close to the worst.

Case #2: Chiquita

Chiquita weren’t always the non-controversial banana company with the wacky mascot that we all know now. At one time, they had a different name - the United Fruit Company - and a very different business ethos.

You see, rather than grow by producing affordable, delicious fruit… they bribed government officials in third-world countries, amassing enormous power over the politics of these developing nations and using it to exploit the workers in those places, to grow the cheapest fruit known to man (second to slave labor, I guess). Hence the banana republic.

Oh yeah, the guy the U.S. government supposedly sent in to make these banana republics more docile for the companies? None other than Major General Smedley Butler.

Case #3: Ford, GM, IBM and the Nazis

I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem like helping the Nazis massacre millions doesn’t seem like a very American way to make billions, but that’s just what these companies have been accused of.  Yet Ford and GM have been accused of not bothering to close shop when fascists took power in Europe; hell, they took the opportunity to borrow some slave labor from the concentration camps.

IBM took it a step further, and actually provided the punch card system the Nazis used to keep track of all those slaves.

Conclusion

That’s not counting the German corporations you buy products from every day who provided such valuable technology as Zyklon B, the gas used to exterminate the Jews. And the horrible and well-documented business practices of Wal-Mart and the Disney Corporation. Or the ruthless monopoly of Standard Oil, and the shady dealings of Microsoft… the list goes on.

These executives are not the benevolent and wise leaders portrayed by people like Rush Limbaugh or Ayn Rand. They are liars, cheats, and ruthless narcissists. Would you give your money to the Nazis? Then why give it to the people who enabled them?

As I watch the situation with AIG and Congress unfold, I can’t help but think about the nature of corporations, and what will happen to people like Edward Liddy - the CEO who authorized $4 million bonuses for the executives in charge of the insurance company despite the failure of the corporation. Is it really so surprising, though, to see business executives spending your tax dollars to benefit the majority shareholders of a company? We should expect corporations to keep their own interests in mind over that of their employees and the public at large in the country that spawned entities such as IBM - who made the punch cards the Nazis used to keep track of concentration camp prisoners - and the United Fruit Company - who took over the banana republics, controlling their governments to open their low-cost plantations - or even allegations, unproven though they may be, that corporations like duPont have actually tried to overthrow our government to install a business-friendly fascist.

Businesses exist to make a profit; CEOs of corporations are supposed to keep the interests of their shareholders in mind over just about anything else. Of course they will do what benefits those people who own the majority of a corporation. The problem is that we have set up and accepted, for far too long, a system, a relationship between government and business, that is fundamentally flawed - we have created the corporation as a whipping boy of the executives who run it, allowing them to act for profit regardless of law or morality.

The nobility of Europe often had a privilege for their children that was not at all extended to the common man: the whipping boy. The children of royalty could not be touched, upon penalty of death, and so their parents - terribly concerned with proper child rearing - created the whipping boy as a way to punish their children’s misbehavior without actually punishing their child. Instead, their kid would grow up with a good buddy - some commoner - who would take the beating for the noble child any time they acted improperly.

Now, this seems like a bizarre idea to those of us in America, who live without divine rights and nobility and class divisions (don’t we?). Unfortunately, it’s a concept that is still in practice, except it’s not the children of monarchs who benefit from it; instead, it is the board of executives of national corporations. The corporation actually exists, legally, as an individual, a person - they have the same property rights as you and me, they can sue or be sued, and, more importantly, they can be charged with crimes.

Unfortunately, charging an imaginary scapegoat with a crime doesn’t do too terribly much for the executives who are actually making the poor decisions and breaking the law. It is not the individuals making these decisions who face the consequences of their actions, but the corporate whipping boy - the imaginary ‘person’ the corporation represents. Well, you can’t send an imaginary person to jail. The most you can do is chastise them, and maybe issue a fine.

Thus, we have a corporate system where there are actually business executives sitting around a table with a cup of coffee, discussing whether it is more profitable to break the law and pay a fine, or to follow the rules and regulations passed by our government. Is there any wonder we have places like Cancer Alley in Louisiana, where oil refineries and chemical companies have polluted the water and air to the point that the cancer rate is astronomically high? If I stand to lose $4 million by implementing the proper safety procedures to keep those pollutants out of the water, and only $40,000 if I break the law, dump my chemicals in the river, and get busted by the EPA, of course I’m going to break the law!

Of course, it’s no wonder businesses have adopted an idea from the nobility we decided to throw the hell out of this country during the American Revolution, when you really consider where some of these wealthy corporations originated. For one thing, some of them are the same people who ruled Europe as monarchs. Next week, we’ll take a closer look at some of corporate America’s richest, and we’ll see how much we really have done to divorce ourselves from the same people who have been running the show since they called themselves barons.

So, I’ve got a secret for you this week. Don’t tell the Republican Party, but Bobby Jindal is a big douche. If you don’t know who Bobby Jindal is, he’s the governor of the shit-tastic state of Louisiana, and also apparently the future of the GOP.

The first-generation American from the deep south was chosen to offer to rebuttal to President Barack Obama’s address to Congress - often a speaking slot that signals the party has some interest in putting them up as a presidential contender, or, apparently as an alternative, a replacement for Mr. Rogers.

Gov. Bobby Jindal, delivering his rebuttal to President Obama’s address.

More telling still is that Gov. Jindal has visited seven other states in his quest to raise campaign funds - supposedly for a 2011 governor’s race in Louisiana, but you would think he’d have more luck winning a second term in his home state by not, say, being a dumbass.

A big bag of dicks. Completely unrelated.

What am I talking about? Oh, just that Jindal is a goddam lunatic, and here’s why…

1. It’s not a good idea to turn down unemployment money from the government when your industries are collapsing.

Bobby Jindal is among a handful of Republican governors debating refusing some or all of the stimulus money being sent out by the federal government. Specifically, Jindal does not want to accept the stimulus funds directed toward unemployment, saying it has a provision that would require Louisiana to raise taxes in the future to fund the expanded benefits.

Now, the fact that Louisiana pays some of the lowest taxes in the country aside… what the hell are you thinking, Jindal!? I could understand if Louisiana did not face a higher unemployment burden in the next year, but the mass layoffs happening around the state tell me that is not the case.

Alright, so you don’t like the stimulus plan, Jindal. Ideology aside, though, don’t you give a damn about your citizens? Apparently not, since you want to kill them, too.

2. Bobby Jindal wants to kill sex offenders.

That’s right. Bobby Jindal involved himself in a battle with the Supreme Court to keep a convicted child rapist on death row. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a big fan of child molestors, but expanding the list of crimes for which you can execute people is dangerous business, especially if you’re a nutjob conservative. The Supreme Court struck down that hope, so instead, Jindal pushed a bill to allow judges to sentence sex offenders to indefinite civil confinement - a slightly more reasonable sentence.

Oh, did I mention that he also signed a bill allowing for chemical castration? Alright, so the guy doesn’t give a shit about the unemployed, and he wants to kill or, barring that, castrate people. It can’t be much worse, right? But it is.

3. He can’t do math.

Seriously. At all. I mean, I haven’t looked at his school records or anything, but clearly Jindal doesn’t know dick about basic math, or he’d realize that cutting taxes while facing a budget shortfall is retarded, yet that seems to be his solution to the budgetary woes of the state.

Louisiana has a projected $1.3 billion budget shortfall in the upcoming fiscal year, so what does Jindal do? Propose extending tax breaks for the entertainment industry. Oh, but it’s okay, nevermind! He knows that will hurt the budget more, so he claims the lost $8 million will be made up by cuts in the budget (hint: education and healthcare, the two largest portions of the budget without protection under the state constitution). What do I expect, though? He’s the guy chosen to lead this bunch of lunatics, who also think cutting the source of state revenue is a good idea when the state has no goddam idea how to pay for the next year.

Conclusion

All that being said, I’d like to officially offer my support for Gov. Bobby Jindal’s presidential run on the Republican ticket in 2012. I mean, I’m not going to vote for him, but I’m telling you, Michael Steele, this is the guy your party wants. The GOP really need to get behind this guy. Really. The world doesn’t think you’re a bunch of dimwits enough already.