I for one would like to welcome our new corporate overlords and assist them in any way possible. This, in effect, is what I read yesterday in a comment attached to a diary written by perhaps Dailykos's most ardent and tireless Clinton supporter.
For more follow me below the fold.
In that diary the poster wrote:
You know, I hate to say it but there are corporations in America, and a lot of people work for them. And, it's probably better for them to have a president who doesn't throw trillions into senseless wars and runs huge deficits and generally alienates most of the rest of the world.
Back home my father works to set up business training courses at the local community college, so that people can (gasp!) get the skills to find jobs at businesses and corporations that actually pay a decent salary, instead of working in fast food.
So, I'm not really getting what you're trying to say here. Corporations are all bad? I mean, sure they are lame, and not all of them are good either, but we do need a working economy in this country. Corporate rock still sucks though.
What a strawman! It's as if the poster thinks those concerned with the role that corporate money plays in American politics are against jobs and decent incomes. With all due respect to the poster, it is incredibly depressing to read this comment and see how many people have recommended it (13 in all). I have seen a number of comments such as this elsewhere in the past, so I simply couldn't let this articulate statement of support for corporations go unanswered.
Do people who make such claims genuinely believe these things? Are they simply doing their best to defend self-evidently noxious contributions? Or are they just so unaware of the role that corporations have played in American and global politics, that they cannot understand why people get so worked up about corporations? Such remarks are simply amazing to me.
Now by way of full disclosure, I come from a corporate background. My father was a high ranking executive for one of the top three pharmaceutical companies. This company rewarded him handsomely for his marketing skills, allowing us to have a nice house, eat well, live in safety, go to good schools, and ultimately go to college which laid the foundations for my later academic career. This company also had no reservations about dropping him like a hot potato after fifteen years of diligent service when downsizing, rehiring him a year later at the same salary but now in a low level sales position. Apart from the lay-off-- which is exceedingly common in the corporate world (people often shifting corporations every four to five years due to lay offs) --these were all very good things. However, it would be dishonest to suggest that just because we benefited in these ways corporations should be called "good" or healthy for American and global politics.
I agree that work and decent salary or wonderful things, but a comment like this is a bit like defending the feudal system because it provided work and safety. Yes, there were some good things about the feudal system, but many other terrible things. Yes, there are many good things about corporations, but many other terrible things as well. Enron, et al, comes to mind first. Then we might think of the concerted efforts of tobacco corporations to hide the negative effects of smoking and distort the public dialogue on these issues. We can think of the similar efforts more recently by coal and oil corporations. We can also talk about the manner in which corporations often do not pay their portion of the tax burden by locating their headquarters elsewhere, all the while reaping the many benefits America has to offer. We can talk about the role that corporate war contracts have played both in the current war and in conflicts for decades. We can talk about big pharmaceutical companies we can talk about corporations like BMS or Merk who have patented medications produced through publicly funded research, driving up the cost of life-saving drugs. We can talk about the role that corporations have played in the politics of third world governments, helping to brutally suppress those fighting for emancipation and justice.
We can talk about all these things, but I think the thing we should talk about most is how the campaign contributions corporate entities are able to make and their massive lobbying efforts that give them disproportionate representation in ways that often disadvantages average Joes and Janes like you and me. We should also talk about how corporate media consolidation has made it exponentially more difficult to have responsible public dialogue about things like health care, global warming, the war on terrorism, etc., perpetually making it necessary to cut through the miasma of propaganda, misinformation, distortion, and outright suppression.
Although there are a few exceptionally egregious examples of corporate campaign contributions with the Clinton campaign, this is a serious problem-- if not the most serious problem --with all of our politicians on both sides of the aisle. Please don't pretend that concern over the role that corporate money plays in the American political system is some irrational hatred. Please call a spade a spade and defend candidates on other grounds. It doesn't do anyone any good to defend this particular aspect of the American political system and only makes changing this aspect all the more difficult.