Bonum Certa Men Certa

If What We Have is Really Democracy, Then Corporations Are People

The two latest candidates of the Business Party, which won the elections again

President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney



Summary: What TAFTA and Washington's surrender to corporate power can teach us about the state of this widely-celebrated "democracy"

SEVERAL years ago, Wikileaks' Cablegate helped show the degree of corruption that's used to sign deals like NAFTA. It is all about corporate power and TAFTA is more of the same, only expanding to another continent (Europe) [1]. Over in the US people are protesting against corporate takeover of the government [2] and PR Watch keeps showing how corporations bribe politicians (recent examples in [3,4,5].) It is no surprise when Washington votes for GMO giants [6] and nations which reject GMO or US corporate power get demonised in corporate media. Someone who regularly reads this site supported this claim with evidence; we have been shown examples of spin on US-based television channels like Fox, trying to describe nations without McDonalds [7] as not fortunate or simply "anti-American". Banks also play a considerable role in controlling politics, as Professor Wolff explains in his good new article about austerity [8]. In his personal blog he goes further and explains why the GOP/corporate-driven Tea Party is doing a massive disservice [9] to the nation where capitalism just became "rule of the corporations" [10] (hence undemocratic). Had there been a real democracy, presidents like Obama would have listened to actual people -- not corporations -- and called those pseudo 'trade' deals off, possibly taking legal actions against their conspirators.



Related/contextual items from the news:



  1. TAFTA: Down with Anti-Democratic US-EU Negotiations!
    While the second negotiation round of the US-EU Trade Agreement, TAFTA (also known as TTIP), has just started, La Quadrature du Net issues a solemn warning to all negotiators against the risk of elaborating policies that would impact hundreds of millions of citizens without any form of democratic legitimacy. La Quadrature du Net calls on citizens to participate to its effort to expose the TAFTA negotiators and their eventual conflicts of interests, while urging individuals with access to negotiation documents to leak them to the public without delay.


  2. More on the #NHR March (in NH) (in January)
    Plans are coming together for the march against corruption in January across New Hampshire.


  3. ALEC Posts Legislative Agendas while Hiding Its Very Special Interests
  4. Kohler Heir and Walker Backer Plumbs Dark Money Depths
    Wisconsin industrialist Terry Kohler has deeper ties to the controversial United Sportsmen of Wisconsin Foundation -- the beneficiary of a controversial $500,000 “sweetheart deal” cut by a Walker administration appointee -- than previously reported. Kohler is one of the top GOP donors in the country, and his array of political spending raises new questions in light of a special investigation into potential campaign finance violations by third-party groups in Wisconsin.
  5. The Kochs Win Some and Lose Some in 2013 Elections
    The Kochs had a hand in numerous local and state races in yesterday's elections. Because the Kochs fund so many entities and because many types of spending are not required to be disclosed, a full accounting of their activities may not be possible. Below CMD runs down some of the known spending, races, and results influenced by the Koch brothers or Koch-funded entities such as David Koch's Americans for Prosperity (AFP).


  6. Washington votes against GMO labeling – preliminary results


  7. FINALLY! A Whole Nation Rejects McDonalds
    McDonald's happy image and its golden arches aren't the gateway to bliss in Bolivia.


  8. The great austerity shell game
    Here's how the capitalist scam works: let government borrow for crisis bailouts, then insist cuts pay for them. Guess who loses
  9. What GOP-Tea Party Risks With Block of New New Deal
    Ironically, if the New Deal actually saved capitalism from what might otherwise have happened - e.g., fascism as in Germany, Japan, or Italy - a haunting question arises. Does the right's blockage of another New Deal now risk contributing to what was avoided in the 1930s?


  10. Capitalism Works (or Not) for Me


Recent Techrights' Posts

Live as You Preach
technology is fast becoming dysphoric
Computers Got Smaller, So GNU/Linux Got Bigger
Many people here recognise the lack of urgency (or need) to get expensive new laptops
GNU/Linux Grows at Windows' Expense and Microsoft Trolls Infest and Maliciously Target Articles About It
Microsoft is - and has long been - organised crime
They Say I'm Mr. Bombastic
They didn't take good lawyers
 
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VII: Washing Their Hands After Corruption and Abuse
"Tragedy or comedy?"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 09, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, June 09, 2025
Gemini Protocol Turns Six in 10 Days From Now
If you haven't tried it yet, then give it a go today
Culling Bad RSS Feeds of Bad Sites
Not throwing out the baby with the bathwater
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Addition Addiction and Nitride
Links for the day
Links 09/06/2025: Science, Hardware Projects, and Democracy Receding
Links for the day
BetaNews is a Plagiarism and LLM Slop Hub, the Chief Editor Isn't Addressing This Problem Anymore
SS Fagioli is basically a parasite leeching off or exploiting other people's work
Links 09/06/2025: Chaos in Los Angeles and Hurricane Season
Links for the day
Links 09/06/2025: Windows TCO and Many Data Breaches
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VI: Political Stunts by Former President Edyta Demby-Siwek and the Connection to Profound Corruption at EUIPO
it's like a money-laundering operation where one politician rewards another at taxpayers' expense
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Pipelines and Splitgate
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 08, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, June 08, 2025
Links 08/06/2025: Tiananmen Carnage Censorship Persists, North Korean Goes Offline
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/06/2025: Love as an Ethnographic Method and Monitorix Gemini-Frontend v0.1
Links for the day
Links 08/06/2025: Exposure of More GAFAM Surveillance and Social Security Records Compromised
Links for the day
Linux Foundation is a Mediator for Microsoft et al, Not for Small Companies That Support Rather Than Attack the GPL
Many people still wrongly assume that because it is called "Linux Foundation", then it is pro-Linux and represents the same mindset
This Past Friday, Confirming What We Said All Along About Brett Wilson LLP: It's Shrinking, Has Considerable Debt, Loss of Net Assets Despite the Microsoft SLAPP Money
The documents only became publicly available less than 2 days ago
Some of the Many Reasons We Sued Microsofters for Harassment
perpetrators of harassment
For 20 Years Many People Were Sharecropping for Canonical's Oligarch, Now He's Deleting All Their Contributions
"Ubuntu has erased instead of archiving the trove of material at Ubuntu Forums"
There Was Always Too Much 'Crazy Stuff' Going on Around Freenode
What many IRC users lost sight of
Exposing Crime is Not a Crime (It Never Was)
In the eyes of rich and powerful people, those who speak about their crimes are the "criminals"
GNU/Linux Distros Abandoning Microsoft GitHub
Will curl be next to leave Microsoft GitHub?
Expect More XBox Mass Layoffs Soon If the Rumours Are True
From a Microsoft media operative
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 07, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, June 07, 2025
Europe Needs to Move Away From GAFAM; The Sooner, the Better
Europe - not just the EU - must abandon GAFAM as soon as possible
The Issue Isn't GNOME's Promotion of Diversity But GNOME Corruption, Abuse, Censorship, and Worse
So-called "Conservative" (republican, pro-Trump, bigoted) people want you to think the problem with GNOME is politics
When the News Sources Become Scarce and Increasingly Full of Polluted/Contaminated 'Content' (With LLM Slop and Slop Images)
Integrity matters
"Linux" Sites That Spew Out LLM Slop
We're lacking enough material for another "Slopwatch"
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part V: Breaking the Law, Just Like EPO
We'll hopefully cover some of the pertinent details later this year