Originally published at The Benfell Blog. Please leave any comments there.
I had just modified my DNS MX settings to ensure that the SSL certificate for the site was consistent when this rolled in from Democrats.com:
Dear ,
In January 2010, five Republicans on the Supreme Court gave foreign corporations a Constitutional right to buy Congress and our next President.
If foreign corporations want to buy our elections publicly, they can simply create U.S. subsidiaries. If they want to buy our elections secretly, they can launder their money through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which aggressively raises foreign money, or through Karl Rove’s secretive American Crossroads GPS, both of which are spending millions in this year’s elections.
That means foreign leaders like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, Hu Jintao of China, and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia can use their enormous wealth to steal millions of American jobs, keep us dependent on foreign oil and even make us fight their wars. . . .
That Democrats join Republicans in appealing to prejudice against other peoples should put any doubts that we are now a fascist country to rest. (UPDATE: According to this article in the Washington Post, the Obama administration is accusing the Chamber of Commerce of using foreign money to fund campaign ads, essentially on an argument that we don’t know they aren’t.)
But as usual with propaganda of this sort, there are glimmers of truth, and it is useful to sort those out and to place them in their proper context.
First, the problem we face with corporate influence in politics is not so much with “foreign” corporations but with multinational corporations who indeed have every interest in exporting jobs and facilities to places where regulations are less strict and where wages are lower. These corporations are not controlled by the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hu Jintao, and King Abdullah but largely by very wealthy stockholders, many of whom are based right here in the United States.
Second, as jobs have evaporated and tax revenues have been eviscerated, it appears that the one remaining asset of any significant value in this country is our military, costing upwards of a half a trillion dollars per year. Historically, the U.S. has used both military, economic, and diplomatic means to advance multinational corporate interests (such as oil in the Middle East and bananas in Latin America) and it is entirely reasonable to expect this pattern to continue. Lack of opportunity in the civilian economic sector makes opportunities such as the military and Xe (formerly Blackwater) attractive, so we can expect that despite Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ worries, such operations will encounter little difficulty finding recruits.
Third, while the Citizens United decision focuses attention, the problem of corporate influence long predates that decision.
So what is really going on with this email, presumably sent out to lots of left-leaning folks? I honestly don’t know. This kind of hysteria appeals far more to the right than to the left—hence the Tea Party. But what it shows us is that Democrats refuse to acknowledge their complicity in the destruction of this country.