President Eisenhower, in his farewell address, warned us of the dangers of the military-industrial complex. Was he right?

The US spends more on “defense” than all other countries combined. According to official reports from 2003 and 2005, we have 737 military bases in 63 countries outside of the US and its territories.

This is intentionally misleading. Bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan are not counted. While there are ten Marine bases in Okinawa, official reports admit of only one. Not all troops are on bases. Personnel are stationed in 156 countries.

Those numbers are at least impressive, perhaps even stunning. Then there are the 6,000 plus bases in the US and its territories.

Domestically, the plethora of bases is not necessarily a factor of military considerations. Congressmen like to have the steady flow of tax dollars into their state or district that always seem to accompany military bases.

The number of military personnel has decreased significantly since my time. The bulk of the increase in military expenditures is in equipment. A few major conglomerates get the bulk of that bulk. Therein lies the trailing part of that complex. So, the taxpayers are shelling out gargantuan sums to a few corporations for unneeded “defense.”

Some people are getting fat off the government teat. Let’s just call them a part of the elite.

Banks were originally intended to provide funding for other businesses. Businesses need money for start up, to meet salaries, for inventory, for expansion. Banks should represent less than 5% of the economy. They now exceed 20%. Last year, over half of all profits went to banks. This represents a severe distortion of the economy. It is unsustainable.

These avaricious parasites with their fossilized ideology have created more debt than the sum total of all assets on Earth. They think of themselves as Masters of the Universe, even after their stupidities destroyed trillions of dollars in value around the world. Countries are going bankrupt. Families are being cast out on the street. They award themselves bonuses that would embarrass King Midas. Did you get a thank you card for your bailout?

We can’t forget the drug dealers and insurance companies. Our congressmen certainly didn’t forget them. You said yes when your congressman asked if you wanted to subsidize the memberships of PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) and AHIP (America’s Health Insurance Plans), didn’t you? You were awfully generous. They both have America in their names but don’t let that fool you. That’s not where their loyalties lay.

So What?

You knew all of that. Why bring it up again? Because I’m going to put it into historical perspective. I’ll use it to predict the future. Isn’t that worth the rehash? It’s going to be fun. Well, maybe fun isn’t quite the right word.

The invention of agriculture was a boon, at first. It allowed people to stay in one place long enough to build substantial shelter. They had time to do that because agriculture normally allowed for enough free time to devote to other pursuits; or, even a bit of leisure.

They were able to produce surpluses most years. However, an occasional drought or flood or locust could bring a famine. They soon decided to store some of their surplus for those lean times. From their own village, town or city there might be a bad person who stooped to theft. Thieves could come from neighboring populations. This required someone to be in charge of a granary; someone to care for it, watch it, dole it out when necessary.

It also made necessary such new inventions as police forces and armies. These people couldn’t devote the necessary time to farming but had to take some of the surplus to survive. The keepers of the granaries appear to have become chieftains, lords and, eventually, local kings. As the communities grew and the leaders became accustomed to special status, their appetites grew.

They became rulers. They wanted special clothing and other adornments. They had friends and relatives who deserved special treatment, as well. This required craftsmen who wouldn’t have time for farming either. They needed a share of that surplus.

The king needed a great wall or an impressive pyramid or something else to impress the people. So, it was necessary to impress them into corvée. This resulted in less surplus while the demands on the surplus grew. Sometimes the king needed to expand his kingdom. His ego needed a boost but for the people it just added to the load to be borne.

Those farmers who had a surplus and leisure time now were subsisting on what was left after the elite took all of the surplus, and more. Their leisure time was spent on required, unpaid labor for the gratification of the elite. What began as a boon became a burden.

It is interesting to find large numbers of stone knives in the Indus Valley when it was in the midst of its Bronze Age. While the elite had the advantages of metal implements and the soldiery had metal weapons, chariot parts and such, the common people were forcibly kept in the Neolithic Age.

The result of this mismanagement of resources was the demise of civilizations and disappearance of great empires. I haven’t analyzed every fall of empire but would rate this as the primary cause of most and at least a contributing factor in the remainder. There may be other factors even when this is the primary culprit.

It happened in the Indus Valley. It happened to Sargon the Great and his successors. It happened to at least two, perhaps three, of Pharonic Egyptian civilizations. It happened to the Mayan, possibly their predecessors, the Olmec, and likely their successors.

Sometimes the end comes by just a total collapse. More often, a neighboring power provides the coup de grâce. These usurpers would not have the capacity to bring down the great, over-the-hill power had it not destroyed its own power, its own economy. In a nutshell, the elite overreached. Their own egos and pleasures blinded them to the reality of how vulnerable was the house of cards upon which their delusions were based.

Does that sound familiar?

My late wife died in 1974. She never had to work outside the home. A single income was sufficient. But, 1973 was the peak for average income in the US, adjusted for inflation.

As a bank supervisor in Los Angeles, we scraped by. Moving to Atlanta, our prospects improved. From 1966 to 1973 we bought three new houses; each larger than the previous one. We bought three new cars. We went on multiple foreign trips each year. Sure, I worked for Delta and the flights were free but the hotels and car rentals weren’t. I also began taking flying lessons; acquiring my commercial license with instrument and multi-engine ratings. I also returned to college. The money was always there.

That was not bragging. That was just to remind you of how our economy used to be. The jobs I had at Delta were ramp rat, passenger service agent, auditor of the caterer and meal planner for all flights out of Atlanta and computer programmer. What happened to the average income earner?

There was an oil embargo in 1973. There was another in 1979. They caused a considerable hiccup in the economy. Then came St. Ronny.

He gave us Supply Side and Trickle Down economics. He also gave us Arthur Laffer’s curve and Milton Friedman’s calcified theories. David Stockman, Reagan’s economic guru left the administration in due time and wrote a book. In that book he admitted that it really was Voodoo economics and that they knew it while they were selling it.

We went from the largest exporter of manufactured goods to the largest importer; from the largest importer of raw materials to the largest exporter; from the largest creditor nation to the largest debtor. All this transpired from 1981 to the end of the last administration. Without a major war or extraordinary economic trauma, Reagan increased the debt by 189%. Those who remember those years fondly should remember that they were paid for by credit card. The bill has come due.

The simpletons that followed in the Clinton administration were of the same ilk and, though the numbers show a modest improvement, it was nothing to be proud of. Rubin, Summers, Greenspan and Gramm provided the finishing touches. The present administration’s economic team belongs to the same club. Does it seem odd that the malefactors that brought us this latest disaster get trillions of tax dollars while aid to the poor for heating oil is cut? Multi-billion dollar bonuses for the elite while the dedicated teacher of your children is taking a cut?

While we were becoming a 3^rd-world country and tax breaks were given to corporations for exporting jobs, the income and wealth differential of the elite and the bottom 80% grew almost exponentially. The signs and portents of demise that the elites of the great civilizations and empires of the past ignored have been ignored by our very own special people.

What comes next? One guess. When will it happen? I don’t want to spoil your fun by giving the exact date. You might run out and sell every US equity short.

Have a nice day.

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Despite what some may think, I was not around for the Dred Scott decision. That aside, I had comforted myself that the Supremes could not make a worse ruling than the one that gave us Bush the lesser.

I was wrong, horribly so.

We are now the only developed country in the world that allows corporations to legally spend unlimited amounts to control the government. Aren’t we special?

Stay with me a couple of minutes. You will see how stupid and/or corrupt at least five of the Justices really are.

How did we get here and what needs to be done? It is simple but the ramifications cannot be overstated.

First we are dealing with a bunch of hypocrites. The radicals of the Court loudly proclaim that they believe in following the intent of the Founding Fathers. They also maintain that the courts should not legislate, nor usurp the legislative role. Yeah, sure.

No Supreme Court has come close to the activism of the present Court. They have overturned more legislation, by far, than any Court of which I am aware. That tendency alone was sufficient to make all predictions on the latest travesty easy. Commentators from the entire spectrum got it right. This ruling was no surprise.

How about their claimed devotion to what they term ‘strict construction?’ That is also a gross mischaracterization. What was the Founding Fathers’ opinion of corporations? It may not be common knowledge but is far from a secret to any scholar or amateur enthusiast of our founders.

With the exception of Alexander Hamilton, all of the founders hated and/or mistrusted and/or feared corporations and the threat they represented to the nation to which they had given birth. This at a time when corporations were relatively rare and weak compared to the present. Back then one must prove a societal need, a benefit to the public, in order to obtain a charter.

Corporations are not mentioned in either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. The last time I checked, the wording was still “We the people . . .” Corporations had only the latitude to function as was delineated in its charter. Where did this idiotic concept of corporations having a legal personality originate? Not from the Supreme Court. It came from an essentially parenthetical couple of sentences by one Justice.

The year was 1886. The case was Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company. The doctrine of corporate personhood was included by Justice Morrison Remick Waite before the beginning of arguments. He stated, “The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does.”

So, two sentences by a single, junior Justice changed the Constitution, laws and the dictionary definition without argument, without discussion, without any attempt at rationality. It subsequently became the very foundation of corporate law.

Let’s look at this. It doesn’t require looking too deeply. It doesn’t require a degree in Constitutional Law. It does require more intelligence than five of the present Justices. It requires common sense. It requires an absence of devotion to the plutocracy, a jettisoning of ridiculous ideologies. Here we go.

Everyone acknowledges that a corporation is property. It, and/or its shares, not only can be owned, by its very nature it must be owned. If it is a person, it enjoys the constitutional prohibition of slavery. You are not permitted, under any circumstances to hold a person as property. Ask your wife.

A corporation speaks with one voice. Although the textbooks tell you that the shareholders control it, or that the directors control it on behalf of the shareholders, the reality is that management rules. Management’s priorities are rarely the same as the stockholders. Stockholders also are further removed from participation by mutual funds, hedge funds and similar devices. Does anyone believe that corporate lobbying efforts are always (sometimes) consonant with the interests or opinions of shareholders?

While many other legal and logical arguments reach the same, or supportive, conclusions, no serious arguments have been proposed that contradict those arguments. We have no need to pursue any further the irrationality of claims for corporate personhood. Let’s proceed to the ramifications.

The last presidential campaign was easily the most expensive in history. The estimates I saw last year were well over $1 billion but less than two. I haven’t seen your checkbook but to me that is significant change. Actually, I consider that amount obscene. It distorts and corrupts. There is no upside for anyone who values their right to vote.

Now let’s look at real money. The major Wall Street casinos have announced record, or near record, profits. These profits are after record amounts being set aside for bonuses. Have you paid attention? These bonuses total about $150 billion.

If Wall Street decided to redirect only half of that amount to campaign finance, we would never have to watch another non-political commercial in an election year (every other year) again. Although that might seem initially to be an attractive side-benefit, all you have to remember is how quickly campaign advertising begins to pall.

While we know better, politicians owned by special interests insist that they are not swayed by lobbyists’ bribes. Given the amounts now available to them, they likely will not even bother to address such questions. The $150 billion cited above represents only that available from the major institutional players of one corrupt industry. Factor in the insurance industry, PhRMA, agribusiness, energy and a host of others wanting laws that benefit them, to our detriment.

There would not even have been the sham of the healthcare debate with its foreordained outcome. The drug pushers could sell morphine as a toothing medication for infants again, as Bayer did before it became famous for its aspirin. The Department of Agriculture could eliminate all of those pesky areas and become a foundation to channel taxpayers dollars directly to ConAgra, ADM, et al. Exxon and its peers would not have to waste another nickel cleaning up after themselves. There no longer would be a need to debate global warming, or spending any funds on research. Government could really be streamlined.

How much have you ever donated to a political campaign? Look on the bright side. Now there is no need to.

I believe that there has never been a law or ruling which so drastically changes and damages our system.

Many people get upset about the power of the government. Permit me to reminisce. Back in the late 1960s or early 1970s there was a little flap at Delta Air Lines, where I was working. You need to understand that at that time aircraft mechanics were treated like royalty. They were the princes of the industry and highly prized by the airlines.

One of these princes let his sideburns grow to the level of the bottom of his ears. No, they were not mutton-chop sideburns. Though wild hairstyles could be seen everywhere across the country, his could not be considered wild by any definition. He was fired.

Except when I was in military service, I would never expect the government to be so intrusive, so controlling of the minutiae of people’s lives. Corporations are not bound to respect any of your rights, beyond the prohibition of discrimination. The government is constrained by the Constitution. With the Founding Fathers, I have always feared corporations far more than I feared the government – until now.

All is not lost. The Court struck down campaign finance laws, not corporate laws or regulations. The Congress unquestionably has the authority to control corporate behavior through changes in corporate law. It could be done by regulation. You and I are, as people, are not controlled by laws in this area so it cannot be claimed that corporations are being discriminated against or denied that to which people are entitled.

I would ask that you notify me the next time you see a bunch of corporations exercising their right of freedom of assembly or, perhaps, their freedom of religion. I would love to attend a baptismal ceremony for one of these ‘guys.’

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