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"The corporations don't have to lobby the government anymore. They are the government."
December's Lowdown
Corporate elites and their small-minded political servants are creating the Incredibly Shrinking America
"We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." What a paragraph! This sparse, 52-word opening of our Constitution did not merely launch a fledgling nation--but a bold experiment in democratic idealism.
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In This Issue
Consumers get blackouts, energy giants get richer
We can bring power back to the people
Also in this issue:
- Money in, legislation out
- Wto buries its head in the sand
- Nike's "freedom to choose"
- Stop hiding the frankenfoods!
- Congress stabs us in the back
- Bush's energy fraud
- Factory-farm drug dealers
- Cornering the mobile market
- Cornering the mobile market
- The lowdown gooberhead award
- The tax-cut bait-and-switch
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Wto buries its head in the sand
The World Trade Organization is acting like a two-year-old who thinks if he shuts his eyes real tight, we can't see him.
That may be cute in a toddler, but definitely not in an antidemocratic global-trade entity through which corporations are seeking to establish themselves as sovereigns over workers, the environment, and our own elected governments.
At its 1999 Seattle meeting, the WTO crowd found itself confronted with 50,000 uninvited guests who ran them out of town. After that, the WTO began cranking out press releases to polish its image, claiming that it really wants to have a "dialogue" with us peasants.
Really? Then why has it chosen the tiny Persian Gulf nation of Qatar for the site of its next international meeting? Short of rocketing its delegates and official guests to the moon, the WTO could not have chosen a place less open to ordinary citizens.
Qatar is an oil-rich, totalitarian monarchy that doesn't allow its own people such basic rights as freedom of assembly, freedom of association, or freedom of the press. The ruling elite doesn't allow political demonstrations or political parties that are critical of the government.