Comments On David Sirota’s New Book - Hostile Takeover
- by Stephen Lendman

I’d like to begin my commentary on David Sirota’s
important new book Hostile Takeover with my strong
endorsement of his fine work.  Everyone should read it
to learn what’s really going on around us that affects
us all in the most important ways I know and which
most people at best only vaguely understand on many if
not most of the major issues. Those who read it will
learn in stunning and graphic detail how large
corporations in league with government at all levels
serving their interests and not ours are destroying
the democratic pillars of our society.  The result now
evident when we know the facts David presents is a
great irreversible harm to the great majority unless
we can collectively act in time to reverse the
destructive path and economically downward trajectory
we’re now on - all planned and implemented by our
elected officials in service to their generous
corporate benefactors.  In his important book, David
lucidly explains the problem in detail and gives us an
action plan to fight back.

Introduction

When I first heard about David’s new book, I was very
eager to read it.  I had to be as earlier I wrote and
got published a long article by the same title.
David’s approach and mine covered some of the same
ground but differed as well including the subtitles we
chose.  My approach was to concentrate on the economic
consequences of corporate size and dominance to
ordinary people.  David did the same, but as was clear
from his subtitle, he did it by documenting in
powerful detail “how big money and corruption” control
the political process for their own gain.  He also
goes further to show how we can fight back to regain
the essential rights we’ve lost.  I covered some of
that myself in an earlier article I wrote called
Democracy in America - It’s Spelled
C-O-R-R-U-P-T-I-O-N.  It’s posted on my blog site -
sjlendman.blogspot.com.  In his book, David gives more
than just an account of how our government was bought.
He presents the evidence in “handbook” form, exposing
the lies and myths politicians and corporations tell
us, and gives us an action plan to fight back and win.

David and I both know that corporations exist for one
purpose only - to make a profit.  I explained in my
writing that corporate law mandates that publicly
owned corporations serve only the interests of their
shareholders and do it by working to maximize the
value of their equity holdings by increasing sales and
profits.  They have to do this and don’t have a
choice.  Should they do otherwise, the companies would
likely face legal consequences and their top
executives dismissal.  But David explains that in a
democratic society, government is supposed to serve
the people and act as a counterweight to unrestrained
corporate power which left on its own could destroy
society.  At times in the past, our elected government
actually passed laws and did that, if imperfectly. 
But that was then, and this is now - a brave new world
order.  It’s one with giant corporations literally
running amuck in charge of everything: writing the
laws, making the rules, deciding who governs and how
and who serves on our courts.  They even have to sign
off on it before the nation goes to war.  Those wars
have nothing to do with national security threats
(we’ve had none since WW II), making the world safe
for democracy or deposing tyrants.  I’ve explained
this in other writing also on my blog site including
exposing the sham of the so-called “war on terror”
which is nothing more than a bogus scare tactic to get
the public to go along with bad policy.  That policy
includes waging war, although they’re only fought as a
last resort when less extreme methods don’t work. 

Why resort to war?  They’re fought to control markets,
vital resources like oil and cheap labor to help those
same corporations make more profits.  In that kind of
world, there’s nothing to stop them from operating as
legalized private tyrannies (with their own armies we
pay for through taxes) exploiting us (and the planet)
for their gain and doing it as another author
explained in his book called The Best Democracy Money
Can Buy.  Those who can pay can play, and those who
can’t have no say and don’t get their way.  Money not
only talks, it rules the world.

It all means that the political game is rigged by and
for corporate America to enrich them and do it at our
expense.  And they’re aided and abetted by the big
government they bought and paid for to do their
bidding - a kind of incestuous relationship for mutual
gain.  It’s a democracy all right, but only for the
privileged few and no one else.  Voters at one time
may have thought they had a say when they went to the
polls, and to some degree they did.  But today, about
half of them understand they’re powerless and don’t
even bother showing up.  Why do it when they know that
on election day the real game is big business and big
government playing “let’s make a deal” - “you scratch
my back, and I’ll scratch yours.”  But to play, you
better have lots of “scratch.”  It’s an arena where
only powerful interests have a say and well paid
lobbyists (aka influence-peddling “bagmen”) “grease
the wheels” of big government to make it work for big
business in a “snatch and grab” all you can enterprise
that leaves the public largely out in the cold.  It’s
the same story at the federal, state and local levels
although the higher up in the bureaucracy it takes
place, the bigger the stakes are. 

The pubic to some degree knows what’s going on and how
it’s interests have been ignored.  At times it’s stood
by, watched, likely felt overwhelmed and helpless and
done little to fight back.  But maybe because the pain
of bad policy has begun to bite deeply in recent
years,  David feels that’s changing and people are
beginning “to demand answers about why our government
is selling us out.”  That’s why he wrote the book - to
give everyone left out of the political process a way
to fight an unfair system and win back the rights and
benefits they’ve lost.  He explains the book’s intent
is to do more than just tell the story of how our
government was bought like a commodity available to
the highest bidder.  It does that and then goes on in
“guidebook” fashion to give us the tools we need to
fix the system so it works for us.

Hostile Takeover Counts and Documents the Ways the
Political Process Has Become Corrupted

David then divides the rest of his book into
explaining the enterprise of government as a
wholly-owned business subsidiary in 10 separate
chapters.  In each one, he explains how our so-called
elected officials have corrupted their high office to
allow their corporate benefactors to exploit us for
their benefit.  The evidence in each chapter shows no
matter how you slice and dice the political system, it
always comes out the same way - they win and we lose:
more and more until it’s down to the nub, and we’ve
lost it all unless we can fight back to recoup and
save ourselves before it’s too late.  David thinks we
can do it.  First he explains what we’ve lost, and
then he lays out an action plan to win it back.  And
throughout the book, David gives copious and powerful
anecdotal corroboration to make his case for the
abuses being committed against us that need redress. 

As I explained above, I’ve also written about these
abuses and understand how our corrupted system works.
I’m a bit less sanguine than David on the public’s
insight into the problem or its readiness to act -
yet.  But David and I are on the same page, and for me
he’s preaching to the choir.  I believe most others,
however, don’t know or understand enough about how
they’re being abused, let alone what to do about it.
This book is for them and is essential reading.  I
endorse and recommend it strongly.  And I’ll go a step
further and call it a survival manual and a call to
arms.  I believe things are even more dire than David
explains.  I think it essential that the public en
masse must begin to act in its own interest and
defense and do it soon and effectively.  Unless it
does, what little remains of our tattered republic and
democracy in name only will be lost entirely, and it
will be too late to regain it.

Chapter One: Our Tax System - Call It Robin Hood in
Reverse

Also call it the great tax scam.  David quotes the now
indicted and disgraced former Republican House
Majority Leader Tom Delay saying on the eve of the
Iraq war in 2003 that “Nothing is more important in
the face of a war than cutting taxes.”  I wonder what
he was inhaling just before he said that or how
stuffed his pockets were with corporate cash.  It’s
hard deciding whether absurd or outrageous better
characterizes such an outrageous statement.  When
Lyndon Johnson was president and needed revenues for
his illegal war in Vietnam, he had to raise taxes and
still couldn’t get enough to pay for it without
running up debt and adding to inflation which sent the
economy into decline in the 1970s.

David then explains that in today’s world as seen
through the eyes of Republican ideologues and most
Democrats willing to go along with them, cutting taxes
has become a religion with no regard for the common
sense notion that the revenues only gotten through
taxes pay for all the essential services we rely on
like schools, infrastructure and everything else.  So
it only makes sense that when government takes in less
revenue, it has less available to provide us with the
things we need, expect and rely on in a modern
society. 

But that’s hardly the end of the story.  Under the
Bush administration, not only have there been large
tax cuts,  but the ones enacted have caused the “tax
structure (to be) flipped on its head.”  Call it the
great transformation of a once-progressive system
inverted to take from the poor and middle class and
give to the rich.  It’s a process that began during
the Reagan years.  But under George Bush it’s exploded
to become greed writ large and has now even been
replicated at the state level.  The most well-off who
don’t need it have benefitted hugely according to the
nonpartisan Citizens for Tax Justice.  They report
that by 2010 after the Bush tax cuts have been fully
implemented as they now stand, the top 15% of income
earners will have gotten two-thirds of the benefits
with the top 1% getting a $600 billion dollar bonanza.
On the other end, the bottom 60% will have gotten an
illusory less than 18% of the benefits.

That’s so because to help offset this handout to the
rich, the Bush administration imposed user fees on
various services amounting to billions of dollars that
affect low and middle income people the most.  Also,
federal grants to states have been cut and new
obligations imposed on them without the proper funding
to cover their cost creating what’s called “unfunded
(or underfunded) mandates.”  To comply, states have
had to raise taxes and fees which again fall
disproportionately on lower income people.  For these
same people, the result has been “now you see ‘em, now
you don’t” tax cuts that amount to a net tax increase
and effective loss and lower standard of living for
the great majority of the public.

And to make things even worse, Corporate America has
made out like thieves from big tax cuts in various
forms and their ability, especially under this
administration, to exploit legal loopholes and take
advantage of lax tax law enforcement.  So although the
official corporate tax rate is supposed to be 35%,
most corporations never pay close to that amount.
According to the Government Accountability Office
(GAO), 94% of major corporations pay less than 5% of
their income in taxes, and corporate tax payments are
the lowest they’ve been in 60 years.  In addition,
many of the wealthiest companies often pay no tax at
all and some of them actually get large rebates.
They’re added to the already large subsidies most
large companies get, otherwise known as corporate
welfare or socialism for big corporations and the rich
and “free market capitalism” for the rest of us.
That’s also apparently called “the American way.”

The bottom line of Bush administration fiscal policy
has been huge budget deficits caused by these unfair
tax cuts plus big spending increases (off the books)
to fund two ongoing illegal wars plus the new Office
of Homeland Security that alone costs $40 billion a
year that we know about.  So far these policies have
fueled overall economic growth and big corporate
profits as it did in the 60s and early 70s.  But at
some point the bills come due and must be paid,
although apparently there’s no plan to do it.  This is
a recipe for economic trouble or worse down the road.
The lesson is always the same that the price for good
times (however gotten or for whose benefit) that were
too good or for reckless (or fiscally irresponsible)
behavior that was too reckless has always been the
same: the day comes when you “gotta pay the piper.”
Herb Stein, Richard Nixon’s chief economic advisor,
said the same thing in his memorable dictum that
“Things that can’t go on forever won’t.” It’s called a
day of reckoning but those least able to cope when it
comes (which it will) will be the same ones cheated by
this administration’s tax policies.

Because of the length of my review and eagerness to
cover as much of the book as possible, I won’t list
David’s solutions that he enumerates at the end of
each chapter.  I’ll just say, he’s on the mark and
that a government working for the people and not the
privileged few and corporate giants would carefully
consider them all and implement most or all of them.
Sadly, today and under this administration there’s
little chance of that happening unless we force them
to.

Chapter Two: Wages - Rising for the Well-Off but
Stagnation or Worse for the Rest of Us

The minimum wage in this country is $5.15 an hour,
hasn’t been raised since 1997, and is now at the
lowest point it’s been since 1949.  The people earning
it and no more might get along fine if they have no
dependents,
don’t mind not eating much, enjoy camping out year
round, love old tattered clothes, never get sick and
are able to educate themselves.  For the rest of us,
that income level is well below the officially stated
poverty line that no one can live on but which is
artificially kept low for political reasons.  That
situation is a metaphor for the average working person
in the US who, adjusted for inflation, now earns less
than 30 years ago even with modest annual increases.

David points out the widening gap between low wage
earners and the affluent.  In my article I had
slightly different data than David and will share it
with readers.  In 2004, I wrote the average CEO earned
431 times the income of the average working person.
That was up from 85 times in 1990 and 42 times in 1980
at the beginning of the Reagan years and the
Republicans rise to dominance.  David and I also used
a different figure on what the average CEO now earns
annually.  He noted $9 million a year and my number
was $14.4 million (mine likely included bonuses and/or
stock option benefits not in David’s figure) in 2001
and rising - plus huge supplemental benefits from
SERPS (Supplemental Executive Retirement Plans) that
effectively increased their income by half again and
all the other special perks corporate executives get
but the average working stiff never does.  Some
companies even pay the income tax for their top
executives.  I described all this in one section as
the US being the unthinkable and unmentionable - a
rigid class society and one becoming more extreme all
the time.

But along with stagnating wages, essential social
services are being cut, especially since Bush took
office in 2001.  That too is part of the plan to
transfer wealth to the rich from the rest of us. It’s
created a crisis in some areas like vital health
insurance needed at all times but crucial to have in
the face of the rising cost of health care services
and less of them being provided for the needy (and to
those of us like myself on Medicare) by a government
intent on fighting wars, helping the rich get even
richer and destroying the social safety net including
the pillars of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

So-called “free trade agreements” like NAFTA and CAFTA
have just made it worse.  These and the alphabet soup
of other trade agreements were sold to the public in
the countries adopting them as a way to grow their
economies and increase jobs.  The result years after
implementation has been hundreds of thousands of jobs
lost and the realization that these plans were never
intended for that purpose in the first place.  They
were and still are plans for the US and dominant
Global North nations to be able to craft a set of
binding trade rules overriding the sovereignty of all
member states to benefit giant corporations at the
expense of working people in those countries.  It’s
worked like a charm, and the terrible carnage it’s
caused is proof positive.  Instead of creating jobs in
the US and other Global North countries as promised,
jobs have been outsourced or exported to low wage
countries including many thousands of higher-paying
manufacturing and high tech ones.  Even a low-wage
country like Mexico has suffered as jobs once sent
there have since been lost to even lower-wage paying
countries like China, Bangladesh and Haiti.  And
Mexico’s small farmers have been devastated by US
heavily subsidized agribusiness that’s driven many
thousands of them out of business and has done the
same thing in India and elsewhere.

The result in the US is services, like jobs at Walmart
and McDonalds, now account for nearly 80% of all
business while manufacturing has declined to about 14%
and total manufacturing employment is half the
percentage of total employment it was 40 years ago and
falling.  Our low unemployment rate the Labor
Department reports monthly only disguises the damage
done.  In the view of some economists, if the rate
today was calculated the same way it was during The
Great Depression when it rose to a peak of 25% of the
working population, the true current figure would be
about 12% instead of the most recently reported 4.7%.
The current calculation method includes part-time
workers who work as little as one hour during the
monthly reporting period.  It also excludes
discouraged workers who wish to work but who’ve
stopped looking because they can’t find jobs.

As he does in all his chapters, David goes on to note
and explain the myths and lies the public is told to
hide a bad and deteriorating situation concluding
again with a set of sensible solutions unlikely to be
adopted unless the public fights for them.

Chapter Three: Jobs - The Good Ones Are Vanishing and
the Poor Ones Don’t Pay Enough or Provide Needed
Benefits

In this chapter David goes into more detail on what he
discussed in the previous one under wages.  He
provides lots of ammunition to show how much trouble
we’re really in.  One example was from University of
California researchers who estimated in 2004 that “up
to 14 million American jobs are at risk to
outsourcing.”  An even more stark assessment came from
Gartner Research that predicted as many as “30% of
high-tech jobs could be shipped overseas by 2015.”  If
they’re right, does that mean that formerly high-paid
software engineers will now be ringing up the few
purchases most people will be able to afford at the
Walmarts of the world.  Not a pretty picture nor one
most readers of David’s book or this review would wish
to look forward to - unless they love the idea of
living in a nation heading for third-world status and
run by a government aiding and abetting the downward
trajectory.

David also goes on to explain that our government
ignores the plight of good jobs being lost and, in
fact, effectively endorses the loss through the large
subsidies it makes available to the companies doing
the exporting.  In addition, the safety net of
unemployment insurance has been gutted through budget
cuts so fewer of the unemployed now receive benefits
they need which are available for a shorter period of
time.  Besides that, the budget for job training to
help the unemployed has been severely cut over the
past 25 years.  Currently 84% of what was available
back then no longer is.  David documents it all with
powerful and graphic anecdotal examples of the
terrible damage done and a government that allows it
to happen showing it no longer cares about ordinary
working people.

Chapter Four: Debt - It’s High, Rising, and Becoming a
Great Burden for Ordinary Working People

Many of us may know something about how the Bush
administration turned a budget surplus into huge
deficits with little if any relief in sight for years
to come.  They also should know a good bit more about
mounting private debt, especially if they’re one of
the many millions burdened with their own debt
obligations and have a hard time figuring out how to
repay them while simultaneously adding more.

The problem stems from a society weaned on the notion
that we should buy now and pay later regardless of
whether our debts from borrowing must be serviced
which means paying high interest carrying charges.
That’s especially true in the case of the main way
consumers run up debt - on their credit cards where
David explained that the predatory credit card
industry makes out like mega-thieves pocketing $24
billion in 2004 from late usury-level penalty fees
alone which made up the bulk of their $30 billion in
profits.  Like all other major industries, this one
has friends in high places, and it freely “scratches
their back” with lots of “scratch” to get legislation
favorable to its interests - namely, letting them get
away with grand theft.  The result, as David reports,
is the tragedy of US consumers being $2 trillion in
debt with the average household carrying and servicing
through monthly interest payments an unpaid credit
card balance of about $7,500.  That’s debt hell for
these afflicted consumers, but profit heaven for the
credit card bandits.  I personally know how these
companies work and always have.  As a result, I pay my
monthly bills in full and have never paid the few
credit card companies whose cards I carry one cent in
interest since getting my first credit card about 40
years ago.  I’m also sensible and restrained in my
spending so my monthly balance is never onerous.  My
advice to others on how to beat these thieves who
thrive on your excesses is do as I do, and they’ll
never know what hit them until it does.

Making matters far worse for the public, already
plagued by stagnating wages and good jobs exported to
cheap labor countries, is the new bankruptcy
legislation.  It gutted consumer protection making it
much harder to get that protection when it’s most
needed.  The new law gives the predatory credit card
companies license to steal even more than they’re now
doing by making it much harder for ordinary people to
seek the bankruptcy protection they used to have.  The
law was passed through lies and deceit about consumer
abuse of the system that needed correcting.  In fact,
Harvard University researchers found that 90% of
personal bankruptcies result from illness,
unaffordable medical bills for people without
insurance to cover them, job loss, death in the family
or divorce - hardly conniving people trying to rip off
the credit card companies or lending agencies.

David then once again goes on to explain in detail the
lies and myths about who benefits and who loses under
the new law, the economic conditions for most people
making them more vulnerable when trouble strikes, and
much more including his sensible solutions to the
problems now created.

Chapter Five: Pensions - Workers Actually Could Count
on Them Once - But That Was Then, and This Is Now

A major part of the American dream is that after a
lifetime of work we can look forward to a comfortable
retirement and secure future.  Long ago, things turned
out that way for most ordinary working people who had
good, high-paying jobs with essential benefits, like
those in manufacturing now lost.  They also had strong
union protection which won them the rights they were
able to enjoy while still working and after they
retired.  No longer in today’s hostile world where our
government officials in league with big corporations
are rewriting sacred rules allowing these companies
the ability to evade their obligations to workers once
thought to be inviolable. 

So even though these companies once agreed in union
negotiations to legally binding contract obligations
regarding worker benefits to be paid to retirees,
they’re now seeking legal protection through the
courts to back out of them.  The courts today are
stacked with corporate-friendly judges, but even when
companies have no justification for redress, they’re
able to drag out legal cases for years through appeals
so that even if they end up losing, many retirees will
have died off waiting and the companies will save
millions even after legal expenses which aren’t cheap.

Besides fraudulent corporate lawsuits to welsh on
their obligations, companies are ingenious in coming
up with new ways to cheat their employees.  The AP
reported one such way in 2002 which was the quiet
conversion of the retirement plans of eight million
workers to so-called “cash balance” schemes by
hundreds of companies.  As David explained, these new
plans were and are nothing more than a con to let
these companies back out of their guarantee to give
their workers a lifetime monthly pension and instead
offer them one lump-sum payment.  The companies
getting away with this scam are able to save many
millions of dollars because that payment amounts to
far less than the original promised benefits which is
why they devised this scheme in the first place.

Even the Bush administration tried getting into this
act by rolling out what David rightly calls “the
granddaddy of all pension rip-off schemes :
privatizing Social Security.” I’ve called it the
grandest of grand thefts if they’re ever able to pull
it off.  It hardly matters to this administration that
this magnificent plan has been “the most successful
government initiative” ever in our history and which
has lifted many millions of working people out of
poverty and made it possible for them to have a decent
retirement that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible.
What the Bush administration proposed doing was to
turn this program over to the sharks on Wall Street
and let them run it and be able to skim off a bonanza
in big fees from retirees who would be their victims
and end up with less than they now receive.  A
University of Chicago economist did the math and
estimated that Wall Street would earn between $400
billion and $1 trillion in broker and administrative
fees under the Bush mega-ripoff scheme.  Thankfully
the public balked strongly enough, and for now at
least, the administration has backed off.  But you can
bet they’re likely plotting their next move to
resurrect what will be their dream scheme if they ever
do pull it off.  And when they launch their next
attempt, it’s almost certain they’ll again try using
the canard that the system is in danger of going
bankrupt and only privitizing it can fix it.  So far
the public hasn’t bought this deceit and hopefully
won’t the next time they try selling it.  But David
makes it very clear that the future security of
millions of working people is in jeopardy through
pension and Social Security “reform” (meaning scamming
the public to steal our future for corporate gain)
unless we the people are vigilant and take steps to
fight back.  David shows us how.

Chapter Six: Health Care - Present Plans or Lack of
Them Are Hazardous to Our Health

Although the government may ignore and deny it, it’s
beyond dispute this country has a major and
unforgivable health care crisis that continues to get
worse.  Presently 46 million or more people here have
no insurance coverage at all, millions more have far
too little, and David dramatically points out that 82
million Americans had no health insurance for some
period of time between 2003 and 2004.  This is
happening in a country that spends almost 2.5 times
the median average for the industrialized world, and
yet the World Health Organization (WHO) ranked the US
37th in the world in “overall health performance” and
54th in the fairness of health care.  Moreover, every
developed country in the world except the US and South
Africa provide free health care for all its citizens
paid for though taxes. 

David dramatically points out that we may have the
best doctors and most advanced medical facilities in
the world, but what good is it if they’re unavailable
to a vast number of the people living here because
they can’t afford to use them.  David goes on to
detail much more, explaining that despite the
inadequacy of our health care system, the providers of
it are some of the most profitable companies in the
country - such as the HMOs, the other big insurers and
the big drug companies.  He also explains that a key
reason why we spend so much and get back so little
overall is that 15 cents of every dollar we spend on
health insurance is skimmed off for “administrative
expense.”  That’s just code language for private
industry very high profits.  Compare that to our
government run programs like Medicare which only
spends 4 cents of every dollar on these expenses.  I’m
on Medicare and am very pleased with it except that
recipients are being forced to pay an increasingly
greater amount for it.  The idea is to enable the
government to welsh on its obligation to us to divert
even more funds to its corporate allies - our loss for
their continuing gain.

At the end of WW II, Harry Truman unsuccessfully tried
to get Congress to pass a universal health care
government run program.  He never had a chance to get
it through the Congress as the dominant health care
industry companies and the legislators shot down his
proposal and every new one that came along later to
extend universal coverage to everyone.  It’s not
because of the cost, although we were told that’s the
reason.  It’s because government owes its allegiance
to its big corporate benefactors that won’t do
anything to deny themselves the right to control the
health care delivery process and be able to charge
whatever prices they wish for their products and
services.  They certainly have taken full advantage of
that, and the result is the dismal state of our health
care system and the high industry profits resulting
from it.

As in his other chapters, David does a fine job
exposing the lies and myths the public is told to
justify a bad system.  And he ends the chapter again
by offering the kind of common sense solutions a
responsible government serving the people would have
jumped on and enacted long ago.  It’s now up to the
public to rise up and demand they do it.

Chapter Seven: Prescription Drugs - The Best Advice Is
to Stay Well and Not Need Them - Their Cost May Make
You Sicker

Here are some of the facts David reports on what I
like to call Big Pharma.  This industry is one of the
most profitable in the country making about 18 cents
profit on every dollar of sales; it’s aided by
government using our tax dollars to fund about one
third of all research on new drugs the industry gets
at no charge; the industry spends about twice as much
on advertising, promotion and administrative costs as
they do on R & D to develop new drugs; the prices
charged for prescription drugs in the US are
inordinately high compared to the rest of the world
and are rising at about four times the rate of
inflation; these rising costs plus those for most all
health services are rising so fast, companies are
forcing their employees to pay a greater share of them
or are reducing overall health care benefits; and the
industry has one of the most powerful and effective
trade associations representing their interests (PhRMA
- that I spelled a different way above to refer to the
companies and not the association) seeing to it that
elected officials are well lubricated with campaign
contributions and more personal benefits to assure
that any legislation hostile to their interests never
sees the light of day.

The bottom line is a Congress acting like a “wholly
owned subsidiary” of the drug industry and consumers
paying dearly for it.  And just like other industries
covered in the book, the drug giants try to justify
their consumer-unfriendly policies with deceit and
lies like claiming charging lower prices would mean
less innovation and fewer new drugs.  They also never
mention that easier regulations have allowed them to
come to market more quickly with new drugs that later
turned out to be unsafe and in some cases resulted in
deaths.  One drug giant’s Vioxx is a stark case in
point and one in which the company is now involved in
large class-action litigation on behalf of 10,000
consumer plaintiffs plus a second class-action suit on
behalf of insurers and HMOs.

The drug industry will also profit handsomely from the
new Medicare legislation that is so bad it could only
be passed in the middle of the night and then only
after enough lawmakers who first voted against it were
coerced or bribed to change their mind - a testimony
to this industry’s influence.  Under the plan,
Medicare’s bulk purchasing power was neutered so the
drug companies could charge full, undiscounted prices
for their products.  The hidden details of this
prescription plan for seniors are bad enough to make
it worthless for many on Medicare like myself.  But
the plan is a likely bonanza for the industry and may
net them hundreds of billions of dollars including
about an extra $139 billion because the government
can’t negotiate lower prices.

David goes on to list other abuses the drug industry
is allowed to get away with by our government that
should be working for us but isn’t.  I’ll mention just
one more which is an attempt by the industry to
prevent consumers from buying their drugs from other
countries like Canada on the false pretext they’re
unsafe - even though they’re the same drugs.  So much
for honesty and fairness.  Once again David shows us
how we can fight back and win.

Chapter 8: Energy - Try to Think of Another Industry
with Closer Ties to Those Now in the Administration

The Bush administration is run by a cadre of high
level officials formerly involved with energy
companies before they came to government including the
president and vice-president.  Now try to think of
another industry that will be better treated by those
in government than this one.  There is none, although
there are lots of others who get their full share and
aren’t complaining.

There are good reasons why energy prices are high
today, and we either don’t hear about them or enough
about them.  The main reason is we’re a profligate
nation with 5% of the world’s population that consumes
26% of the world’s daily oil production and about 23%
of total natural gas production.  The reason we’re so
wasteful is the industry wants it that way and the
government, in full support of the energy giants,
encourages consumption and discourages conservation.
The reason is obvious.  Our bad habits are good for
business. 

David’s book didn’t have some industry figures I now
have to show how good business really is in a time of
sky-high oil prices.  I’ll do it by citing the
operating results of the oil giant I most like to pick
on because they make it so easy for me to do it -
Exxon-Mobil.  In 2005, this company showed it’s
currently the largest corporation in the world.  In
its annual report to shareholders and Wall Street
investors, it reported the highest annual profit ever
earned by a publicly traded company.  It was a
breathtaking $36 billion on sales revenue of $371
billion.  But that’s not the end of the story.  The
good times just keep rolling for this oil giant as it
recently reported its operating results for its 2006
first quarter, and they’re better than ever: profits
were up 7% from last year to 8.4 billion (their
highest ever for a first quarter) and sales were up as
well by 8.4% to $89 billion.  Now to put all that in
perspective, based on its 2005 sales volume,
Exxon-Mobil is so large that if this company were a
country it would rank in size ahead of nearly 75% of
all countries in the world.  They can thank the Bush
administration for a lot of their success.  Guess who
their top executives will be voting for in November
and the top officials of the other energy giants as
well.

High energy prices (and specifically oil prices) are
also the result of at least two other factors which
David discusses.  One is the effect on competition by
massive consolidation in the industry, especially
among refiners.  He noted the Federal Trade Commission
(FTC) approved 413 mergers during the Clinton years
and another 520 in the first three years of the Bush
administration.  Fewer companies mean less
competition, and that’s led to higher prices.  David
also reported that Consumers Union in 2004 found that
higher prices were mostly from higher charges at
refineries.  And those increases were the result of
lax federal regulation which allowed refiners to
create artificial bottlenecks in supply driving up the
cost of gasoline at the pump.  There’s a nasty word
for this never used.  It’s called price fixing, and
our government watchdogs are allowing it with their
winks and nods to their oil giant friends.  The
consuming public is forced to pay the price and is
lied to by the government and industry trying to
justify it. 

To top it all off, it’s well known, especially by
those who try to deceive us, that energy supplies are
finite.  With that in mind, you’d think the government
would be encouraging or even mandating the industry to
make a determined effort to find alternative sources
to replace our dwindling resources that won’t last
forever.  And you’d also think laws would be passed
requiring conversation especially by raising fuel
efficiency standards for vehicles and enacting other
measures to lower energy consumption.  But if you
thought that, you’d be wrong.  Although the need is
urgent, doing these sensible things are bad for
business.  And as we see repeated industry after
industry, our government will even pursue reckless
policies to support their corporate friends and
funders, and in the process ignore the needs of the
public.  Nothing will ever change until we demand it,
and that’s what David is trying to convince us to do.

Chapter 9: Unions - They Once Were Strong and Won
Great Benefits for Their Members - No Longer

David observes, and I strongly concur, that there’s no
clearer expression of corporate America’s hostile
takeover of government than how elected officials
treat ordinary working people.  Above all, that means
their right to organize and be represented by strong
unions that will fight for their rights.  Large
corporations especially hate unions and always have.
But a golden age of worker rights emerged during The
Great Depression in the 1930s when economic conditions
became so dire the Roosevelt administration and
enlightened business leaders knew they had to make big
enough concessions, like it or not, to avert a
possible worker’s revolution similar to what happened
in Russia in 1917.  The key legislation enacted for
workers was the passage of the Wagner Act that
established the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
that guaranteed labor the right to bargain
collectively on equal terms with management. 

Things began to change in the post WW II era beginning
with the 1947 passage of the Taft-Hartley Act that was
the first major shot across the bow by corporate
America to curb the power of organized labor.  But
things really picked up steam adversely during the
Reagan years when that administration showed its
contempt for working people.  It began in 1981 with
the firing of 11,000 striking air traffic controllers,
jailing its PATCO leaders, fining the union leaders
millions of dollars and finally “busting” the union.
The Reagan administration also used federal tax
dollars to finance strike-breaking, worked to reduce
worker health and safety protections and campaigned to
change federal statutes guaranteeing worker rights to
organize and bargain collectively.

From Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush, things have
gotten progressively worse as the social contract the
government once had with the people has been
systematically dismantled.  It’s been done program by
program, year after year with the ultimate goal of the
Bush administration and all politicians beholden to
business to make all ordinary working people
“self-sufficient” with little or no safety net for
protection and the power of union representation
effectively neutered. We see the result in how union
membership has declined through the years.  Whereas in
1958 about one third of the work force belonged to
unions, today it’s under 13%.  That shameful figure is
the lowest in the industrialized world to the
detriment of all ordinary working people here. 

Corporate America in league with government has
shamelessly campaigned against unions in an effort to
demonize them to discourage workers from understanding
how membership benefits them.  The rhetoric used is
hostile, deceitful and contrary to the facts which
David lists:  average union workers earn about
one-third more in total compensation than nonunion
members; 89% of union members have employer-paid
health care benefits compared to 67% of nonunion
members; employers pay a greater share of union member
health care premiums than they do for nonunion
members; over two-thirds of union members have
short-term disability insurance compared to about
one-third of nonunion workers; and, union members
receive about 26% more vacation time and 14% more
total paid leave (vacations and holidays) than
nonunion members.  Also, strong unions benefit
nonunion workers according to the nonpartisan Economic
Policy Institute.  They reported union influence
resulted in an 8.8% wage increase for the average
nonunion high school graduate.  And another key fact
came out of the influential Council on Foreign
Relations.  They reported that the decline in union
membership “is correlated with the early and sharp
widening of the US wage gap” between the well-off and
ordinary working people.

Again David goes on to list and debunk the many myths
and lies government and business try to use to attack
and destroy organized labor.  Without it or in
weakened form, big corporations especially can exploit
their work force, hold down wages and benefits and
increase their profits.  So far their plan is working
like a charm as noted earlier in the section under
wages.  Ordinary working people today earn less than
30 years ago when adjusted for inflation, and the gap
between rich and poor has widened to obscene levels
and it’s getting worse.  It’s unlikely this trend will
be reversed unless a way is found to revive the union
movement so that working people again have a strong
voice fighting for their rights.  Again, David offers
solid solutions.

Chapter Ten: Legal Rights - This Means the Right of
Ordinary People to Have Their Day in Court and Be
Treated Fairly Because the Law Assures It - It’s
Called the Right of “Due Process” Guaranteed Under the
Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution

Fair treatment under the law in a democratic society
serving us all is the way things should be, but
they’re not, Fourteenth Amendment notwithstanding.
That’s because corporate America in collusion with
their government benefactors have stacked the legal
deck to prevent it.  So instead of equity and justice
we have “tort reform.”  That’s code language meaning
limiting the legal rights of ordinary individuals
including their ability to file lawsuits against
corrupt companies and be able to get fair redress for
the harm caused them. 

David shows how government has pandered to corporate
wishes. In 1995, Congress passed a bill limiting
shareholders’ rights to sue company officials and get
proper restitution when they cooked the books or
violated the law in other ways.  Then in 2005,
Congress enacted legislation limiting our right to
file class-action lawsuits.  And the same thing is
happening at the state level, so that power and
influence is stripping ordinary people of their legal
right of protection against corporate abuse that seems
to become greater as corporations grow larger and get
cozier with elected officials.  The 2005 federal
legislation requires most class-action suits to be
filed only in federal courts which are more heavily
stacked with business-friendly justices than the state
ones.  Also, many state laws are tougher and federal
courts are so overburdened many cases never get heard
and those that do must wait far longer to be placed on
the court docket.  When justice is delayed under this
kind of an unfair system, it’s denied.

Once again David shows how big corporations and their
government lackeys have gamed the system and rigged
the legal rules so they win and ordinary people suffer
for it and are denied justice.  One more time David
shows us how to fight back and win.

The Sum of It All for Ordinary People

David sums up his thoughts in a final chapter asking
when “will this downward spiral ever end?”  He then
goes on to tell us the good news and the bad.  As if
we didn’t know it, he stresses the bad news is both
major political parties are complicit with their
corporate allies and willingly aid them in their
hostile takeover.  So any time we’re able to throw the
bums out, we’re just likely to get new bums.  David
adds more bad news explaining “the media” largely
ignore what’s going on.  I’d go much further than
David and say the “media” are the dominant corporate
media, and they’re in on the scam as they too benefit
from it.  The reporters and pundits they have on air
or in print have little latitude beyond what their
employers expect them to do. If they want to keep
their jobs, they’ll support corporate-friendly
policies because they’re good for business including
the companies they work for.

But David also gives us some good news.  Americans are
smart he says.  They know corporations and the rich
have too much power, and government is there to serve
them.  We also have new avenues to connect with each
other and become better informed.  The growth of
alternative media, the internet, weblogs (I have my
own) and more are attracting growing numbers and over
time may weaken the corporate media’s stranglehold on
us as our main source of information - which is no
information at all.  It’s the party line designed and
intended to “keep the rabble in line” so they can
continue their wicked ways at our expense.

I must briefly add an update to David’s reported good
news on alternative media sources.  It seems when
things are getting too good for consumers, corporate
America mounts an offensive to regain the offensive
and grow their profits handsomely in the process.
That’s what the telephone and cable companies are now
doing in Congress with their attempt to make the Web a
gated community. They want to destroy net neutrality
by gaining the right to charge their Web site
customers based on the amount of their traffic.  Their
plan is to be able to offer a new tier of broadband
service to companies using their networks to make them
pay more for speedier access.  There’s lots more they
want as well, if they can get it, that will benefit
them but hurt consumers.  There’s now momentum
building on Capitol Hill to head off this intrusion to
rewrite the rules and hurt our internet freedoms.  We
won’t know the outcome for a while, but the stakes for
the public are very high and the adversary we face is
very powerful and committed to beat us.

Overall on all the issues he discussed in his book,
David admits we face a tough struggle and that “for
every victory…..there are many more defeats.”  But
he ends the book with his final prescription on how we
can fight back, and I’ll list the ones he’s chosen:

1. Reject the idea that we can’t bring about change.
History shows we can if we’re fully committed.

2. Get informed on what’s going on and how it’s
harming us.  It’s not that hard if we try, but you
won’t get it on TV or in your morning paper.

3. Fight back at the grass roots.  That’s how
Republicans began their rise to power back when
Democrats controlled the White House for 20 years and
the Congress for much longer.  It starts at the local
level and goes up from there.  In my city of Chicago,
it’s called the city council and various boards that
run the functions of government.

4. Don’t get co-opted by the system.  Instead,
organize ordinary people for political action where
you live.  Remember how former Democrat and House
Speaker Tip O’Neill characterized the system when he
said “all politics is local.” His grammar may have
been bad, but his wisdom was sound.

5. Campaign and fight for public funding of elections.
As long as private money rules, they win and we lose.

David ends on a very upbeat note, and I’ll add my own
after his from my article on the same subject.  He
cites our history of an active population that in the
past fought back and won major victories - ending
slavery, women’s rights including to vote, the right
to organize, civil rights and lots more.  We’ve always
fought injustice when it got bad enough and those
affected wouldn’t take it anymore.  David concludes
he’s confident our outrage will grow enough to make us
fight back again and lead us to a better future.  And
I’ll end this section with a quote by famed Chicago
community organizer Sol Linowitz who understood and
preached that “the way to beat organized money is with
organized people.”  He proved it.

My Own Summation of David’s Important Book

I loved the book, especially because I wrote about the
same subject using the same title as I stated at the
outset.  I also said up front and will repeat again
that everyone should read David’s book as a starting
point to learning what’s wrong that’s harming us and
getting worse and then learn how we can fight back and
win.

That said, I have some suggestions for David in future
editions of this book.  I covered a few issues David
didn’t in my Hostile Takeover article, the earlier
companion one to it I called Democracy in America -
It’s Spelled C-O-R-R-U-P-T-O-N and other writing.
I’ll list three important ones briefly and end.

l. Obscene levels of military spending that benefit
the defense contractors and all other companies
serving the military - industrial complex have hurt
the public enormously.  I wrote that the Center for
Defense Information reported that since 1945 over $21
trillion dollars has been sucked out of the economy
for military spending largely to benefit US
corporations even though the country had no real
enemies all through those years - and we were lied to
all that time to make us believe we did.  The public
paid for this largesse through our taxes that should
have been spent on essential social services we never
got.

2. The state of public education in the country has
been degraded by a combination of neglect and a
deliberate effort to produce new generations of young
people only fit for low-paying service jobs - because
many of the good ones (especially in manufacturing and
high-tech) are being exported to low-wage countries.
George Bush’s “no child left behind” education program
is just another fraud to enrich corporations at the
expense of school children.

3. The prison population in the country has grown to
over 2.1 million with about 900 new inmates being
added each week.  It’s now the largest in the world,
even greater than China’s with four times our
population and a government that has no compunction
about locking people up.  I wrote a major article on
this I called The US Gulag Prison System, and I was
referring to the one at home.  This is an outrage and
should be a national scandal as is the state of what I
call our criminal-injustice system.  All of it is an
outgrowth of a society benefitting wealth and power
and doing it at the expense of ordinary people who
naturally become more restive as their lives become
more intolerable.  So we’ve chosen to solve the
problem by locking up as many of them as we can on any
pretext instead of providing essential services and
correcting corporate abuses which is how a government
serving us would do it.  This one (Republican or
Democrat) doesn’t and won’t unless we make it do it.

I urge David to consider adding these topics to a
future edition of his wonderful book.  But I applaud
him for his important contribution.  It’s his first
book, and I certainly hope not his last.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
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site at sjlendman.blogspot.com