The corporate elite: Too long unaccountable and too long untouchable

“There has always been, and there is now, a profound conflict of interest between the people and the government of the United States.”—Howard Zinn

“We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented”’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the triple giants of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”—Martin Luther King, Jr.

The amoral and insatiable appetite of the corporate/military elite for profit and power in this nation has brought to de facto fruition a U.S. government which is neither accountable to, nor concerned about, the needs, rights, and aspirations of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people.

The government of the United States of America is, in real terms, owned and operated by an avaricious corporate hierarchy to which both the Democrat and Republican parties are irretrievably beholden. This includes the present rhetorically-obfuscating, ahistorical, corporate clone, U.S. President Barack Obama.

The so-called news and information media are also owned and operated by and for the benefit of, the corporate/military elite—not the ordinary everyday people. The ballot box and the judicial system have been made null and void by corporate hegemony combined with its concomitant and incessant backroom financial manipulation. Elected officials, more often than not, are mere corporate puppets saying one thing but doing another. Instead of forthrightly and audaciously protecting the rights and needs of everyday people, these politicians, unfortunately, act as the political prostitutes for the barons of the giant insurance, banking, utility and mortgage corporations, while pretending to have the interest of the people at heart. This is the continual mockery of genuine people’s democracy.

From the outrageous trillion dollar Wall Street ‘bailout’ rip-off, to the raging profit-driven U.S. wars throughout many parts of this planet of Mother Earth, to the unacceptable and terrible economic austerity, the legitimate needs and aspirations of everyday people of this nation, and indeed worldwide, have been relegated to nothing more than being corporate cannon fodder. While the Democrat and Republican parties feign political warfare with each other, the everyday common folk pay the horrible price of economic austerity and social and judicial injustice.

It is the entire political system of the United States of America that has been utterly compromised in this 21st century, and it cannot be reformed or fixed. It has become rotten to its very core. Rather, it must be systemically changed.

This is the present day stark reality. But it did not have to be this way, nor should it be allowed to proliferate or continue. It is ordinary everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people who must bring about an end to this ongoing debacle.

Make no mistake about this: The corporate-owned government nationwide will employ every conceivable devious tactic in an effort to break the back of the everyday people’s struggles and movement for economic, judicial, social, and political justice. But in the words of the late great people’s historian. Howard Zinn, the people have the power of “truth” on their side. Moreover, it remains quite accurate that “the will of the people is stronger” than this corrupt system’s technology or subterfuge.

It is time to hold these corporations and their corporate-government accountable, and put them out to pasture where they must be relegated to the dustbin of history.

Let us intensify in this protracted struggle as we agitate, educate and organize to bring about a more just society and world.

Each one teach one! Onward, then, my sisters and brothers. Onward!

Intrepid Report Associate Editor Larry Pinkney is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil / political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities, Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil / Lehrer News Hour. Pinkney is a former university instructor of political science and international relations, and his writings have been published in various places, including The Boston Globe, the San Francisco BayView newspaper, the Black Commentator, Global Research (Canada), LINKE ZEITUNG (Germany), and Mayihlome News (Azania/South Africa). For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.)