Britain's Daily Mail has a nice splash explaining how the rich have bought boltholes with airstrips in New Zealand they can scurry away to when the whole damn financial house of cards they've built finally collapses.
Zero Hedge reports that the Disastrous Market Mania will end in Revolution, Taxes or War.
Some conservative have joined liberals these past few years in casting a critical eye on high finance, big biz, and corporations. Progs and Cons may both perceive a problem, but we can't agree on a solution.
How do we get the corps to behave?
Government regulation fails because once the hoopla fades over draconian new laws, politicians and bureaucrats simply sell exemptions in exchange for campaign contributions and business as usual continues.
We could go all Fidel Castro on their greedy asses, but the old Soviet Union and Castro's own Communist Gulag Nation stand as warnings that such 'cures' are worse than the disease.
It's The Government, Stupid
Government also spends an inordinate amount of resources constructing and maintaining safety nets for crony crapitalists who would crap their pants if you let them and their money loose in a truly free market.
The US Government's Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, runs a deficit every year to cover the phony baloney promises of corrupt union grandees. Our government assumes responsibility when corporate vampires crash a company and raid its pension fund.
It is government that throws open the gates to illegal immigrant labor (remember when Dems used to call such workers scabs?), while our cities suffer double-digit unemployment. What do you think that does to wages?
It is government that sells slavery licenses (H1-B Visas) to the Silicon Valley bandits like Mark Suckerturd, because you can never be too rich or too unpatriotic.
Government regulation serves to protect the big guys from little upstarts by making the price of entry into the marketplace prohibitively expensive. Politicians like Hairy Reed, Dennis Hastert, Nancy Pelosi, The Clintons, and the Obamas cash in on their privilege and exalted position by selling government access. They award government business to crony contractors. These dirty pols use the official Government Seal of Approval as their personal signet ring, steering government contracts, crafting legislation and subsidies that sluice profits to favored industries and companies.
So, whose fault it it?
Corporate behavior is inseparable from political corruption: DC is just one more fanged and ferocious face of a hydra-headed monster. Here are my ideas to tame the beast:
* Prohibit politicians from taking so much as a ball point pen from anyone. No vacations, no free rides, no cash. Not from individual citizens, nor from organizations or corporations. This should remove the incentive to do special favors.
* Campaign contributions from individuals only, and only during a predetermined time period, a legal fundraising season. No self-financed campaigns. Campaigns may only be conducted using money raised from individual citizens eligible to vote in US elections.
* No more tax exemptions for political and advocacy groups. You can stand in the public arena and advocate for whatever issue or candidate that tickles your fancy, but there is no tax benefit or advantage to such activities or to organizations that conduct them.
* Simplify corporate and business taxes, end all government subsidies
* End corporate welfare--All of it. Ex-Im Bank, subsidies for this or that, sugar, ethanol, petroleum, everything
* Remove the Wall Street and corporate safety nets. The financial whizz kids crap their pants, they clean it up
* Make the leadership of companies and corporations personally liable for the actions of the organization they lead. Vest them with pecuniary and fiduciary liability.
* Oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership because of anti-worker, pro-oligarch provisions such as those that permit corporate grandees to move people from country to country like chattel to avoid paying workers a living wage.
I realize I am straying dangerously close to campaign finance reform territory, and blogger buddies like Fredd may fear I'm embracing Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, so could someone help me out?
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