"Now that both the defense and energy industries, having thrown off nearly all vestiges of regulation, regard the US government as their best customer, they have implanted themselves at the helm of the ship of state," Brightman writes toward the end (page 177) of TOTAL INSECURITY, setting the table for the following remarkable observation: "There is no longer much government left to defend the interests of lesser institutions, including other businesses, or the welfare of mere citizens, or the actual security of the nation."
Brightman points out that Rumsfeld's 'reorganization' of the military is emblematic of the colonization of government by corporate interests. In the same way that the shills in Congress and the White House have been intent on destroying Social Security in order to benefit their stockjobbing cronies, Rumsfeld is in the process of selling off pieces of the military to private contractors like Halliburton and Kellogg, Brown and Root, doing so under the shop-worn rationalization of "modernization" and "transformation" (or is it "freedom" and "democracy" -- the rhetoric of business and government has become so commingled it's hard to keep it straight). As Brightman points out: "In budgetary terms, this is another massive diversion of taxpayer dollars from the public to the private sector..." It also serves as a "work around" for an administration hell bent on circumventing the rights of prisoners and citizens -- a real "win-win" for the lovers of cabalistic secrecy.
Expanding on the ramifications of this capture of the US government, Brightman, a few pages later, says: "'Industry and government function as two branches of the same operation -- a military-industrial-congressional complex, if you will -- which in this instance sells off military stock to private cartels..." The instance she is referring to in this case are the close links between key corporate nodes and the Bush administration such as Halliburton and Dick Cheney, Lockheed-Grumman and Bruce Jackson (Bush's former campaign fund-raiser who now represents the company), Lynne Cheney (who served on Lockheed's board), and Air Force Secretary James Roche, who was for seventeen years a top executive for Northrup Grumman.
Brightman argues that the need for new markets and new raw materials has always driven American foreign policy: the Spanish American War was fought for coaling stations in the Philippines to extend the reach of the American merchant fleet, the interference of the U.S. in Nicaraguan and Panamanian politics was prelude to building the Panama Canal deemed a necessary means to the end of taking over the Panama Canal project and to provide for the controlled circulation of US goods and military might across both hemispheres. More recently the extraordinary economic advantage the US enjoyed post--WWII, a "good war," emphatically demonstrated the profits that could be reaped by the American industrial complex when linked with the needs and desires of the American military.
So closely are these interests now aligned, Brightman asserts, and so weak has become the regulatory apparatus of the state that we now have a "government" driven by the sales production goals of the defense and energy sectors. This "government" best expresses Schumpeter's "gales of creative capitalist destruction" when those two corporate interests most closely coincide -- such as in the pursuit of the Mid East policies crafted by the "Vulcans" -- the Wolfowitzes, Perles, Feiths, Libbys, the more lately vulcanized Cheney and Rumsfeld.
Brightman notes, however, that these interests are in often in conflict with the larger economy. "The Bush administration, in effect, is practicing economic warfare on its own economy, including a significant sector of the investor class. And it's doing so with a powerful but risky instrument of late capitalist development. This is the privatization of military, energy, and foreign policy-making by a small group of people who move back and forth between the corporate boards of Halliburton, Bechtel, Lockheed-Grumman, the Fluor Corporation, Phillips Petroleum, Booz Allen Hamilton, et. al., and the upper echelon of government."
Recently we have seen the results of the privatization and the rollback of the U.S. government in the spectacle of destitute Americans in New Orleans, who, under the much hyped regime of free market supply and demand, were found by that regime to be unworthy and ineligible for corporate assistance prior to and in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Meanwhile, of course, Halliburton and KBR are super-eligible for such assistance, so much so that their former employees now in government are assigning to their former (and no doubt future) company, those sweet no-bid government contracts. Katrina at last uncovered for the average American a view of the devastation caused by the much heralded free market angel, exposing the fact that this much-exalted spirit of social and economic justice best serves the interests of those least in need of its blessings. Finally, the economic angel was revealed as a demon, a destroyer of the poor, infirm, and the elderly, scourge and goad of a struggling middle class.
In an early chapter Brightman recounts her early experience as a teenage volunteer for the second Adlai Stevenson campaign, waged under the slogan "The Party for You -- Not Just for the Few." It was a recession year, 1956, she says, and "Big Business was the villain." Democratic speechwriters noted that under the GOP, "General Motors had made a billion and farm income dropped a billion..."The rise in corporation profits as a whole was seven times greater than the rise of the average American's income." (pg. 34). Now, of course, the Democratic Party would never dare suggest that Big Business is the villain. And certainly, it would never suggest throwing the defense and energy interests out of the temple of the people's government. For, as Brightman shows in grim detail, those interests are now both foundation and keystone of the American system.
A bit dated now (May 2004 pub.), but still dead on its description of the heretofore mostly hidden grope for control of the people's government, TOTAL INSECURITY is a must read for all concerned Americans.
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