Chris Hedges: How the Corporations Broke Ralph Nader and America, Too

Randall Stephenson of AT&T said that if I wear this hat, he’d get me an H-1B visa to the States.

(photo caption winner h/t Mel Toast)

I'll never drive a Camaro again. Or shop at Safeway. Chris Hedges explains How the Corporations Broke Ralph Nader and America, Too:

“Nader was singled out for destruction, as Henriette Mantel and Stephen Skrovan point out in their engaging documentary movie on Nader, “An Unreasonable Man.” General Motors had him followed in an attempt to blackmail him. It sent an attractive woman to his neighborhood Safeway supermarket in a bid to meet him while he was shopping and then seduce him; the attempt failed, and GM, when exposed, had to issue a public apology.”

Oh, the apologies! Well-funded attacks against Nader picked up steam in 1971 with the launch of an eight page memo, where Hedges cites the rise of the Neo-Frat Boy Corporate State agenda against U.S. citizens with the formation of the Cash Cow of Indian Outsourcing friendly, "Business Roundtable" fraternity below:

“But far from ending their effort to destroy Nader, corporations unleashed a much more sophisticated and well-funded attack. In 1971, the corporate lawyer and future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell wrote an eight-page memo, titled “Attack on American Free Enterprise System,” in which he named Nader as the chief nemesis of corporations. It became the blueprint for corporate resurgence. Powell’s memo led to the establishment of the Business Roundtable, which amassed enough money and power to direct government policy and mold public opinion. The Powell memo outlined ways corporations could shut out those who, in “the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals,” were hostile to corporate interests.”

And of those bi-partisan think tanks that the Neo-Frat Boys deploy to pad their spreadsheets with mighty lies about a Great Labor Shortage? Some of them do give it the old college try, as this Harvard Business Review study entitled Restoring American Competitiveness reveals that “sophisticated engineering and manufacturing capabilities that underpin innovation in a wide range of products have been rapidly leaving too” in order for a few corporate insiders to cash in quickly by ridding their companies of American workers in favor of foreign cheap labor. So much for “innovation”, unless you call a few Neo-Frat Boys with a lust for profiteering at the expense of Main Street “innovators”...

And how's that whole US employment thing working out?

Obama administration officials spent the weekend cautioning that the unemployment rate would stay high for some time. He's right. It will stay high in order to kick American white collar workers out of their jobs in favor of imported, cheap labor and US taxpayer dollars can subsidize foreign corporations like Indian Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in Ohio and Florida within in the United States. So why are anti-American worker lobbyists teeming on Washington for MORE imported workers to take scarce American jobs? Hedges explains the history of how the BR began to apply “pressure” on the national media to advance their anti-American worker agenda below:

“Powell called for the establishment of lavishly funded think tanks and conservative institutes to churn out ideological tracts that attacked government regulation and environmental protection. His memo led to the successful effort to place corporate-friendly academics and economists in universities and on the airwaves, as well as drive out those in the public sphere who questioned the rise of unchecked corporate power and deregulation. It saw the establishment of organizations to monitor and pressure the media to report favorably on issues that furthered corporate interests. And it led to the building of legal organizations to promote corporate interests in the courts and appointment of sympathetic judges to the bench.”

I don't believe all US business leaders are total sociopaths without integrity and conviction (or that antiquated thingy called a moral compass), but there is a distinct correlation between the decimation of our economy, the erosion of US innovation and the rise of the MBA obsessive, Neo-Frat Boy Corporate State that sold out our jobs to the third world. Do any of the BR brass members finally have second thoughts?

“Backshoring”? LWOH reported here that NCR, GE, and Dow among others are now “backshoring” jobs to America. A good thing? If those jobs are permanent, non-temporary status and go to American workers with good compensation packages and are NOT outsourced to foreign corporations who import cheap labor under H-1B and student visas, indeed. Wouldn't it be something if American “progressives” would unite with the same well-placed vigor against the Catholic Church's pedophilia crimes/protection racket and lobby insulated US business leaders and their enabling political pals to stop this war on America's educated workers? Oh, and about that economy thing?

There ARE things US corporations and political figures can do to push the unemployment rate down and revitalize Main Street: STOP importing foreign labor/corporations and say NO to anti-American worker lobbyists.

It's not the Economy, Stupid. It's YOUR JOB!

Party on, plebes!

-2Truthy