ad-free
A marketplace for speech.
82,433 Hours of Speech
help
help
516,063 Transcriptions
add title (free)
add title (free)
406 Sources
add source €0.99
add source €0.99
Search:
Newsbud
Title: Corporatocracy: How the Corporate Welfare State Divides and Conquers
Published: 2014-02-11
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez8I8VGLNUw
Title: Corporatocracy: How the Corporate Welfare State Divides and Conquers
Published: 2014-02-11
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez8I8VGLNUw
1/35
since nineteen ninety six the United States department of defense has accumulated an eight point five trillion dollar black hole in its budget the number is so staggering that it is quite literally inconceivable several times larger than the annual budget of the entire federal government it is equivalent to half of the entire fraudulent debt of the United States government itself aside from a recent report by Reuters2/35
or the occasional back of the paper mentioned in one of the dinosaur media outlets however you have to turn to Russian state sponsored media to discover this fact since nineteen ninety six the Pentagon has spent eight point five trillion dollars in taxpayer money that has never been accounted for nobody can say for sure how many billions of that amount were wasted on goods and services that3/35
were never delivered on over payments to contractors and many other things what does Congress do about it nothing and national security experts the miles Sears here with me to help us crunched the these numbers eight and a half trillion dollars on accounting for a lot of money %HESITATION this is the kind of thing that you would think would bring Capitol Hill to a screeching halt there4/35
be hearings kind of almost daily into various committees looking into it none of that and Elian visiting from another planet could be forgiven for legitimately questioning why this scandal is virtually unknown while the details of Justin Bieber's latest arrest or Miley Cyrus is the latest antics are literally unavoidable in the cultural zeitgeist or why the use of steroids in Major League Baseball is considered worthy of5/35
Ernest congressional investigation well this unaccounted for eight point five trillion dollars is relegated to passing mention in the occasional congressional hearing fiscal year nineteen ninety nine two point three trillion missing fiscal year two thousand one point one trillion missing and the O. D. is the number one reason why the government can't balance a checkbook the Pentagon has claimed year after year that the reason they can't6/35
account for the money is because its computers don't communicate with each other my second question Mister secretary is who has the contracts today to make those systems communicate with each other how long have they had those contracts and how much have the taxpayers paid for them the second question and I forgot what the second question was what seems perplexing from an outside perspective however is Monday7/35
in reality to those inside the system the truth is that despite all the fuzzy rhetoric about republics and inalienable rights and the rule of law the United States is nothing but an oligarchy run by a handful of international banking syndicates they're multinational corporate cronies and the politicians in their back pocket the Pentagon budget story is not reported on for the simple reason that it is the8/35
defense contractors they don't much of the media and have intimate relations with those outlets that are not directly under their control in April of two thousand and eight David Barstow of The New York Times broke the story about how the Pentagon used seventy five military analyst former military men to get the bush administration's version of the war in Iraq out to the American people we've got9/35
generals and if you ask them about the prospects for war with Iraq they think it is almost certain and the defense contractors in turn own the political figures that decide who received the government's defense contracts the classic example of this is Dick Cheney as George HW bush's secretary of defense he awarded a contract to KBR a Halliburton subsidiary to investigate the possibility of contracting out military10/35
services to private companies unsurprisingly KBR concluded this would be a good thing and soon Halliburton and other private companies were receiving a larger and larger slice of the Washington defense budget pie also one surprisingly Cheney left his post as defense secretary at the end of the bush administration and became CEO of Halliburton but this is not the only example of the defense contractor revolving door as11/35
Ryan Dawson of the ANC report notes in his new book the separation of business and state Thomas white the secretary of the army was involved with Enron as a senior executive he unloaded two hundred thousand shares twelve million dollars worth of their stock during that scandal while white was serving as vice chairman of Enron energy services he actively used his political contacts to give and run12/35
a single bitter contract to privatize the power supply for fort Hamilton he was also fond of using military jets for personal trips for himself and his wife and Gordon England the secretary of the navy flipped back and forth between General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin Lockheed Martin is at the top of the list when it comes to Pentagon contracts and General Dynamics is usually in the top13/35
five England was the president of General Dynamics land systems division and later became president for General Dynamics entire fort worth division that division was sold the Lougheed and he became a president there sadly the list of such blatant conflicts of interests is nearly endless and by no means limited to the military industrial complex the same is true of the revolving door in the biotech industry around14/35
companies like Monsanto this list of officials includes Linda Fisher a senior EPA official who later became Monsanto's VP of government and public affairs Michael Taylor Obama's deputy FDA commissioner who also served as Monsanto's VP for public policy and US Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas who served as a corporate lawyer from Monsanto in the nineteen seventies and in the healthcare sector where high ranking insurance company executives15/35
literally write the legislation that mandates everyone to purchase health insurance from the corporations Liz Pollard zilch part might chief health council list Ballard's but I team together helped healthcare team Liz Fowler's work for me many years ago sensed left private sector and came back which she realizes that she could be there at the creation of healthcare reform because you wanted to have a certain sense that16/35
beer professional lifetime goal she put together that of white paper last November two thousand eight %HESITATION eighty seven page document which became the basis the farm cara measures and all bills both sides the I came from the problem is so blatant so obvious so out in the open that even its opponents readily admit to its existence and yet it continues without significant opposition from the public17/35
how can this happen because in a twist that again would be difficult to explain to anyone not steeped in the system people disagree not on the problem itself but on what to call it if you have people on those the so called left saying well it's all the corporate talk receipt and the right and then you have people in the so called right saying it's all18/35
big government and they're right without realizing they're talking about the same thing really at the end of the day yeah there's actually there's sort of two methods that they do their they'll say well the corporations are it's all the corporations because their pride in the government tack this certain way and you can say well actually it's the state because they're the ones with all the power19/35
that's enabling the corporations you buy the awarding them your tax money and everything and it's the same result and what it really is it's it's this dating corporations sing and there walking on top where you it's it's not that one has to bribe the other to act that way it's in their own interest to do that once people realize they can vote themselves money it was20/35
over and that's what they do and we we had a massive abusive no big contracts for example which respects me for emergencies best just a waiter wipe out the bidding process and they're really allow the government to what money to itself because we talk about a corporation look at its board members corporations are not just only they're not companies are publicly traded they don't just have21/35
a boss it gets oversimplified but if you look at their BOT they have overlapping membership with people in the Pentagon and people on the president's cabinet the treasury are are you know name the department I mean it's totally insider trading not they're not only just investing in the people they give me money and they work for them simultaneously in the on elected portions of government like22/35
the Pentagon is probably the largest one I mean Paglia yet commerce labor etcetera and then they all do it they'll do it so it but we really need to separation of corporations Nate's and not just blame the government or blame the corporations you have to see how they're working together and not get so fixated in belonging to %HESITATION group or something on your left or right23/35
or whatever that's really irrelevant this is the ultimate example of divide and conquer in action a small readily identifiable ruling oligarchy that no serious political observer denies the existence of is able to keep the public from attacking it by dividing them along ideological grounds so that the public spends all their time arguing over definitions and splitting doctrinal here's instead of attacking the commonly acknowledged enemy you24/35
couldn't ask for a more perfect system of control thankfully the corroboree of this divide and conquer strategy is that it is possible to unite the people against their common enemy simply by employing some rhetorical strategies of our own alright well we could go on and on and talk about all of these problems we could even talk about the solutions which again are not particularly controversial of25/35
there a lot of people on both sides of the spectrum again that would and that would agree with the idea that there is something beyond just taxing the rich or just cutting social welfare how about we cut the corporate welfare everyone can vary greeted that except for the corporate fat cats themselves but the real question the twenty trillion dollar question is how do we move the26/35
conversation to that point given the types of mental barriers that I've been erected around these real solutions yeah I think you have to approach it wine without a label like don't come and say now man are kissing libertarian whenever just comments saying we need to cut corporate welfare and everyone assume you're one of them in that you know because then everyone agrees that everybody agrees that27/35
%HESITATION cutting foreign aid I think most people agree with or reducing it %HESITATION you know would not have Lynette saying we should have no bid contracts you Sir lose people because they are that means but keep it simple and I think that one corporate welfare for sure for banks as well as for military industries but you don't have to necessarily spell it out to say corporate28/35
welfare and they'll they'll understand yeah you don't need to be bailing out all these people dis dollars that's kind of what got occupy a regionally going wise dead bailouts the banks and the tea party taxed enough already well they don't want the same thing and and I think most people could agree on that day just get caught up in these wedge issues and the sort of29/35
%HESITATION socially find things to argue about that are really no legislative issues and they get they get watered down by that and so we have to really keep it simple but is not everybody's political hi and we have a lot of low information voters to but you have to just keep coming back to and say we have to cut corporate welfare and these are the people30/35
that vote for it and you have to make that %HESITATION one issue pony to say may be no more wars he's a guy that's nice way to save money we don't need to have all these wires and occupations everywhere we need to cut corporate welfare and then there is open seating E. but don't worry about that like that's the two we if we can do that31/35
I mean getting rid of the fat is a big thing but I don't think we can get to that point and still east start do seeing their grip first on the Congress that the lobbies have I and I think that starts by people getting really upset about corporate bailouts and welfare they have to pay all that money back and we have to stop bombing people so32/35
peace and ending that kind of welfare we have plenty of money left over from whatever social programs that are struggling we need to have plenty of money already for that and there are other market solutions that are better than than social welfare to but I don't think you can really get that you just can't bring up too many issues so I think we have to start33/35
with the Indian wire and then sacked and I think Yasser ending corporate welfare I think two is enough and that would be a good place and there's easy solutions for a lot as we shall see next week the idea of uniting the people against the oligarchs is not only possible it is actually happening in case after case but as always it is a question of whether34/35
it is enough to push back against this oligarchical control or if it is too little too late not yeah not can comment on intermediate team let me interrupt you congressman let me interrupt you just for a moment we've got some breaking news out of Miami stand by to help right now in Miami Justin Bieber has been arrested on a number of charges that judges teaching reading