Re-Entry

Hello Friends and Neighbors.  While the Rev is currently struggling with re-entering the first world, I suppose that it is important to get back to work, and back to the message.

During my recent travels, I was reading, amongst other things, a two-volume biography of Theodore Roosevelt.  "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" by  Edmund Morris, and "Theodore Rex" by the same author, chart the amazing early life of Roosevelt and, in the companion volume, the contentious years of the Roosevelt presidency.  

Theodore Roosevelt was a contradictory and fascinating character, intensely interesting.  Many of Roosevelt's actions and beliefs are so at odds with each other that they are difficult to reconcile.  His blood lust as a hunter, juxtaposed with his force as one of the founders of the policy of resource conservation, is just one example of the seemingly polar opposition of his beliefs.  

There are many things that "Teddy" did and said which are consistent with his background as a person of privilege.  And yet, at the same time, Roosevelt began to challenge the nascent corporations and the new phenomena of trusts in American business.  Some of the issues that he raised seem prophetic today.  

"It is no limitation upon property rights of freedom of contract to require that when men receive from government the privilege of doing business under corporate form... they shall do so upon absolutely truthful representations...  Great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefor our right and duty to see that they work in harmony with these institutions."  Theodore Roosevelt's Message to Congress, 1903.

One of the reasons that corporations have become the enormous entities that they are, is because they do business with the governments of the world.  The governments provide a huge market for the goods and services that the corporations offer.  No private customer can possess the buying power of a government that requires military armaments, transportation infrastructure, or energy production.  Selling guns, bridges and power grids to the government, to use the same three examples, is good business.

Mega-markets, on the order of defense contracts, are created solely by government sized consumers.  Since corporations like General Electric have reaped huge benefits from the award of defense contracts, why should they not be held to the standard of being trustworthy participants, bound to the same compact and conduct, with the government that is making them rich?

Of more specific complaint would be companies such as Halliburton, Brown-Root, or a smaller company now know as Academi, once Xe Services and prior to that the by apt moniker Blackwater.  These corporations, from the enormous to the merely deadly, exist primarily as parasites on the US government, as well as other hosts.  Halliburton and Brown-Root, both connected with the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal, benefited from the "no-bid" contracts to supply services to US troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Blackwater was a private army, with whom the US contracted for security services in Iraq.

Halliburton and Brown-Root, as previously mentioned, had "No-bid" contracts with US military to supply housing, food services, and other support for US troops.  Think about that My Brethren, a "No-Bid" contract.  That means, in essence, that a company provides goods or services without a prior agreement as to price.  Once the goods or services are rendered, a billing is sent to the US Government, who pays it.  I ask you, Sisters and Brothers, who among us can afford to do our shopping this way?  Anyone?  Of course not.  And yet, when called to account, the corporate officers of Halliburton and Brown-Root, who have counted among their numbers Cheney and Rumsfeld, became testy that government officials were questioning some of the corporate billing practices.  

Blackwater, of course, is an even more heinous example.  The US, in its infinite wisdom, hired these mercenary cowboys to provide "security" for officials travelling around Iraq.  In the course of these duties, the Blackwater folks killed more than a few innocent Iraqi civilians.  Changing their name two times does not absolve these trigger-happy maniacs,  hired by tragically short-sighted US officials, of murder.

Brethren, I will grant you that these are disparate examples of the government-corporate interrelationship.  There are so many more, it is difficult to know where to begin.  Whether it is the interstate highway system, the Manhattan Project, of the mind-boggling land giveaways of the early railroad projects in America, the benefits that huge corporations have harvested are, in large part, as a direct result of tax-payers dollars.  

Brothers and Sisters, without us, there is no them.  The mega-corporations, the huge multi-nationals, grew out of the early trusts that Roosevelt fought against.  The fight continues, unabated, and is now more desperate.  The corporate trusts of the early 1900's are as child's toys compared to the schemes and financial slight-of-hand practiced by the Corporate Demons of our present day.  We, each of us, must see the Down-Pressor for who he is or forever remain under his thrall.

Take back the power!  Take it back, Brethren.  Look and listen to the vapid excuses for leadership that are currently positioning themselves for another round of inaction in Washington.  I urge all of us to look behind the curtain at those who manipulate the levers of fear in an attempt to draw away attention from the real problems that beset our nation and the world.

Be strong, be real, be here, be aware and strike a blow!