America's Failing Corporatocracy

In May 2010, President Barack Obama paid a personal and well-publicized visit to a solar panel manufacturing company in California, called Solyndra.  In order to promote government "investment" in green technology, the Obama administration granted Solyndra a $535 billion loan guarantee.  The guarantee had been applied for and denied under the Bush administration, but the company's investors and executives had made substantial donations to Obama's campaign.  They had also spent over a million dollars lobbying Congress on bills that would benefit companies in the business of clean energy production.  Thus, the administration fast-tracked the company's loan application.  But, in early September 2011, Solyndra filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and is now not only under FBI investigation, but is also being sued by the 1,100 workers who were abruptly laid off.  Meanwhile, taxpayers are now liable for the $535 million, in order to cover Solyndra's defaulted loan.

We post this news neither to single out a failed corporation, nor to single out a poor economic decision on the part of a presidential administration.  Rather, we deliver this news so as to explain that the Solyndra affair now typefies what can happen when government crawls into bed with corporations.  And anymore, crawling into bed with corporations is what government does most effectively.  Political party affiliation matters not, for both Democratics and Republicans do it.  For better or for worse, the United States has become a full-fledged corporatocracy, and as the economy flails and wags and sinks, so does the government that marries it. 

Few could, or even would, argue that government does not benefit most those who contribute to it.  Politicians cater to campaign contributors, if only to get more contributions.  Meanwhile, government funds are proportioned (lately, under the guise of "stimulus" measures), loans are guaranteed, and regulations are legislated and subsequently enforced by newly created regulatory bodies, all to the benefit of specifically those entities that have contributed.  As those companies succeed, more is contributed to the politicians who perpetuate and propagate them; and when they fail, they're "bailed out."

Yet, though many may admit to America's corporatism, few seem to recognize that the ones who must ultimately pay for it is, well, everyone else who's not a member of the corporatist structure.  The taxpayer.  The voter.  Joe and Josephine Sixpack, who still naively believe that America is the land of opportunity, but can't start their own business because they're regulated and taxed out of the prospect, or because they lack the mountain of funds necessary to contribute to the campaigns of those politicians that would help them.  As a result, they must resign themselves to their workaday jobs in order to make enough money to buy their food from the corporations that process it, and to pay their taxes to the government that subsidizes and regulates the food processing corporations.

It is no wonder that the call is often heard for a "viable third party."  Yet, even members of prospective third parties are most likely to be co-opted into the corporatist structure.  Greens are absorbed by the Democrats; Libertarians are catered to by Republicans.  The only difference becomes what corporations would benefit from whomever is in power.  Such is in the nature of American politics, we suppose, and so it is even less wonder that so many are indifferent to the whole mess.  Yet, such is the state that the country currently finds itself in.