Conservative or Preservative? Corporate influence is pervasive...

    The Republican strategy is to split the vast middle and working class – pitting unionized workers against non-unionized, public-sector workers against non-public, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don’t believe these programs will be there for them, and the poor against the working middle class.
   By splitting working America along these lines, Republicans want Americans to believe that we can no longer afford to do what we need to do as a nation. They hope to deflect attention from the increasing share of total income and wealth going to the richest 1 percent while the jobs and wages of everyone else languish.—Robert Reich,  The Republican Strategy

    Mr. Reich makes a strong case for opposing the current Republican outcry against the Obama administration, and does so in a way that puts so-called Conservatives into the role of preservers of a lop-sided status quo which profits only a few at the expense of the American Dream. My idea of this American Dream consists of working hard for your retirement as well as being honest about paying for the services we do indeed receive from state and federal government, which means admitting that Americans pay less in taxes than most of the world and receive more. In addition, expecting those who are elected to serve the interests of those who elect them is bedrock to any notion of representative democracy.
   This last notion takes on a new meaning when combined with Supreme Court rulings that erode individual liberty at the expense of granting corporations more rights than any one individual. The same laws allow corporate abnegation of responsibility not permitted to any one individual. The same laws give corporations the ability to donate more to any political campaign than can any one individual, unless that person is Bill Gates or some other billionaire. The Supreme Court has done this by taking a few 19th Century notions about corporate rights that are not healthy for our way of life currently, and allow corporate influence into all areas of our lives.
    President Eisenhower, one of the nations greatest military minds, stated in his 1961 farewell address as President about such corporate influence:

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

He ends by stating,
   "Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow."