“We’re a big corporation, we can do anything we want.”

 I was already pissed! It all started coming into focus a few months ago when I was talking to a CSA from Southwestern
Bell Yellow Pages. They’re the “friendly” people that tell you to let your fingers do the walking in all the commercials.
I was explaining to them that I was selling my small business and was wondering if I might get some kind of discount
by paying off the balance I owed them a little early. I had also called them to tell them that the process of selling my
business was taking a little longer than expected and that this payoff would be a little later than the normal monthly
payment on our contract. This “friendly” company’s CSA started in on a rant about no discounts to pay them off
and then proceeded to tell me there was a $25.00 dollar fee for being late. I had the contract in front of me and after
reviewing it with him mentioned that there was no late fee provided for in the contract. The CSA told me that it was
something they had just started doing and that it wouldn’t be in the contract. My question was pretty simple.
How could they alter the terms of our agreement without notifying me?

“We’re a big corporation, we can do anything we want!” he told me. At that point my jaw hit the floor!
This was the third business I have opened, grown to a reasonable unincorporated size then sold and I’d never
heard this line of crap before. Needless to say the rest of our conversation went rapidly downhill as his words
kept echoing in my mind. “We’re a big corporation, we can do anything we want.”

Now Enron has filed for bankruptcy. Something about a little 600 million dollar book keeping ERROR.
Retired Enron employees have lost everything they invested in the company over the years for retirement.
Our Commander in Thief has been tied to some of the top executives of Enron who by the way managed
to sell all their stock at a combined total of somewhere over 1 billion dollars before they admitted their little
book keeping error. At the same time they were making this huge profit they used the excuse of “we’re
changing our retirement plan administrator so you can’t sell your stock while the price is dropping” to keep
their retired employees from selling any stock. Congress is starting up an investigation and those words keep
echoing in my mind,  “We’re a big corporation, we can do anything we want”!

Now days you don’t just hang a sign and open for business. There are lots of FORMS to fill out and then there
is this whole “corporation” thing to think about. S corporations or LLC’s or just incorporated. Tax advantages
and incentives for different corporations doing different types of business. Limited Liability is the newest corporate
buzz word. Basically this means that if you are incorporated then no one is responsible if you cause damage or
injury to an individual during the course of doing business. In other words no one can be prosecuted for criminal
conduct because the law is aimed at punishing the individual for their indiscretions not entities like corporations.

There are different ways of keeping records or doing accounting. Something I’m going to try and explain to my bank
next time I get a little short on cash. For a corporation they generally tend to pick the method of accounting that sheds
the most favorable light on their business transactions so they can bilk individual stockholders out of their hard earned
dollars. In the end it all boils down to one thing. How much profit can you generate at the expense of those people
that are supposed to be customers and shareholders. At no time in the history of mankind has doing business become
so complicated and corrupt except maybe during the time of the Roman Empire just before its collapse. It’s no wonder
that the words corporation, consumer and ethics are rarely if ever seen in the same sentence. While words like
corporation and profit generally tend to be the only thing that anyone considers when conducting “Big Business”.

The attorney’s that seem to make up the vast majority of our lawmakers don’t or won’t do anything about it.
It’s no wonder, these same corporations make millions in donations to the campaign funds of our lawmakers thus
insuring that it’s business as usual at the top of the corporate food chain. What most people don’t realize is that this
“campaign” money, at least what they don’t spend on campaigning, eventually winds up in the retirement fund of the
politician it is donated to. (Used to be that this type of money was called a bribe but now that they have others words
so it doesn’t sound so criminal.) Are you pissed yet? The “we’re a big corporation, we can do anything we want”
problem doesn’t end there. There’s still a little problem that no one seems to be mentioning involving American
corporations and terrorist (and the companies and countries that support them) with huge bankrolls looking for
places to invest their money.

Ever wonder what happens to all those millions or billions of dollars that are “frozen assets” of these terrorists?
U.S. and foreign corporations, which by the was include those that own banks, property and businesses throughout
the corporate world, use these terrorist invested funds to conduct their day to day operations, make campaign
contributions and make huge profits from them even though they are “frozen” so that the terrorist can’t access them.
Which leads us to this question. If we’re going to go to war against the countries that support terrorism and use this
excuse to freeze their assets then why aren’t we going to war against the corporations that support terrorism and
terrorist countries by accepting these huge infusions of capital to conduct corporate business?
Because “they are big corporations, they can do anything they want”? Are you pissed yet?

The final piece of the big picture really makes things confusing. If large corporations are the biggest contributors to
political war chest and these corporations are operating on millions or billions of dollars “invested” by terrorist and
the countries that support them then doesn’t that make the money donated to OUR lawmakers by these corporations
at least in part coming from terrorist? Are you pissed yet?

If it wasn’t so funny that terrorist by attacking innocent people are attacking their own investments then by now you
would be madder than a “wet hen”. All this is being done in the name of corporate profits. I myself find it kind of amusing
that Osama Bin Laden is actually guilty of attacking his own financial support which is a sick form of self mutilation or
maybe in this case attempted suicide. When you add in the fact that the largest part of most campaigns are funded from
“We’re a big corporation we can do anything we want” it really gets to a point of being ridiculous. Our political system
has actually declared war on its self by attacking the terrorist and terrorist countries that invest in and support larger corporations which in turn provide the bulk of funds for most campaigns. The stupidity of the whole thing couldn’t be
more absurd and the only people that suffer from the whole thing are “we the people”.  Are you pissed yet?

Well, you should be because until “we the people” get really pissed and stand up against “We’re a big corporation,
we can do anything we want” it will be business as usual between big corporations, politicians and the terrorist money
that at least in part supports them. In the end it all boils down to ripping off the average consumer for every penny that corporations, politicians and terrorist can get their hands on. No one in Afghanistan or any other part of the world is
actually dying for an ideal regardless of what they think they’re up to. This isn’t the first time that religious zealots have
been manipulated into believing that they are fighting for a higher ideal. The facts are that since the beginning of time it
has always been about those that are supposed to be our leaders using their power to amass as much of the “pie”
as they can get their greedy stinking hands on and they continue even today to do it at the expense of the very
people they are supposed to be helping and representing. Are you  pissed yet?
 

Write to Cliff Downing