Corporate Takeover of Wisconsin: The Worst is yet to Come

Wisconsin's Takeover by Corporate Power is a Microcosm of the Corporate Takeover in Other Parts of the World: The Worst is yet to come.

As we do a postmortem on the recent recall election, we are forced to acknowledge the power of corporate money in molding the attitudes of the voters to vote against their best interests. When Big Money owns our politicians, and Big Money “Think Tanks” define the conversations, and corporate media delivers the conversation as a “free market' infomercial instead of real news, we are left with a society that is becoming morally bankrupt.

Dr. Kamran Mofid, the founder of “Globalization for the Common Good” in Oxford, England has recently addressed the issue in England. His comments could very well be applied to the US and especially to Wisconsin.

“Thanks in part to the grip of corporate power on the media and on political parties, few today in the West can imagine any other politics than those of big money. In the US, and increasingly also in Europe, the income differential between the poor and the wealthy already resembles that of banana republics. The downtrodden are asked to bear the burden of a financial crisis created by bankers.

Neo-liberalism has only accelerated these processes at the heart of capitalist society, destroying the so-called Western values and "social cohesion". Moreover, this is a threat that emanates from within, not without. Witness the riots in England that thanks to the feral capitalism and neo-liberalism has become one the most unequal and unjust countries in the western world, coupled by its moral, ethical and spiritual decline.”

What is important to remember from Dr. Mofid's statement is the relationship between becoming an unequal and unjust society and subsequent civil disobedience of the disenfranchised. What is upsetting in Dr. Mofid's comments is the fact that the United States is currently much more unequal than England, or all of Europe.

Therefore, it is the responsibility of progressives not to give up, civil society needs people who care about people over money.