Corp Germ > Corp Seed > Corp Monster - 3

Electric Public Transportation Destruction

In this series we are posting and commenting about how corporations began as a twinkle in the eye of public officials, with an eye toward public service.

That history has been distorted to generate a meme complex inhabited by the neoCons of the right-wing news media who have by now fabricated a false history of corporations, free market economics, and American capitalism.

In doing so they use Adam Smith as a forerunner, making him out to be someone who had their corporatist ideology, when he in fact was not one of them:

The other part of the story is the development of corporations, which is an interesting story in itself. Adam Smith didn't say much about them, but he did criticize the early stages of them. Jefferson lived long enough to see the beginnings, and he was very strongly opposed to them. But the development of corporations really took place in the early twentieth century and very late in the nineteenth century. Originally, corporations existed as a public service. People would get together to build a bridge and they would be incorporated for that purpose by the state. They built the bridge and that's it. They were supposed to have a public interest function.

(Corp Germ > Corp Seed > Corp Monster). The germ idea, or germinating concept, of the corporation was that they were to serve a temporary public function, then that corporation was to be dissolved once the service to the community had been accomplished.

Then along came war which engendered a toxic environment exactly as an early American statesman wisely warned:

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied : and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. Those truths are well established.

(The Greatest Source Of Power Toxins?, quoting James Madison). Notice the phrase "war ... develops the germ of every [enemy to public liberty]".

Notice also that what President Madison said is the opposite of current propaganda, which the media uses to ultimately tell us that "war is the source of your freedom".

We can quickly and easily test President Madison's theory with a case in point:

General Motors produced vast quantities of armaments, vehicles, and aircraft during World War II for both Allied and Axis customers ...

The General Motors UK division, Vauxhall Motors, manufactured the Churchill tank series for the Allies. The Vauxhall Churchill tanks were instrumental in the UK campaigns in North Africa (ironically often being used to attack German logistics units using Opel [GM made] trucks). Bedford Vehicles manufactured logistics vehicles for the UK military, all important in the UK's land campaigns. In addition, GM was the top manufacturer of U.S. Army 1½ ton 4x4 vehicles.

Nevertheless, while General Motors has claimed its German (Opel) operations were outside its control during World War II, this assertion appears to be contradicted by available evidence. General Motors was not just a car company that happened to have factories in Germany; GM management from the top down had extensive connections with the Nazi Party, both on a business and personal level. During war Opel's Brandenburg facilities produced bombers JU-88, trucks, land mines and torpedo detonators for Nazi Germany.

(History of GM). The corporation went from germ to seed to monster through the toxins of power on steroids during a war.

The photo to the right shows a clean energy rail system we could have had if the corporate monster had been contained.

The photo at the top of this post shows the carcases of victims of GM Corporation's post war atrocities, which ended up destroying the existing clean energy public transportation system.

The Great American streetcar scandal (also known as the General Motors streetcar conspiracy and the National City Lines conspiracy) refers to an largely unpublicized program led by General Motors to systematically replace streetcars and electric train in many cities across the United States with petroleum fuelled bus services.

Some believe that this program was directly responsible for the virtual elimination of effective public transport in American cities by the 1970s.

General Motors Corporation and others were subsequently convicted in 1949 of conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses and related products via a complex network of linked holding companies (Street Car Scandal).

We now know that clean energy transportation is key to our freedom from the addiction to oil.

So we can conclude that President Madison was indeed a wise visionary, noticed by one writer who has published a blog hoping to find a way back to where we were, and then beyond that to freedom from the oil addiction:

“Where there is no vision, the people perish” - Proverbs 29:18

A society that does not plan or prepare, that does not consider the consequences of the present and contingencies of the future, a society that lives only for today, the next quarter or the next election is doomed.

Events and a changing reality will, sooner or later, catch up with those that refuse to prepare. Available resources, time and most importantly, wisdom will simply not be at hand to allow us to adapt and recover from foreseeable negative developments – developments that reasonable people would have started to prepare for decades ago.

(Economy Free From Oil). We can be sure that the corporate monsters in our midst will declare war on anyone who challenges The Twinkie Empire, because we now live in The Criminally Insane Epoch.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post is here.