On The Origin of "Conspiracy Theory" - 2

One band of 'conspirators'

In this series we are taking a look at the origin and evolution of the species we denominate as "conspiracy theory."

Previous Dredd Blog posts have shown how the modern forms evolved in the court systems of England, and now have become prolific in the American legal system (On The Origin of "Conspiracy Theory").

Additionally, we are looking at the perversion of that concept by the American Media, as a function of propaganda, which may harm the justice system by destroying one of the system of justice's most useful tools:

The concept of criminal conspiracy has its earliest roots in fourteenth century English common law. At that time, it saw limited use as a legal theory. It became more broadly applied in the United States in the nineteenth century, though still the scope of prosecutions was not wide. Today, however, conspiracy is a far-reaching legal principle, embracing antitrust actions, an enormous number of more traditional criminal cases, and even tort lawsuits. It is the basis of prosecutions dealing with, among other crimes, drug violations, securities fraud, murder for hire, bank robbery, and extortion.

... Conspiracy is an agreement by two or more people to commit a crime.

(ibid, quoting Dept. of Justice Conspiracy Theories). The McTell News has perverted the concept of "conspiracy theory" in the minds of the public, who are the source of those who become jurors in federal prosecutions.

So, that media incompetence and malpractice may affect law enforcement by turning jurors against conspiracy theories before they ever sit on such a case to hear official conspiracy theory charges against a defendant.

Next, the exercise in this series of fusing propaganda into the mix is quite logical since the U.S. is the original modern source of the most proud of propagandists, the one who thought up the "conspiracy theory" known as the shadow government:

THE conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.

Edward L. Bernays

Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.

They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure. Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons — a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty [now 320] million — who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.
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It is the purpose of this book to explain the structure of the mechanism which controls the public mind, and to tell how it is manipulated by the special pleader who seeks to create public acceptance for a particular idea or commodity. It will attempt at the same time to find the due place in the modern democratic scheme for this new propaganda and to suggest its gradually evolving code of ethics and practice.

(A Closer Look At MOMCOM's DNA - 4). That quote in the post is what once federal government employee Bernays wrote in his book "Propaganda."

Why Bernays is associated by Dredd Blog posts with McTell News is, among other things, that he is called "The Father of Spin."

He is the originator of American Public Relations ("PR"), which is another way of saying deceiving the public:

Today, few people outside the public relations profession recognize the name of Edward L. Bernays. As the year 2000 approaches, however, his name deserves to figure on historians' lists of the most influential figures of the 20th century.

It is impossible to fundamentally grasp the social, political, economic and cultural developments of the past 100 years without some understanding of Bernays and his professional heirs in the public relations industry. PR is a 20th century phenomenon, and Bernays -- widely eulogized as the "father of public relations" at the time of his death in 1995 -- played a major role in defining the industry's philosophy and methods.
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"Bernays' papers . . . provide illuminating and sometimes disturbing background on some of the most interesting episodes of twentieth-century history, from the way American tobacco tycoons made it socially acceptable for women to smoke to the way other titans of industry persuaded us to pave over our landscape and switch to beer as the 'beverage of moderation.' The companies involved aren't likely to release their records of those campaigns, assuming they still exist. But Bernays saved every scrap of paper he sent out or took in . . . In so doing, he let us see just how policies were made and how, in many cases, they were founded on deception."

In an industry that is notable for its mastery of evasions and euphemisms, Bernays stood out for his remarkable frankness. He was a propagandist and proud of it.

(The Father of Spin, PR Watch Magazine, Vol. 6 No. 2, p. 11, 1999, emphasis added). Note also that Dredd Blog for years has been pointing out the growth of the PR industry:

One of the most important comments on deceit, I think, was made by Adam Smith. He pointed out that a major goal of business is to deceive and oppress the public.

And one of the striking features of the modern period is the institutionalization of that process, so that we now have huge industries deceiving the public — and they're very conscious about it, the public relations industry. Interestingly, this developed in the freest countries—in Britain and the US — roughly around time of WWI, when it was recognized that enough freedom had been won that people could no longer be controlled by force. So modes of deception and manipulation had to be developed in order to keep them under control" ...

(The Deceit Business). In a recent Dredd Blog post we quoted a journalist trained in the U.S., but now working in Jordan, who calls the journalism prevalent in the U.S. "professionally criminal" (Origin of the Classic Nuclear Bully).

Thus, it is no wonder that our culture is ignorant of "conspiracy theory" even within our own culture, much less other cultures that have also had a positive use for them:

Delving into multiple genres, Pagán offers a powerful critique of how conspiracy and conspiracy theory can take hold and thrive when rumor, fear, and secrecy become routine methods of interpreting (and often distorting) past and current events. In Roman society, where knowledge about others was often lacking and stereotypes dominated, conspiracy theory explained how the world worked. The persistence of conspiracy theory, from antiquity to the present day, attests to its potency as a mechanism for confronting the frailties of the human condition.

(Conspiracy Theory in Latin Literature, emphasis added). Even the book that sells more copies than any other in the U.S. has a conspiracy theory or two in it:

She [Esther] finds favor in the king's eyes, and is made his new queen. Esther does not reveal that she is Jewish. Shortly afterwards, Mordecai discovers a plot by courtiers Bigthan and Teresh to assassinate Ahasuerus. The conspirators are apprehended and hanged, and Mordecai's service to the king is recorded.

(Wikipedia, "[Bible] Book of Esther", ~400 B.C., emphasis added). The conspiracy theory that Mordecai spoke to the King of the Persian Empire was not rejected, but rather ended up saving the lives of a lot of people and bringing justice to bad people.

This post is long, so I will continue it in a future post of this series.

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

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Nick Jonas & the Administration and their Conspiracy Theory (lyrics here):

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On The Origin of "Conspiracy Theory"

"Conspiracy Theory" According To McTell News

Today Dredd Blog begins a series that is going to look into history to find out where and when the description "conspiracy theory" originated and why.

But before we begin in earnest, one thing to note is that in different disciplines "conspiracy theory" can and does have different implications and meanings.

For example, the U.S. Department of Justice lawyers use the term every day in federal courts when they are dealing with the many federal conspiracy crimes (Dept. of Justice Conspiracy Theories) such as a conspiracy to rig elections (Election Conspiracy Theory Confirmed?).

Even the "Father of the Constitution" who was also a congressman, a cabinet member, and later president, used the term "conspiracy" to list nefarious cultural essences that "are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace" (Founding Fathers' Conspiracy Theories).

The first thing to distinguish, when tracking down this origin, is the knowledge that there is a difference between "official conspiracy theory" and "unofficial conspiracy theory".

Official sentences and phrases in our current media nuanced culture of "doublespeak" can get jiggy wid it:

With doublespeak, banks don't have "bad loans" or "bad debts"; they have "nonperforming assets" or "nonperforming credits" which are "rolled over" or "rescheduled." Corporations never lose money; they just experience "negative cash flow," "deficit enhancement," "net profit revenue deficiencies," or "negative contributions to profits."

(William Lutz, Rutgers University, author of The New Doublespeak). An example of an official conspiracy theory is "19 Arab hijackers conspired then did 911, 15 of them were Saudi Arabians" (Fighting Terrorism For 200 Years - 2).

An example of an unofficial conspiracy theory is that "others conspired to do it" (The Washington Times, "Explosive News").

The main difference, for our purposes today, is that the mainstream media extols the virtue of official conspiracy theories, but disdains unofficial conspiracy theories.

Therefore, I would guess that most citizens today think of the mainstream media version of "conspiracy theory" when they hear it, even though the term means the unofficial conspiracy theory version (they don't call the official version a "conspiracy theory").

Never mind that this notion of conspiracy theory started a long time ago, because such conspiracies are as ancient as human civilization itself.

We do have some more modern references that do not disdain conspiracy theories like the modern media do, rather, conspiracy theories in those references are considered like any other part of reality:

The Oxford English Dictionary records the first use of the phrase "conspiracy theory" to a 1909 article in The American Historical Review. Other sources predate this use by nearly four decades to at least 1871, where it is used in The Journal of Mental Science reporting on a conference of the Fifth Quarterly Meeting of the Medico-Psychological Association (now the Royal College of Psychiatrists), held on Thursday, January 27, 1870:

"The theory of Dr. Sankey as to the manner in which these injuries to the chest occurred in asylums deserved our careful attention. It was at least more plausible than the conspiracy theory of Mr. Charles Beade ..."

(Answers Dot Com, emphasis added). Let's go on to consider the coup d' etat, for example, because in general a coup d' etat is the result of a conspiracy to remove an established government.

Coup conspiracies have been ongoing for thousands of years, as well as having been done in recent times, both by those inside government and those outside of government (A Tale of Coup Cities - 3, Journalism: Facts vs. Fantasy).

In fact, you might be surprised how many conspiracy theories are handled by the federal and state governments on a daily basis:

Over one-quarter of all federal criminal prosecutions and a large number of state cases involve prosecutions for conspiracy.

(Conspiracy Theory, 112 Yale L.J. 1307 (2003), Preface,  emphasis added). That is a lot of real, serious as a heart attack, beyond a reasonable doubt, and well documented occurrences of "conspiracy theories" going on in reality before the eyes of anyone who wants to see them.

Notice the legal reality that conspiracy is a separate crime, different from the planned crime yet-to-be-done:

Consider how a law school textbook might introduce the elements of traditional conspiracy law: Imagine that Joe and Sandra agree to rob a bank. From the moment of agreement, they can be found guilty of conspiracy even if they never commit the robbery (it’s called “inchoate liability”). Even if the bank goes out of business, they can still be liable for the conspiracy (“impossibility” is not a defense). Joe can be liable for other crimes that Sandra commits to further the conspiracy’s objective, like hot-wiring a getaway car (it’s called “Pinkerton” liability, after a 1946 Supreme Court case involving tax offenses). He can’t evade liability by staying home on the day of the robbery (a conspirator has to take an affirmative step to “withdraw”). And if the bank heist takes place, both Joe and Sandra can be charged with bank robbery and with the separate crime of conspiracy, each of which carries its own punishment (the crime of conspiracy doesn’t “merge” with the underlying crime). Why should conspiracy liability begin at the moment of “agreement,” before any crime is committed? Why can a conspirator be charged with both the inchoate offense of conspiracy and the robbery? Why should the law punish conspirators even if it’s impossible for them to commit the crime they planned? Why is withdrawal from a conspiracy so difficult?

(ibid, "Conspiracy Theory", Article, PDF), emphasis added). Remember that those "conspiracy theories" happen every day when a criminal prosecutor has a conspiracy theory of the case in criminal conspiracy prosecutions.

Nevertheless the McTell News chatty kathy drones habitually continue to imply that "conspiracy theories" exist only as paranoid play-pretend imaginings of delusional people "out on the fringe."

Thus, when people on the street are questioned about the issue of conspiracy theory, they seem to have no clue about the real world's massive volume of conspiracies ongoing regularly and officially.

Rather, they tend to recollect only the news media's romantic fabrications of a supposed reality -- of what is reported to be in the minds of only a very few eccentric folk.

The next post in this series is here.

Origin of the Classic Nuclear Bully

The Iran and North Korea situations can be used to envision the similarities between nations that are bullies and individuals who are bullies.

Much of McTell News is all aTwitter about whether or not their bully idol should or should not hit the victim harder.

Or instead, should they simply continue taking their lunch and goodies from them?

This portion of the chatter is not in contention much in the ongoing chattering class's waste of time, but what is sorely disputed is who the bully is.

The media in the various nations are and have been the propaganda mouthpieces for the agenda of epigovernment; an agenda that includes, among other things, dividing and conquering the thinking of the masses (Epigovernment: The New Model).

In that pursuit, in general the media support their government's script faithfully, giving new meaning to "lip service."

For example, consider the actual recent middle east nuclear proliferation history:

High-level talks between Israel and its Muslim neighbors regarding a nuclear weapons-free zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East have been cancelled by the US and Israel.

A nuclear weapons-free zone has been repeatedly proposed, only to have Israel – the only state in the region with nuclear weapons – reject it in favor of maintaining this nuclear monopoly, further destabilizing the region, and keeping the threat of others’ nukes as a primary excuse for its militarism.

Diplomats tell the Associated Press that the US, one of the organizers of the meeting on this latest NWFZ proposal, would likely make a formal announcement of its cancelation soon, claiming that “the time was not opportune.”

While Iran is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has publicly pledged its opposition to nuclear weapons development, has subjected itself to thorough international inspections, and in fact has exactly zero nuclear weapons, Israel has done none of the above and has approximately 200 nuclear warheads. Iran is being severely punished and threatened with attack, Israel is supported with unparalleled economic, military, and diplomatic support.

(The Peak Of The Oil Wars - 8). What makes it all the more bully ludicrous was caught and pointed out in the British press yesterday:

By coincidence two clashes over nuclear issues are hitting the headlines together. North Korea and Iran have both had sanctions imposed by foreign governments, and when they refuse to "behave properly" they are submitted to "isolation" and put in the corner until they are ready to say sorry and change their conduct. If not, corporal punishment will be administered, since they have been given fair warning by the enforcers that "all options are on the table".

It's a bizarre way to run international relations, one we continue to follow at our peril. For one thing, it is riddled with hypocrisy, and not just because states that have hundreds of nuclear weapons are bullying states that have few or none. The hypocrisy is worse than that.
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Rami Khouri, the distinguished US-trained Lebanese writer, calls it "professionally criminal". After a month in the US recently, he found that coverage of Iran was based on "assumptions, fears, concerns, accusations and expectations almost never supported by factual and credible evidence". In as much as these distortions build public support for a military attack on Iran, he finds it as culpable as the media's role in the runup to the attack on Iraq a decade ago.

(Guardian, "... it's the US that's the rogue state", emphasis added). Drugs ruin an individual's mind eventually, and the drug of oil mixed with propaganda destroys a nation's "collective mind" as well.

Eventually that toxic combo pigeon-holes a nation into using bullying as its foreign policy.

The next post in this series is here.

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An Iranian Band:

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MOMCOM: The Private Parts - 5

Everyone Loves Death Juice

A while before Dredd Blog began this series another series covered some subject matter that should also be grafted into this series.

That other series is The Chamber of Corruption, ending here so far.

Today we will look at how the private parts of MOMCOM naturally include the chamber of corruption.

In this current series we have noted that the private parts of MOMCOM include about 47 international corporations of various sorts.

These include a front of international banking institutions which own all or parts of each other (MOMCOM: The Private Parts - 3).

Also included are international corporations which form the MOMCOM parts that founded the chamber of corruption in a foreign nation, including various oil companies that are fused with oil-field industrial parts makers, and Pentagon contractors, such as:

First notice some of the founding members of that foreign nation's copy cat chamber:

Bechtel, The Boeing Company, BP, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Fluor Corporation, General Dynamics, General Electric, Goldman Sachs, Halliburton, KBR, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon ...

(U.S.-U.A.E. Business Council, Founding Members). Their stated aim and purpose is:

The U.S.-U.A.E. Business Council provides its diverse membership unparalleled access to senior decision makers in business and government in the U.A.E. and in the U.S.

(U.S.-U.A.E. Business Council, About, emphasis added).

(The Chamber of Corruption - 3). At that time, 2007, when the chamber of corruption was formed, the statement "senior decision makers in ... government in ... the U.S." clearly refers to Cheney I and Bush II.

What is also strange is that this foreign copy cat of "The U.S. Chamber of Commerce" was formed by Arab royals:

I Wanna Hold Your Hand Sahib

Launched in May 2007, the U.S.-U.A.E. Business Council was inaugurated by His Highness, Crown Prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and His Highness, Foreign Minister, Sheikh Abudullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan ...

(ibid). The problem I see, among other things, is that this relationship is problematic because it enlarges and increases factors which caused the institutionalization of scatter brained ideas in the wake of 911:

The U.S. government allows its citizens to be killed en masse by foreigners, without repercussions so long as the country doing it has more oil than any other terrorist country involved?

(Fighting Terrorism For 200 Years - 2). That post deals with main stream media reports on video that point out the scenario whereby Saudi Arabia financed 15 of the 19 911 hijackers, but we did not call them on it because they are rich oil nations.

Recalling the recent Petraeus scandal, where a general who became CIA director allowed civilian ladies he was having affairs with to use his secret-laden computers, and seeing as how we notice MOMCOM's little coms covering every inch of the planet (The Virgin MOMCOM - 8), these kinky cozy affairs are clearly very dangerous.

One reason they are dangerous is because the private empire pulling the strings that run the MOMCOM casino like to brag "I am not an American company" (MOMCOM: The Private Parts - 4).

The previous post in this series is here.

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Got Bette Davis MOMCOM eyes?

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The Common Good - 3

Nuclear Aftermath - Hiroshima

In this series we are wondering about what happened to our national understanding of "the common good."

Several years ago on this date a Dredd Blog post argued that military war machinations around the world have caused and are causing impoverishment in the public sector.

Therefore, it follows that militarism run amok is not in accord with the very American concept we call the common good.

The title of that post was Economy of Destruction Reaps Poverty, and here is the text from that post:

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How much would you pay a hurricane to come through your town or city and wreak havoc, destruction, and death?

Or an earthquake?

Or a flood?

Or a tornado?

Or a fire?

Did you know that modern armies can wreak more havoc, destruction, and death than all of those combined?

In the USA's arsenal alone is enough WMD to destroy all human life on earth several times over:

However, what's different about this weapon? In our past, we've discovered gunpowder, rocketry and TNT - but they've never threatened all life on Earth as we know it. This is because all weapons in the past have never had the capacity to act on such a global scale, where as weapons based on Element 92 - nuclear weapons - can quite easily cause a 'nuclear winter' by throwing up enough dust into the atmosphere to prevent light from the sun reaching us. There are still close to 50,000 nuclear weapons in the world. More than enough to finish off the entire human race.

(Think Quest, emphasis added). That considers only the nuclear destructive capacity.

There are biological, chemical, and other WMD that can do total annihilation too.

Yet each year the United States still pays more money for armies than all the rest of the world combined.

So what does an investment in havoc, destruction, and death produce?

Does it produce homes, stores, clothing, food, roads, infrastructure, or compassion for the weak among us?

No, instead the purpose of havoc, destruction, and death is to destroy those things.

So why does the US spend $623,000,000,000 EVERY YEAR on destruction, then wonder why it is having financial problems?

The answer is because of deceit and propaganda. See posts here, here, here, and here.

A substantial portion of that money is used to sell people on the need for the capacity to wreak havoc, destruction, and death.

If we don't have the capacity to destroy, they say, we will suffer havoc, destruction, and death. They teach that MAD, mutually assured destruction, is the only way to stop destruction. Which is a tad disingenuous isn't it?

They scare us with propaganda against "the axis of evil" and dangerous enemies.

For example, remember that dangerous enemy Russia? Russia spends $50 billion a year, and China spends $65 billion a year on the military.

Those two big military powers, which the propagandists have used to scare the willies out of us, together only spend $115 billion a year to our $653 billion a year.

We spend 5.7 times more than the both of them combined, so their people must be really, really scared of us?

All the world together, besides the USA, spends $500 billion annually on their military.

The USA spends $653 billion annually on the military.

The whole world can't keep up with our insatiable spending spree on WMD. Six billion people can't outspend 300 million people. Twenty people can't outspend 1 person?

During the Bush II years we spent $5,000,000,000,000 on destructive things. That is enough to build about 33,400,000 homes at $150,000 each. Or enough to do a lot of good instead of a lot of destruction.

The share of each American each year is roughly $2,000.00; yes, an amount in effect paid by each man woman and child; but it is much more per person if only working people are considered for the source of those taxes.

There is little wonder that a people who spend so much on destructive machines, which have no other economic worth, would have financial problems is there?

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Back to today's post.

Two statesmen, who were also U.S. Presidents, who were aware of the relevant factors, and whose life experiences cover a long span of time in our nations history, put it like this:

"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." - James Madison

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"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." - Dwight Eisenhower

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

The Common Good - 2

Why is petroleum not a public utility?

In this series we are taking a look at the American concept known as "the common good."

While doing so we are also bemoaning the loss of some of the meaning of that phrase, because our nation was solidly founded on that idea (The Common Good).

The loss of the meaning of that basic American concept is tantamount to national amnesia.

So, it is time that we all work toward focusing on one of our more important national concepts.

One easy way to grasp the concept in its fundamental essence is the sub-concept we know as "the public utility", an entity dedicated to the common good:

A public utility ... is an organization that maintains the infrastructure for a public service ... subject to forms of public control and regulation ... regulation occurs when the government believes that the operator, left to his own devices, would behave in a way that is contrary to the community's best interests ... utilities can also refer to the set of services ... consumed by the public: electricity, natural gas, water, and sewage. Telephony may occasionally be included within the definition.

(Wikipedia, "Public Utility"). The common good, the public well-being, is served when those public goods and/or services that everyone uses is a not-for-profit, but rather a for-the-common-good enterprise.

A fundamental question, in that context, is "why was oil never the subject of the concept of the common good by being handled by a public utility"?

I will focus on that issue more in a future post of this series, borrowing from other Dredd Blog series such as: The Peak of The Oil Lies,  The Peak of The Oil Wars, A History of Oil Addiction, The Fleets and Terrorism Follow The Oil, The Peak of Sanity, The Private Empire, and perhaps others.

Especially in the sense that the Department of Energy has officially said that "Oil is the lifeblood of America’s economy", meaning at least that oil is equal to substances managed by public utilities, such as "electricity, natural gas, water ... sewage ... Telephony".

Why wouldn't the American Economy's "lifeblood" be part of the common good as a utility?

The reason has been revealed in the various series mentioned above, and will be enhanced in this series as we explore the evolution from the common good to the common bad.

An evolution which has resulted, among other things, in the entity we now call Oil-Qaeda, a prime example of "the common bad."

Anyway, the public utility concept has been experienced across the nation in every state for over a century and has been shown to be a structure that successfully provides for and increases the common good when applied well.

There are some difficulties, as technology arises, in accurately conceiving of what is public and what is private, as some sarcastic writers have shown:

Since not long after the Civil War we have accustomed ourselves to "private business" as one large category, and "public business" as another. The distinction is part of our settled ideas, and it has become a pretty clear thing in the treatment of the respective classes after the labeling has been accomplished.
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Should the inquiring Martian tax us to explain, we should, no doubt, in some language or other, succeed in conveying that the answer lies in the sense, upon the part of contemporary society, of its dependence upon certain sorts of enterprises.
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A logical Martian might then list the things on which, as human beings, we are most dependent, and conclude that the public utilities class are the enterprises by which food, water, shelter, fuel, or clothing are purveyed ...

(Harvard Law Review, "The Public Utility Concept In American Law", Vol. 41, #3, pp. 277-308, 1928). All we need to do is remember the concept of "privatization" to grasp the ancient movement to convert all public utilities, and all other things public, from public to privileged private hands (out of the common good hands into greedy corporate hands).

The results of succumbing to the common bad instead of the common good are written down in well-known history:

During the nineteenth century, in response to the dominant belief that public interest would be best promoted by grants of special privilege to private persons and to corporations, the Federal Government, by gift, or sale for nominal sums, alienated in fee simple, and without reservation of public right, the major portion of the public domain.

This basic privilege was supplemented by further federal grants in the form of patents, subsidies, banking powers, and tariffs. In the twentieth century this process has continued by means of federal grants of exclusive rights to exploit particular sectors of the public domain: hydro-electric sites (Federal Water Power Act of 1930); radio, wireless, and television channels (Federal Communication Act of 1934); public highways (Motor Carrier Act of 1935); and airways (Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938).

The states, following the same theory, granted corporate charters of extreme laxity; municipalities granted perpetual or long-term franchises of exclusive character.

In general, the recipients of these privileges were given practically a free hand in respect to organization, finance, and price policy.

They [corporations] followed the historic behavior pattern of all holders of special privilege and the final result was monopoly, exploitation, and political corruption.

These aggressions eventually became so apparent and so onerous that a widespread demand for legislative restrain arose, in response to which the Granger Laws, Interstate Commerce Act, Sherman Law, and the first state public utility statutes were enacted. Each sought in its own way to curb certain obvious manifestations of monopoly.

(The Journal of Land & Public Utility Economics, "The Passing of The Public Utility Concept", by Horace M. Gray, 1940; emphasis added). The author used the word "passing" in the sense of ceasing to exist.

It isn't that we forget history, and therefore have to relive it, rather, it is that the supporters of King George during our revolutionary time frame never gave up -- like the weeds in a garden sometimes do, and their "the king can do no wrong" ideology has now become dominant in "our public garden."

Add to that the fact that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and we are back to substantially being the nation of King George we long ago migrated away from, because we could not stand it.

We now live in a time when they (Epigovernment: The New Model) can and do make war based on lies, commit torture and other heinous war crimes, plunder the people's treasury, practice wicked propaganda, all with impunity and without accountability.

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

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