Several list-members have noted that in Minneapolis, good citizens and open, democratic activist groups may be labeled, monitored, and marginalized as "terrorist threats". I believe this to be the result of corporatist government. If you are not familiar with the term "corporatism" I include below three links to online articles giving different but poignant summaries. (A good understanding of corporatism or fascism is essential to understanding this post.)
http://www.sltrib.com/2002/nov/11252002/commenta/5226.htm
The above link is to an article by Molly Ivans: "In the Age of Corporatism, Liberals Are the New Conservatives"
http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp1003.html
"Talking to Your Kids about Fascism" by Gary Leupp is a brief historical overview.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=3054
Robert Locke also describes corporatism. He also relates corporatism specifically to urban real estate.
Here's a quote:
"….Let's take New York as an example, just because I know it best and the pattern is clearest here, though similar dynamics work in other locales to a greater or lesser degree. Basically, real estate development here has become so over-regulated and over-taxed that it is virtually impossible to do profitably without government help. Government is aware that it has strangled development, but still wants it to occur because voters want jobs, campaign contributors want their projects, and projects create patronage opportunities for politicians. Therefore, government selectively lifts the burden of taxation and regulation on certain projects to push them into the black. It does this with tax abatements, loan guarantees, zoning changes, condemnations, outright subsidies, tax-exempt bond issues, exemption from regulations, and selective public infrastructure investments. As a result, only projects with political support can happen, and every skyscraper is a monument to the political deals that enabled it to get built. The result is capitalist in the sense of being privately owned, but it is not a free market. Government is expected by developers to keep a steady flow of profits going (while keeping politically-unconnected competitors out of the game.) It is expected by construction unions to keep a steady flow of construction jobs. It is expected by the public to deliver shiny new skyscrapers full of jobs."
I do not agree with all Locke has to say. I do believe that corporatists see cities as pools of tax dollars to be drained. Target, Brookfield, and the notorious Block E developers suck tax dollars out of the city. Meanwhile, the city is transformed from a place with history and unique local features into another "no-place/anyplace" collection of malls and corporate offices. The city is shaped and financially drained by corporations in collusion with politicians who in turn rely on these same corporations for money needed to stay in office or to seek a "higher" (lower?) political office.
I believe that our local politicians are often forced into the role of selling the corporatist "product" to the people. The city is not a monument to open democracy and civil society, but rather to coercion and collusion in closed corridors of power.
Even though many corporations evade paying taxes, urban infrastructure changes - such as the I35W Expansion Project - are initiated and dominated by a corporate elite. Public participation is managed and manipulated by professionals skilled at doing so.
For the most part the media plays along, publishing and airing dis-infotainment while refusing to investigate anything that will upset the merged corporate/government powers. Why search for reporters who will investigate with persistence and passion or shake the very foundations of complacency? Better to hire many fluffy entertainers who pose as journalists to feed the complacency of the class of consumers targeted. Guess who owns the media?
Corporatists shrink government funding of all but military and domestic intelligence functions, so that schools, human services, parks and such will be dependant upon self-serving corporate handouts to survive. This increases conformity. Our schools are coerced to program kids into becoming nothing more than "pro-sumers" (producer-consumers) in a world dominated by corporate slogans and logos. Behind the logos, of course, are armies with weapons of mass destruction, glorified as "defenders of freedom and democracy."
Our city and county government policies reflect the current demands of corporations which dwarf the city (and county, and state) in terms of real economic and political clout.
As a result, "we the people" have less and less to do with shaping our city and the bio-region we inhabit and leave to those who follow than do these predatory corporatists who promise prosperity but poison and impoverish both the land and people.
We are relegated to squabbling over the increasingly narrow menu presented as the *only* possibilities by those who will gain power and wealth no matter what pre-packaged option is chosen. Those with the most wealth or power do not live in Minneapolis, let alone the state. For many CEO's this metro area is at most a stop-over on the way to a more lucrative gig elsewhere. For many politicians, Minneapolis is simply a rung on the ladder of political power.
While some Minneapolitans conform in comfort, most are left scrabbling for survival. This economic desparation of many is an important element of corporatist politics. It is vital to keep most people scrabbling to survive, so that an educated minority can be frightened as well as seduced into serving an even smaller elite.
Those of us who long for democracy must address corporatism directly. Under so-called "small government" politicians, government is getting much larger, with power and money concentrated at the federal level and increasingly going to expanded military rule abroad and domestic police rule.
The federal government responds directly to the bidding of corporations who see the world - and our city - only in terms of profit and power over resources. Local governments are being hollowed out economically. This leaves local governments - and us - increasingly powerless against the expanding federal government. Local officials now must be little more than shills for the corporate-political merger which has taken place in Washington, DC.
In our corporatist world, government is "small" relative to small business elites, but very large and powerful in relation to individual people and to individual communities.
I believe that we citizens must work to revive democracy. I hope we can continue careful, thoughtful discussion of corporatism. I hope we continue to decry the marginalization of citizens and democratic organizations through using the "terrorist" label.
Do fellow list-members have thoughts about this? What is being done locally to bring democracy back to America? Are our city and county governments able to do anything in the face of the fascism of our rapidly expanding federal government? Do other list-members prefer corporatism to political democracy coupled with economic capitalism? Are there other perspectives amoung us?
Gary Hoover
King Field
"I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
-- Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1816.
"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling power. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing."
--President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. (One Thousand Americans, George Seldes, page 5.)
"The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money."
-- Alexis de Tocqueville
