Will we vote for corporate capitalism or the common good?

As a business communicator, I admire a good marketing plan. For example, when Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign developed their ad targeting women, I was impressed. “I believe there’s an athlete in everyone,” one woman says in the signature ad. It helped move me off the couch to start jogging; I still buy Nike shoes. And it’s helped Nike weather troubles with athlete endorsements and factory conditions in Asia.

Since I’ve written a few marketing plans myself throughout the years, I’ve learned to spot them in action. And I’d been saying, “There has to be a marketing plan for conservative political interests somewhere,” when I stumbled across an article in August 2011, acknowledging the 40th anniversary of something called the Powell Memorandum. (Read the document here: http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/global-warming-and-energy/polluterwatch/The-Lewis-Powell-Memo/) This memorandum, penned by former Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, is the blueprint for American political history during the last 40 years.

Written in 1971 when Powell was working as an attorney and sitting on the board of 11 corporations, it outlines for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce an extensive list of tactics to protect the interests of America’s largest corporate citizens. Paranoid about liberal activism in the 60s, Powell believed corporate America should exercise much more political influence. His tactics include shaping the political environment within higher and secondary education via: staff appointments, speakers, textbooks and curriculum, especially in graduate schools of business.

With regard to the wider public, Powell suggested developing think tanks to craft research and messages designed to favor big business. To disseminate them, television, radio, print publications, books, journals and paid advertisements should all be used. Consequently, today most major media is owned by corporate conglomerates.

Finally, Powell suggested corporate powers turn their efforts to the political and judicial arenas. The key to this strategy was money – to both parties, with efforts targeted to wean Democrats from union influence. Yet over time, more dollars began to flow to conservative political challengers.

In a web article about the Powell Memorandum, Bill Moyers and Company posted an excerpt from Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson’s book Winner-Take-All Politics: (http://billmoyers.com/content/the-powell-memo-a-call-to-arms-for-corporations/2/) “By the end of the 1978 campaign, more than 60 percent of corporate contributions had gone to Republicans, both GOP challengers and Republican incumbents fighting off liberal Democrats. A new era of campaign finance was born: Not only were corporate contributions growing ever bigger, Democrats had to work harder for them. More and more, to receive business largesse, they had to do more than hold power; they had to wield it in ways that business liked.”

The height of this plan’s success was the current Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, unleashing loads of corporate cash into the current election.

Great American businessmen have long understood that a business cannot survive without customers. Henry Ford made sure to pay his employees a wage large enough to allow them to buy the cars they helped make.

But unfortunately, current corporate leaders (And I’m talking about large international companies, not small Main Street businesses.) have lost sight of their place in the American community, squeezing larger profits via staff cuts, government subsidies, tax breaks and public contracts without giving back via taxes and living wages to employees. Their leaders do not acknowledge responsibility for the common good.

As Hacker and Pierson’s book points out, this corporate agenda provides money to both political parties. Yet the majority now flows to Republican politicians, represented at the top by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

So no matter what you may feel about President Barack Obama, if you’re part of the 99 percent, following the money means you have a better shot with the incumbent. That’s your choice – corporate capitalists or the common good.

Will we make an informed choice?

Ok, I admit it. I’m ticked off about the debate. Why?

Not because media pundits, who live for a good figurative shoving match, gave Round 1 to Romney. I’m angry because I see an unengaged citizenry refusing to acknowledge this stuff matters.

What set me off? Facebook.

Yeah, I know it’s a social networking site. People routinely post stupid things. I annoy people by sharing articles with an alternative perspective on politics and religion. I’m well aware most are probably ignored. But as one of my college professors used to say, “Even a blind pig occasionally finds an acorn.” Sometimes I get a person’s attention.

But I blew a gasket the morning after the debate because too many intelligent people I know refused to watch. Really, you’re going to opt for Honey Boo Boo?

Is it any wonder the American people get nothing from their representation in government?

The whole idea of a democracy is citizen involvement, but when citizens refuse to do their work, they have no right to complain about the product. Americans only want to show up every four years for the main event – the election of the President. And then the best we bring is some vague impression of who is “likeable” or “presidential.”

If we know anything about policy or the issues, it probably comes from an ad – TV or direct mail, like the one I received from the Romney campaign recently.

In the past year, both my husband and I were inexplicably registered as Republicans. The only response I got when I marched into the auditor’s office to correct that error was a shrug and a “wishful thinking, I guess.”

As a consequence, we now get Obama and Romney campaign literature. I tend to toss both, preferring to use my own research to evaluate records. However, this flier caught my attention, first, with a large photo of president Obama.

Next came the headline: “President Obama will continue to grow government. More runaway spending. High taxes. More jobs lost.”

That stopped me before I made it to the trash can because these claims are wrong.

First, let’s take the claim President Obama has grown government with runaway spending.

As Factcheck.org notes: “The truth is that the nearly 18 percent spike in spending in fiscal 2009 — for which the president is sometimes blamed entirely — was mostly due to appropriations and policies that were already in place when Obama took office.” http://www.factcheck.org/2012/06/obamas-spending-inferno-or-not/ Yet this article goes on to explain at length the complexity of government spending and our current situation, making it clear no one party is to blame.

Second, will taxes increase under President Obama? Well, as this article on Think Progress notes, income taxes under Obama are at an historic low. http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/07/11/514384/taxes-30-year-low-obama/?mobile=nc%C2%A0 Factcheck backs that up. http://www.factcheck.org/2012/07/tax-facts-lowest-rates-in-30-years/

And in the future? Well, the Romney flier didn’t specify which taxes, but I’d guess they are including the cost of the Affordable Care Act. Again, I’ll defer to Factcheck: http://www.factcheck.org/2012/07/biggest-tax-increase-in-history/. Brooks Jackson writes: “In short, there are too many moving parts in both the ACA and in earlier tax laws to make simple comparisons that are valid for all purposes. . . . Despite all these uncertainties, one thing is abundantly clear. There’s no way the ACA’s tax and other revenue increases come close to being the largest in U.S. history.”

Finally, declaring President Obama will lose more jobs denies reality given reports this month that indicate he may finish this term with net job creation, as this Bloomberg article outlines: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-27/payroll-revisions-signal-economy-has-created-jobs-under-obama.html The Romney ad’s claim also makes no reference to the horrible economic conditions President Obama inherited. To deny his efforts to prevent greater economic turmoil is to deny reality.

But then acknowledging reality would mean admitting policies under the previous Republican administration led to the current economic uncertainty.

As Stephen Colbert once said, “It is a well known fact that reality has a liberal bias.” Unfortunately too many citizens pretend what they do won’t make any difference, so they can watch crappy reality TV without guilt.

If you plan to vote, do your homework.

Are the Hunger Games in our future?

This has been the year of the Hunger Games at my house. First, my 11-year-old daughter read the book, discovering it’s the start of a trilogy. So she read the second and third books and began watching movie trailers online. Then she reread the entire trilogy.

Next, we ordered tickets for the first night of the movie – for her, a friend and me. Finally, she added the movie to our Netflix queue. She waited patiently through our summer of itinerancy until we were home.

So last Wednesday night, we watched the movie again; it was the first time for my husband. For those who don’t know the story, Hunger Games is a futuristic morality tale by Suzanne Collins. In it, the nation of Panem is divided into 12 regional districts ruled by the wealthy and brutal Capital. As punishment for an uprising 75 years earlier, each district must submit two youth, male and female, to an annual competition called the Hunger Games. The children range in age from 12 to 18, and they must compete to the death, with one victor emerging. The games are broadcast throughout Panem, and all are forced to watch the slaughter. For the Capital it is sport; for the districts, it is torture.

As the plot unfolds, it becomes apparent the Capital relies completely on the districts to supply the labor and natural resources to support its lavish lifestyle. So the intimidation, fear and division the games sow help maintain the Capital’s power.

Watching this movie a second time, I was reminded of events in our country recently: the teachers’ strike in Chicago and Mitt Romney’s fundraising speech, describing 47 percent of America’s populace as refusing to take responsibility for their lives. No matter whether you support Romney or not, you can’t deny he sees America divided between the worthy and unworthy.

Former Bush aide Mark McKinnon writes in a post at The Daily Beast: “This is a deeply cynical view of America. Not to mention wrong. And it’s a long way from the compassionate conservatism that welcomed more Americans into the Republican Party under President George W. Bush.”

Similarly, in Panem after the heroine has created a stir of hope for her poor coal mining district, President Snow tells the Hunger Games’ producer if he saw the people in District 12, he would not root for them or any underdog.

I wonder who really feels “entitled” in that culture – and in ours.

In Panem, Snow uses division to keep these underdogs down, which brought to mind the teachers strike in Chicago and Wisconsin’s battle over collective bargaining last year. Pit union workers against non-union workers to keep all wages low and to whittle back worker benefits and protections for all. Pit Democrats against Republicans so they don’t realize the 1 percent is developing policies to increase the wealth of corporations and the super-rich while overloading the middle class; never mind the poor. Divide and conquer.

The underdogs in Panem watch 23 children die each year for 75 years. And as my daughter reminds me, on every 25th year they added special features like doubling the number of competitors. So many children lost before the people begin to stand up to the fear and manipulation.

And it leaves me asking, “What will it take to unite us; what’s in our future?”