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.