The Elite Consensus: When Corporations Wield the Constitution
Describes Shadow Corporate Government
...will forever change the way its readers follow the news
New York, N.Y. August 25, 2003, -- The Elite Consensus:
When Corporations Wield the Constitution, by George Draffan,
a new book from the Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy (POCLAD),
goes behind the veil of giant corporations --Enron, Bechtel, Halliburton,
Monsanto, Pfizer, and others making our daily news -- to show how
the "system" really works.
Draffan describes how corporations leverage power through think tanks and business
groups to form an undemocratic system of governance over citizens. He outlines
the normal, everyday ways these institutions shape the national investment and
political policies, portraying how a shadow system of corporate power effectively
governs.
The corporate agenda is served equally by conservative, liberal, and libertarian
philosophies, according to Draffan. Corporate power, he writes, descends from
the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court grants of "personhood" and
Bill of Rights protections to corporations.
Unlike muckraking books about scandals in one industry or another, Draffan
focuses on the mechanisms of power wielded by the entire network of corporate
players.
"Today's corporate leaders received a head start from the men of property
who wrote the Constitution," Richard Grossman and Ward Morehouse, cofounders
of POCLAD [www.poclad.org, ] wrote in their foreword that succinctly summarizes
the book's analysis.
The Elite Consensus names names. It reads
like a playbill of actors on the stage of domestic and foreign policy
who "wield the Constitution" to their own ends. It gives
profiles of those players -- think tanks,
business groups and nonprofit organizations -- whose "experts" are
regularly quoted in the media promoting corporate agendas with no reference
to their corporate backers. A valuable guide for activists, citizens, journalists,
scholars and students, the book reveals the interconnections between these organizations
and their revolving-door relationships with government.
Interestingly, the book includes the Brookings Institution -- a tax-exempt think
tank commonly considered liberal or centrist --whose board includes corporate
CEOs from AT&T, Chase Manhattan, Kissinger Associates and Bank of America,
a former director of the World Bank Robert McNamara, and directors and trustees
of major foundations.
"Corporate-driven think tanks and educators enjoy the prestige of
university appointments where corporate agendas are developed and disseminated,"
writes Draffan, Executive Director of the Public Information Network,
Seattle, WA. "Corporate foundations decide which charities and which
environmental groups get funded. Investment bankers control more money
than the World Bank and their unregulated speculation in national currencies
has plunged Latin America and Asia into financial crises. Governments
have become mere salesmen promoting multinational corporations, which
are the 'muscle and brains' of the global economy."
The Elite Consensus traces corporate funding
of think tanks and organizations like the Business Roundtable, Chamber
of Commerce, Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), International Chamber of Commerce,
Heritage Foundation, Brookings Institution, American Enterprise Institute,
United Nations, and other nonprofit corporations.
Draffan describes how a single corporation--General Motors-- affected the
economies of both Mexico and the U.S when it laid off 99,000 U.S. workers between
1992 and l996. He said General Motors became the largest private employer in
Mexico by moving its operations south of the border. U.S. union workers were
replaced by lower-paid contract and temporary workers making Manpower, Inc.--a
temporary employment agency--the largest employer in the United States.
The political cartoon on the book's cover by nationally noted political
artist Matt Wuerker illustrates the book's theme: the conflict between
"We the People" and corporate power. His caricature of the Capitol
building and Washington Monument shows a billboard hiding the buildings of corporate
organizations whose power rests on the U.S. Constitution, supported by the building
blocks of the 1st and 14th amendments. Constitutional amendments meant for citizens
are the "rights" corporations use for themselves in the courts,
as the book details. Wuerker, whose cartoons can be seen on the POCLAD website,
can be contacted at www.mwuerker.com.
Anyone who was affected by the recent power blackout, lost a pension in a corporation
that went belly up, or lost a job in a company whose work was sent to a country
with cheaper labor, will want to read this book. Public indignation at the Enron
and other corporate scandals indicates the public is hungry to know more about
what is going on behind the scenes.
________________
The Elite Consensus: When Corporations Wield the Constitution
About the author:
George Draffan is a forest activist, public interest investigator, and
corporate muckraker. He is the author of The Elite Consensus,
A Primer on Corporate Power, and co-author of Railroads
& Clearcuts and Strangely Like War.
For the past fifteen years he has provided research services and training
to citizens and public interest groups that are investigating and challenging
corporate power. Some of his work can be found at Endgame, a project of
the Public Information Network (www.endgame.org),
which he directs.
About POCLAD:
A dozen activists formed POCLAD (www.poclad.org)
in 1994, to research and write about constitutional, legal, corporate,
and people's movement history and since then has held over 200 "Rethinking
the Corporation, Rethinking Democracy" public meetings. POCLAD
continues to develop vital research and analysis for the years ahead:
reading lists, pamphlets on critical issues, a thrice-yearly publication
By What Authority, an anthology on corporations and democracy [Defying
Corporations/Defining Democracy] videos, PowerPoint presentations,
and workshops for activists engaged in struggles with individual corporations.
POCLAD's "Rethinking the Corporation/Rethinking Democracy"
retreats are incubating nation-wide citizen efforts to curb the "corporate
usurpation of citizen rights". POCLAD's work provides a framework
and historical analysis of the Constitution and the role it has played
in the political struggle between "We the People" and corporations.
The Elite Consensus is the latest addition
to the POCLAD body of publications.
POCLAD principal Karen Coulter, an ecological and social justice activist
since l980 who founded Oregon's Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project,
conceived of The Elite Consensus as a manual
for activists and recruited Draffan to write it.
WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT POCLAD:
"POCLAD's thought-provoking work on the questions of corporate
power in a democracy goes beyond redressing a specific wrong to ask what can
we do about it in a large sense."
-- Molly Ivins
"The first step in solving a problem is learning more about the problem,
and how and why it grew. POCLAD is giving us U.S. history like it's not
usually taught in schools. Hooray!"
-- Pete Seeger
Note to Editors: Formal publication date is November 24, but
advance copies are now available.
Contact Judi Rizzi (1-800-316-2739) if you would like a copy for review.
The Apex Press, 180 pp. 2003.ISBN 1-891843-14-1 (softcover)
1-800-316-2739; 1-914-271-6500; cipany@igc.org; www.cipa-apex.org
Click here to download this Press Release in PDF Format
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For
Immediate Release: September 10, 2003