Rosy Eyes

America has become a corporate police state

States and municipalities, for instance, have toughened criminal penalties and immigration laws at the behest of the private prison industry; empowered Wall Street banks to not only collect taxes but levy additional tax penalties; and allowed energy companies to exploit so-called forced pooling statutes, thereby creating what one Republican governor calls a new power of “private eminent domain.” One state is now even considering making it a criminal act to share your Netflix password with friends and family, because that is cutting into Netflix revenues.

In Washington, D.C., the federal government just enacted a healthcare bill whose individual mandate forces citizens to purchase private insurance, and the Pentagon has developed a reliable pattern of using military power to occupy resource-rich countries — and then to privatize those resources at the barrel of a gun.

This same government, which has granted corporations the rights of “personhood,” has also used its power to let corporations avoid the responsibilities of personhood — effectively using state power to create a new privileged status that is above the law. For instance, federal statutes have trampled the concept of “equal protection” by deliberately exempting corporate interests from the laws the rest of us live under — laws like the Safe Drinking Water Act (which doesn’t apply to natural gas drillers) and antitrust statutes (which still don’t apply to private health insurers). Federal courts have used judicial power to limit corporations’ legal and financial liability for fraud and lawbreaking.

This modern Corporate Police State differs from what we call “corporatism” in that it is not merely about funneling public dollars to private interests à la the Wall Street bailout. Indeed, this new monster has bigger goals than the occasional bailout. It is all about using the government’s position as society’s supreme rule maker and law enforcer to create a fully- functioning corporate state — one that doesn’t just channel police power into crushing the occasional protest, but constructs an entire legal and military framework around preserving and expanding private profit. And, as we’re now seeing, that includes a radical reimagining of the U.S. Constitution.