"Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property. Corporate personhood is the legal fiction that property is a person."-- Anonymous
In 2010 the pro-corporate 5/4 United States Supreme Court decided, in the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission ruling that favored multibillionaire corporate elites and their trans-national corporations by making it easier for them to steal US elections by allowing unlimited, anonymous monetary “contributions”/bribes to both major US political parties, political action groups and the many politicians who were then beholden to their newest corporate paymasters.
The Citizen’s United ruling, which should go down in the history books as the “worst Supreme Court decision of the past century”, has emboldened the already powerful, corruptible and endlessly greedy corporations - that already own or somehow have dominion over the economy, the government and the media - to now also be able to have intimate access to any number of campaign fund-needy politicians to do their will whenever their desired legislation comes up for a vote.
<<<Money Doesn’t Just Talk, It Screams>>>
It is impossible for progressive voters to match the influence that comes from the huge amounts of anonymous campaign money from corporations such as is coming from foreign mining companies. And the monetary influence is aimed at politicians from all the political parties who take corporate money namely Democrats and Republicans.
This reality explains why progressive northeast Minnesota voters are always having to swallow hard when going to the polls to vote for the latest DFL candidate who is in the process of betraying voters on environmental issues such as the most recent copper mining issue that will eventually spell environmental disaster for everybody, including pro-business, climate change denying conservatives who live downstream from the proposed mines and their massive polluted tailings lagoons..
The Conservative US Supreme Court has thus made legal the absurd notion that inanimate paper corporations like the penny stock companies PolyMet and Twin Metals should have the same rights and privileges (but not the same responsibilities) as living humans. Both of those out-of-state Penny Stock mining companies – and their foreign union-busting major mining corporations - are potential despoilers of northeast Minnesota’s irreplaceable wetlands, rivers, aquifers and aboriginal land, water and way of life.
<<<What Should be the Punishment for Human and Corporate Entities That Plunder, Rape and Pillage?>>>
But if corporate America has acquired new privileges with the Citizen’s United decision, shouldn’t it be subject to the responsibilities of personhood as well?
Any fair-minded, thinking person would agree that if any entity enjoys the privileges of a human being on this earth, it should also bear the same responsibilities. Thus and such entity should incur the same punishments as humans do when it hurts people, commit crimes, poisons the water, fouls the air or rapes the land.
One of the rare victories against corporate giants occurred at Shapleigh, Maine, when that town managed to protect their water rights from the insatiable water-extracting corporate giant Nestle, whose many bottled water brands includes Arrowhead, Calistoga, Deer Park, Ice Mountain, Ozarka, Poland Spring, Pure Life, and Zephyrhills. (See video and more information on this episode at: (http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/40335). Be sure to consider boycotting them in protest.
Nestle, one of many multinational corporate exploiters around the world, has no allegiance to any state or municipality or any location where it tries to extract water or minerals that never were theirs to begin with. But when the minerals are gone and the aquifers, lakes, rivers, wild rice beds and downstream water has been fully polluted, Nestle, PolyMet, Twin Metals, Glencore, Antofagasta, et al will be long gone. Sudden abandonment of exhausted or unprofitable mining sites has always been routine for giant resource-extractors and polluters like Exxon/Mobil, Shell, Chevron, British Petroleum, Halliburton, Deep Water Horizon, Nestle, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Perrier or any of the thousands of other corporate intruders and lobbyists that dupe legislators and media opinion-leaders into allowing the extraction of the nation’s resources without giving back anything other than the thin promise of temporary jobs – and the high likelihood of a permanent toxic wasteland that will be irremediable at any price.
And who benefits?
Why, of course, the major benefactors will not be the lucky few local non-union workers whose temporary jobs that will soon dry up before the home mortgage will be paid up. Among the major benefactors will be the high-skilled employees that will be flown in and out by company helicopter every 7-days to do the high-tech mining work.
The major benefactors will also be the faceless, out-of-state investors, the financial institutions who make the loans, the corporate shareholders, the hedge fund managers and the CEOs who are living and doing business out of state at some luxurious corporate headquarters, and you can be certain that none of them will have to experience the poisoned environment that they will be leaving behind when the tailings lagoon leaks or the levee breaks.
Exploitive corporations, - and not just mining companies - are sociopathic entities and, by nature they really don’t care about ethics, as can be easily detected when one listens to the deceptive talking points coming out of the mouths of the public relations spokespersons and the commercials on TV and the print media.
Publicly-traded corporations are primarily interested in next quarter’s profit report, which determines the level of interest that stock traders might have when making buying and selling decisions, and the allegiance of the management of such corporations is to its fellow co-investors, its mutual fund investors, and its executives and management teams, although they do give lip-service to local community interests. Corporate allegiance, however is not to the people whose lives and health depends on the usability and sustainability of the land, water, air and food supplies that they will be left behind when the mine closes or it fails in a catastrophe.
<<<”Trust us, We’re the Experts”; “Toxic Sludge is Good for You”; “We’ll Clean up After Ourselves” -- and Other Corporate Lies>>>
Conscienceless extractive, mega-corporations that swoop down on naïve and unsuspecting people and local governmental bodies, usually have little trouble convincing them to “trust us, because we’re the experts”, especially if the companies have co-opted authorities in the media (with advertising income) and bribed politicians with campaign contributions. They are cunning at getting their future victims to believe that at some time in the uncertain future they will un-poison (remediate) the environment and leave behind a pristine landscape and water supplies.
Under-employed or laid-off workers, understandably desperate for jobs are easily fooled into believing the well-crafted disinformation - until it is too late and the mess is no longer the corporation’s problem. It’s an old con.
Promises made by copper/nickel mining companies during the courtship phasehave historically been broken with impunity when those foreign corporations pull out, merge with other entities or file for bankruptcy. Silver-tongued CEOs and their shyster lawyers are very good at getting us rubes up north all starry-eyed over a relatively small number of temporary jobs while discounting the huge risks of permanent dead zones that will be created from the poisonous chemicals left behind in the permanently poisonous tailings lagoons.
<<<Sociopathy and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel (DSM): Understanding the Connections Between Human and Corporate Criminality
There are a number of common denominators that link human and corporate criminality. It isn’t just mining companies. Just take some time to explore the dark sides of such Fortune 500 corporations as WalMart, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Boeing, Dow Chemical, Chevron, Exxon/Mobil, du Pont, British Petroleum, Halliburton Monsanto, Merck, Pfizer, Proctor and Gamble, Nestle, Perrier, Nike, Goldman Sachs, J P Morgan Chase, etc, etc. If a corporation is a multibillion dollar a year company, they have been ruthless in their attainment of all that wealth and power and you can be sure it meets the definition of a sociopathic entity.
There are checklist diagnoses for various personality disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel [DSM], which is billing bible and diagnostic manual for psychiatrists and other physicians who make psychiatric diagnoses. One of the 374 disorders that is listed in the 4th edition is antisocial/sociopathic personality disorder (code number 301.7), which identifies pathological liars, chronic cheaters, criminal types, abusers, thieves and killers whose lack of morals, ethics or consciences enables them to avoid getting caught or punished for their crimes and misdeeds.
<<<Corporate Sociopaths are Often Protected by Teams of Lawyers and Impenetrable Boardroom Walls>>>
These “sociopaths” (valid synonyms include “antisocial personality” or “psychopathic personality”) typically refuse to accept blame or acknowledge any responsibility for their actions. They typically lie to generate interest in their profit-making schemes, lie again to avoid prosecution when they have been found guilty and then typically run away if all the schemes fail, with plenty of lawyers to delay prosecution or lessen the penalties.
They are famously incapable of showing genuine remorse if they are ever caught or convicted for their crimes. It is common for guilty corporations to accept punishment but avoid admitting their guilt
Below are seven diagnostic criteria that are used to diagnose antisocial (aka, sociopathic or psychopathic) personality disorder in human entities (it only takes three of the seven to make the diagnosis for people):
1) callous disregard for the feelings of other people;
2) incapacity to maintain human relationships;
3) reckless disregard for the safety of others;
4) aggressiveness;
5) deceitfulness (repeated lying and conning others for profit);
6) incapacity to experience guilt; and
7) failure to conform to social norms and respect for the law.
Other common traits manifested by sociopaths include:
Lack of conscience.
Lack of remorse for evils done to others.
Indifference to the suffering of its victims.
Rationalizes (makes excuses for) having hurt, mistreated or stolen from others.
Willingness to exploit, seduce or manipulate others.
No sign of delusional or irrational thinking.
Cunning, clever.
Usually above average intelligence.
Always looking for ways to make money or achieve fame or notoriety.
Willing to cause or contribute to the financial ruin of others.
Untrustworthy.
Cannot be trusted to adhere to conventional standards of morality.
Sociopaths do not have delusional thinking and are not considered mentally ill. They know exactly what they are doing. Sociopaths are, for all intents and purposes, totally sane but are also incurable. These individuals make up at least 4% of the US population, although certain professions tend to attract larger percentages of them (read The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us, by Martha Stout, PhD. .
(Learn much more about corporate sociopathy at http://www.thecorporation.com/or by watching the 2003 Canadian documentary titled The Corporation at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHrhqtY2khc.)
Actually the exact number of human sociopaths is not precisely known, but, lacking empathy or a conscience, none of them truly feels guilty about their misdeeds. Believing that there is nothing wrong with them, human sociopaths rarely ask for help. And therefore they never truly try to change.
If and when human sociopaths are court-ordered to submit to evaluation and “treatment”, they may feel forced to acquiesce to the order but typically will only pretend to change until the pressure is off and their unethical or criminal activities look doable again.
Academic psychologists tell us that attempts to rehabilitate full-fledged sociopaths are useless, but nonetheless, the often seductive, charming, charismatic, silver-tongued sociopath is often able to fool the treatment team into thinking progress is being made.
Likewise, sociopathic corporations don’t have much trouble seducing regulatory agencies, the public and desperately underemployed workers by promising jobs and a secret un-tested plan to prevent environmental catastrophes. Only when it’s too late and the corporation has skipped the country with the extracted loot will all the painful realities be revealed.
<<<What Should be the Punishment for Sociopathic Corporations Who Rape and Poison the Environment?>>>
Experienced psychologists tell us that sociopathic individuals that have committed crimes have to be locked away to protect society from them.
So a number of questions need to be asked. Given the fact that human sociopaths need to be avoided, marginalized or locked up, we need to ask what should be done with the corporations that meet the criteria above. What needs to be done with corporations that have a history of false advertising, over-charging, deceiving the public, lying, cheating, poisoning the water, fouling the air, raping the land or otherwise acting unethically?
Given the anti-constitutional 2010 Citizen’s United ruling granting personhood to corporations for political bribery purposes, shouldn’t sociopathic corporations be dealt with just like their human counterparts when they act criminally? Shouldn’t long prison sentences be given to the CEOs, Boards of Directors and management teams? Shouldn’t there be confiscation of property or even capital punishment in the case of egregious cases involving mass deaths as in the case of Merck over the Vioxx and Gardasil deaths and disabilities and the vaccine industry for all the vaccine deaths and disabilities they have caused?
Most of us are against capital punishment for humans, but any person with a conscience and more than a double digit IQ knows, despite what the Citizens United ruling seems to assert, that corporations are not really human. Corporations don’t bleed and don’t cry out in pain during the execution process. Their executives may, however, plead for mercy while shedding insincere crocodile tears.
Nevertheless, capital punishment for corporations would prevent a lot of future sociopathic behaviors.
<<<Would it be More Humane to Tar and Feather the Corporate Rapists After the Deed is Done or Would it be Better to Just Say No to Their Presence in the First Place?>>>
Perhaps the old punishment of tarring, feathering and being driven out of town on a rail should be considered for corporate polluters, rapists and Ponzi Scheme schemers when they are exposed as the sociopaths that they are.
But perhaps it would be better for everybody involved – and more humane - to not let the rapists and polluters into the state in the first place.
<<<What Should be Done With Corporate Rapists?>>>
What about the crime of rape as applied to corporations that obviously don’t have male genitalia actual testosterone? Rape has several definitions, including the following ones that are in my dictionary:
1) Any violent seizure or hostile action against a weaker opponent;
2) to rob or plunder;
3) the act of seizing and carrying off by force;
4) the crime of having forcible sexual intercourse without consent.
Corporations that plunder, pollute or poison Mother Earth or ruthlessly execute hostile takeovers in order to acquire weaker companies meet some of the above definitions of rape. Most of us would agree that our society should punish corporate rapists as severely as it punishes the human kind that so commonly commit sexual assaults or behave in inappropriate sexual ways.
What about the known lethal poisons that thousands of unregulated chemical corporations knowingly discharge into the water, air, soil of Mother Earth? Shouldn’t their destructive acts be regarded as rape, assault and battery, reckless endangerment or premeditated ecocide?
Their poisonous intentions that threaten the survival of portions of the planet have already caused a multitude of die-offs of thousands of species of animals in the increasing numbers of dead (and dying) zones in the many poisoned aquifers, wetlands, lakes, rivers, lakes, and oceans all around the planet.
What about the dead zones in the many human brains that are being exposed to corporate manufactured and heavily marketed neurotoxic pharmaceuticals (like the mercury and aluminum in childhood vaccines) or the brain-damaging psychiatric drugs and pesticides (especially the fluorinated and chlorinated ones) that were allowed on the market before being tested for long-term safety?
And, of course, what about the extractive mining companies that, with their poisonous explosives, blow the tops off of mountains in Appalachia or the Philippines in order to extract and export the non-renewable mineral resources beneath?
Does it make any sense to trust the foreign mining officials and their cunning lobbyists who claim innocence when living things downwind and downstream are sickened or die?
Who should be responsible for the toxins that contaminate the previously pristine streams and aquifers that once provided safe drinking water and a healthy natural environment for fish, wildlife, wild rice and humans (especially the aboriginal First Nation brothers and sisters that had their lands and livelihoods stolen from them – without compensation - for centuries)?
<<<Zero Tolerance for Sociopathic Corporate Predators; Stop Them Before They do it Again!>>>
How many strikes should any out-of-state extractive industry be allowed before they are called out for the predators that they are? Shouldn’t corporate intruders be stopped before they despoil even one more aquifer, one more stream, one more lake, one more mountain or our only planet?
Shouldn’t politically-connected corporate exploiters be banned, arrested, tried and punished just like the human predators that relentlessly stalk their sexual prey? And shouldn’t there be generous monetary restitution from the corporations for the victims of past corporate criminality?
Shouldn’t industrial-strength thieves, liars, rapists and killers be treated the same as human thieves, liars, rapists and killers, especially after receiving the privileges of corporate personhood in 2010?
Shouldn’t we humans be suspicious of untrustworthy corporations that have lied to us with their multicolored Power Point presentations, feel-good commercials, “green-washed” billboards or highly-paid lobbyists that are bribing politicians and paying off the media so they will not oppose or expose their agendas?
What about those despised sociopathic executives that are addicted to their obscene wealth, profits, prestige, corporate jets, vacation homes and quarterly bonuses?
We regularly intervene for society’s human addicts who need help overcoming their gambling or drug addictions and are thus a danger to themselves or others. Shouldn’t there be interventions for these power addicts before they do any more damage to us, the planet or our progeny?
The answer, in a fair society, should be yes to all these questions, no matter how often the smiley-faced, well-dressed corporate spokespersons - in their most cunning damage-control mode - try to convince us that their companies are "responsible citizens". We star-struck celebrity-worshippers of high profile corporations and well-coiffed CEOs seem to sucker for that line again and again. But the stakes are higher this time. The survival of the planet and its creatures is at stake.
<<<Should Multinational Corporations be Judged Guilty Until Proven Innocent?>>>
One wonders what should be the best approach for dealing with cold-blooded, non-human corporate entities. Rather than applying the standard American constitutional guarantee for human citizens (to be judged innocent until proven guilty), shouldn’t we be judging dangerous non-human entities as guilty until proven innocent?
I like that notion. I have often advised my psychologically traumatized patients (falsely diagnosed, by the way, of having mental illnesses of unknown etiology) who were victims of physical, sexual, emotional or spiritual abuse in childhood to not give respect and forgiveness to their abusers unless the abusers have truly earned it, have sincerely and contritely asked to be forgiven and therefore deserve to be respected, forgiven or obeyed.
Psychologically speaking, not obeying - and also not respecting - one’s victimizers (even if they were parent-figures) should be the norm in interpersonal relationships. Psychologically speaking, the existence of significant parental neglect or abuse in a family should be one of the exceptions to the 4th commandment rule (that commands children to honor their father and their mother). Likewise, we should only do business with companies that have earned and truly deserve our trust and respect.
Being suspicious of sociopathic entities is an important strategy to follow if one is to protect oneself from being cheated, used or abused – or raped. Staying out of a sociopath’s grasp or sphere of influence is the proper thing to do, even if the person or corporation appears on the surface to be charming or honorable. Both traits can be easily faked.
Staying clear of venomous vipers, alligators, hungry grizzly bears or anybody or anything that one suspects has no conscience makes good sense, since conscienceless entities are also likely to be liars and thieves and are thus fully capable of rape and pillage and even murder if they think they can get away with it.
Staying away from (including advocating for the boycotting of) corporations that have behaved unethically in the past is a simple thing that a person can do to combat corporate criminals, but in our largely brainwashed, advertised-into-submission culture, only small minorities of people recognize - until it is too late - that they are being bamboozled.
<<<Has the Corporate Coup d’etat Been Completed?>>>
The concept of corporate power and privilege has massively benefited Big Businesses at the expense of the public, but the reality is that it has been going on for generations. Multinational corporations and multibillionaires are increasingly in control of all three branches of government. Both political parties have been seduced until they are now owned by their seducers.
Throughout US history, it has always been wealthy corporations, wealthy businessmen, wealthy politicians, wealthy judges and wealthy attorneys that have been installed in federal judgeships by equally wealthy presidents - many of whom have been members of the same bipartisan “old boys’ clubs” such as Yale University’s elite, secretive Skull and Bones. America’s courts have always had judges that were in bed with corrupt capitalist, racist and union-busting elites that have never regarded the common good as being a priority.
Say Hello to Friendly American Fascism
The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini is said to have proclaimed that "fascism should rightly be called corporatism as it is a merger of state and corporate power:” He should know, he invented the term and the concept. Italy’s right-wing, anti-worker, union-busting corporations loved and supported him as much as most 1930s German corporations loved and supported Hitler and that fascist dictator’s anti-communist, anti-socialist, anti-union agendas.
Fascism is a right-wing, nationalistic, authoritarian political ideology that rules with military discipline and police state power, backed up by a secretive national security apparatus, aggressive propaganda, control of the media and suppression of trade unions. Therefore, Big Businesses, notably the weapons industries and other war-related or police state industries thrive in fascist nations that suppress the rights of workers and keeps their wages low.
Fascist nations commonly violate the human rights of their own citizens as well as the rights of the nations that they invade and occupy. Fascist leaders try to unify the people by creating artificial chaos. Such leaders create enemies and then, usually via false flag operations, try to incite war against them.
Dissent in fascist nations is not tolerated and elections are often fraudulent. Oftentimes there is some sort of a merger of church and state and anti-intellectual/anti-scientific attitudes are fostered, thus appealing to the ignorant or uneducated. And there is always an obsession with law and order.
Who can deny that there has been a slow, rolling corporate, quasi-fascist coup d’etat that has gradually been overturning America’s one person/one vote democracy? America has all the marks of a plutocracy (rule by the wealthy privileged class) that prefers fascist rule and favors corporatism.
Who can deny that wealthy corporations and their plutocratic billionaires have inordinate control over the economy, foreign and domestic policy and both major political parties? And now these inhuman entities have their privatizing eyes on our water, our land, our breathable air, our Social Security, our Medicare and even our food (as Bob Dylan sang in Union Sundown, “I can see the day comin’ when even your home garden is gonna be against the law”.).
Elections will continue, although the choice of candidates, the so-called “debates” (that exclude minor party candidates) and the value of small monetary donations will be increasingly meaningless. There will be fewer viable anti-establishment candidates like Paul Wellstone (or a Green Party candidate like Jill Stein or a Democratic Socialist Party candidate like Bernie Sanders) for whom to cast votes. The American dream (that “you have to be asleep to believe in”, as George Carlin put it) appears to have vanished. And we sheep were asleep at the wheel when it disappeared and America became a nightmare for minorities and the impoverished.
Corporate Rights vs. Corporate Responsibilities
It is the greedy, conscienceless, under-regulated multinationals (and NOT “man”) that are poisoning the planet’s ecosystems. It has been nonhuman corporations that have been causing the economic and environmental crises - including global climate changes and wars. And, because they rarely get indicted, much less punished, for their crimes, corporations are continuing to get away with planetary rape and pillage - and they don’t seem to care. Their motto seems to be: “grab everything you can steal by any means necessary; enrich and privilege your authoritarian CEOs, your boards of directors, your shareholders, spokespersons, lawyers, lobbyists, legislators, judges, and military and law enforcement officials so they are on your side; don’t get caught; hunker down in your gated communities with your chauffeurs and your bodyguards while the revolutionary riots are raging outside; and let the devil take the hindmost.”
Wrist slaps seem to be the norm for corporate sociopaths and the superrich if and when they are “brought to justice” for their crimes. If there are any consequences for reckless or destructive business practices at all, the corporation usually gets assessed a relatively small and very affordable fine. For large corporations, punitive fines for criminality are just a part of doing business. (The $2.2 billion fine against Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals for illegally marketing the antipsychotic drug Risperdal didn’t much affect its share price nor did it seem to stir up its shareholders.)
Sometimes though, a corporation about to be brought to justice will threaten to move its headquarters or its operations to another state or nation, leaving their smelly and toxic messes to be cleaned up by somebody else, just as one would expect of a conscienceless sociopath.
The brazen action of the Roberts’ Supreme Court in Citizens United might be one of the final nails in the coffin of America’s mortally wounded democracy. Given the fact that the myth of corporate personhood is now the law, it is past time that we of the 99% insist that the 1% be punished at least as severely as are human sociopathic criminals. The 99% needs to exercise its duty to preserve and defend the constitution (and the planet) from all enemies, foreign or domestic, human or corporate, even if the corporate criminals are hiding behind boardroom walls during the day or living the celebrity high life at night.
We must identify and courageously name America’s domestic enemies even if they are corporations or members of the executive, legislative or judicial branches of our federal and state governments. Naming the evil-doers (and naming the evil that they do) must be done in order to effectively confront them.
Simultaneously, we need to demand that our basic human right to have access to healthy, uncontaminated water, food, soil and air (and access to affordable education, health care and dental care as well), be safe-guarded from the greedy exploiters and predators in the plutocratic classes who extract the wealth and resources wherever and from whomever they can. The fate of our children, grandchildren and planet Earth depends on those safe-guards.
Among the first of the many steps that must be taken if we are to reverse the multinational corporate takeover/privatization of the planet is to demand that our local, state and federal legislators reverse the Citizens United ruling and correct the damage done. (See www.movetoamend.organd http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposedfor more information.)
Dr Kohls is a physician from Duluth, Minnesota, USA. Since his retirement in 2008 he has written a weekly column for the Duluth-area Reader Weekly alternative newsweekly, which has a weekly readership of 35,000. The Reader is distributed for free in northeast Minnesota and northwest Wisconsin at over 400 locations across the region. His columns have been re-published widely on progressive websites all around the world. In the decade prior to his retirement, Dr Kohls practiced what could best be described as “holistic (non-drug) preventive mental health care”, often successfully helping patients who were sickened and/or addicted to their cocktails of psychiatric drugs safely get off or cut down on their known-to-be-neurotoxic and known-to-cause-dementia medications.
Dr Kohls’ columns usually deal with the often well-hidden toxicity that is being inflicted upon life on earth by non-human, sociopathic corporate entities that remorselessly enrich themselves and their wealthy “investor-shareholders” by exploiting (and risking the destruction of) Mother Earth. The entities that need to be exposed are usually well-hidden behind boardroom walls and the nature of what can be described as corrupted American crony capitalism, American imperialism, American friendly fascism, militarism, racism, sexism and the toxicity inflicted on human life and health by the nebulous ruling classes (the 1%ers) that gain their wealth and power through the institutions of Big Banking, Big Media, Big Weapons, Big Agribusiness, Big Chemistry, etc.
Dr Kohls has considerable insider knowledge and experience concerning the obvious over-drugging and over-vaccinating agendas of Big Pharma, Big Vaccine and Big Medicine (each of which are deeply involved with these well-funded lobbying and propaganda groups for Big Business: the CDC, the AMA, the AAP, the APA, the AARP, etc, etc . Each of these corporate entities promote the highly profitable but highly toxic “treatments” (that are often cavalierly prescribed for our vulnerable children by once-respectable physicians) that threaten American democracy, civility, health, longevity, sustainability and the future of the planet.