From the early days of Ronald Reagan to the upside down world of Swartzy, the current governor of California, the issue that perhaps has most divided the people of the United States are the protected and spoon fed 'income streams' of the corporations. These 'for profit' income streams were created from public services that were privatized to yield unbelievably vast income streams that benefit only the privileged few. The vehicle that does the stealing and the profiting for these few are the capitalistic multi-national corporations and their 37,000 lobbyists in Washington D.C.

What has been taken in these criminal seizures of public facilities are things like public transportation, public libraries, public utilities, almost the entire prison system, along with the practice of medicine that has been turned into a roulette wheel run by bean-counters who measure office visits against the companies' bottom lines.

These offensively oriented corporations each have their own brand-names: and Americans apparently love to wear these brands. Our clothing is replete with corporate brands, our sporting events reek of corporate patronage-which the public buys in vast quantities. So what has happened since the days of the company store? The company store of today is every major corporation, many of which are larger that most countries. They own the credit system, the banks, and the politicians, the education community and largely they 'own' most of us indirectly, by the controls they have taken over this society. As corporations they OWN the legislative process, they receive Corporate Welfare on a scale that dwarfs anything handed out as welfare or Social Security. They quietly have come to own the legislature and the White House, while they continue to receive huge tax breaks, denying the people that needed help to survive, when people's incomes are slashed, while their taxes are increased accordingly through fee increases on a myriad of services compounded by an endless paper chase that makes a living hell out of so many lives.

The folk-ballad says: 

"You load sixteen tons and what do you get-another day older and deeper in debt! St. Peter don't you call me cause I can't go-I owe my soul to the company store!"

In today's world the coal mines and the Railroad Barons, along with the Robber Barons have been replaced by faceless corporations that rule with iron fists from their towers of gleaming glass and steel in the hearts of major population centers around the world.

Ronnie, as governor of California, closed California's mental facilities and threw the patients into the streets, as a cost cutting measure. Then he pioneered the idea that public transportation needed to make money ­ and could no longer just be a tax-supported way for ordinary people to get where they needed to go. When he became president he applied this "idea' to the nation: Hence the decline of public transportation, which exacerbated the homeless problems that deepened because of the newly dumped addicts and mental patients along with societies' misfits. Many of these people lost the help they needed to be productive members of society and instead became a public drain upon the shrinking assets of an otherwise healthy society. The creation of these twisted purposes behind the upending of public services is directly attributable to what the government casually refers to as the creation of "income streams." That is a misnomer ­ what this involves is the siphoning off of tax-supported public services that were converted to corporate profits at the expense of the general public that had created them with tax dollars in the first place, to offset the costs to the poor and working classes, to be able to survive. In effect the 'company store" of old has become that monster that owns everything from your cell phone to what is played on your i-pod, to the films you watch and the media that you try and get information from. This can be summed up as food for the Barracuda's of Business, who have quietly taken over virtually every area of your life from the companies you work for, to the food you eat, to the thoughts you think you need to think about: not-to-mention the thoughts that you must not think, because if you visit those forbidden thoughts then you shall become an enemy of the state! This has to change!

Corporations have far too much power. The only thing that currently determines the outcome of all our elections is about how much money can be raised. That was the topic on all the Sunday talk shows this morning. Corporations have unlimited funds for this purpose-and they are not shy about utilizing every avenue both legal and illegal to win the battle of the political war chests, needed to re-confirm, their ownership of all that matters to the population of this country that used to be a nation.

Citizens no longer get tax-dollar help from the government-because all that money goes to the ever-larger and anti-human corporate interests who increasingly divert our money into the purchase of war-making and all those industries that contribute so heavily to that form of death and destruction that creates new opportunities for re-construction of all that their wars destroy. However, the portion of tax-dollars that will aid these corporations in their growth and dominance increases hourly, along with those corporate protections that have insulated the corporations from all but the most heinous of crimes. This while working people watch their lives be torn apart by dead-end work without a future!

So go ahead and live your "very busy lives" and continue to ignore what is staring you in the face. Listen to the Schwarzenegger's of present day California when they tell you that all people, including the unemployed MUST have "ACCESS to Health care." Notice that he does not say that everyone must have HEALTH-CARE ­ NO, he wants to sell the poor health-insurance which is a promise without a benefit! And that's only one of the ploys to create an ever larger income stream for the Insurance industry that in the case of medicine is practicing an on-going fraud, because of policies that terminate the insurance the minute something serious happens to the policy holder.

Corporations are not people, they have become Tyranny incorporated and as currently chartered they can live forever with all the rights of a person, yet they have none of the responsibilities. Every time you buy something from one of these sharks-please understand that they do not have your best interests at heart-quite the opposite! You are expected to support these institutions upon pain of being fired or charged with some form of being anti-American.

To the world at large these corporate giants are often seen as sharks, but the sharks see their customers worldwide as possible Barracuda that collectively might decide to attack them and put them out of business-hence their need for legalistic protections for their various extortions and frauds, seen through their threadbare velvet gloves that try to hide the naked steel of their grip upon the millions of lives, which their greed and arrogance creates. All the efforts of The New World Order and the "FREE-Trade" association legislation is aimed directly at freeing the corporations from any and all restrictions-as surely as it is focused on enslaving those who must work to survive!  

These wars that almost all of us are terrified of, have also provided very useful smokescreens to allow for the expansion of those powers, that have tightened the corporate death grip which threatens everyone not enslaved already! People the world over must come together to stop the wars, remove and punish the insiders and get back to 'questioning everything!' In 2008 there must not be any FREE-SPEECH ZONES encased in razor wire and miles from the platform where supposed candidates come to campaign or debate. This nation was supposed to offer a public forum in the marketplace of ideas, especially during elections - and not simply to become a fixed travesty that supports only the moneyed view. Either we find a way to reclaim our rights to free and public speech or we can forget about all that high-blown BS about having anything like a real democracy! This is especially true during the current false-flag wars for corporate dominion over the resources of the world. This can only 'be' your world if you are involved in what happens in it!

kirwanstudios@sbcglobal.net