Want Proof of the Hostile Takeover? Read This.

By David Sirota

The basic premise of my upcoming book Hostile Takeover is that there is no
longer any lines between Big Business and government. They are one and the
same - both looking to fleece the average American as much as possible.
And a new story in the Wall Street Journal today shows exactly what I'm
talking about.

Back in 2003, Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) led a bipartisan group of
lawmakers to introduce an amendment to outlaw so-called "cash balance" pension
conversions whereby companies, without warning, reduce the pensions they
promised workers without giving those workers a choice to stay in their
old pension plan. The amendment ultimately passed the House of Representatives
(though was killed in the final conference committee) over the strong
objections of Corporate America, including IBM, which had been one of the
biggest companies to try to shaft its workers with these kind of pension
rip-off schemes.

But the amendment didn't pass without the Bush administration quite
literally turning over the Treasury Department to IBM. As the Washington
Post reported at the time, IBM sent around a document to congressional
offices labeled "Treasury talking points" that said the Treasury
Department "strongly opposes the Sanders amendment to the Transportation/Treasury
appropriations bill." Treasury soon admitted that "the department had
prepared" the materials, but had never actually released them to
corporations to help them lobby to defeat the bill.

Now, years later, the Wall Street Journal reports that "an investigation
into ties between Treasury Department officials and International Business
Machines Corp. shows the Treasury worked closely with IBM on pension
issues and provided information that was subsequently misused in the company's
lobbying." A report demanded by Sanders from the Treasury Department's
Inspector General "said a Treasury official disclosed nonpublic
information to IBM and failed to report expenses paid by a lobbyist for a
pension-industry trade group."

Those are shocking revelations, even for a corporate-owned administration
like the one we have now. However, perhaps more shocking is the fact that
the Journal also notes that "the Justice Department didn't pursue criminal
or civil charges in the matters because they didn't meet the agency's
'prosecutorial threshold.'" In other words, yeah, they broke the law, and
illegally turned the people's government over to Big Business, but that's
not worth prosecuting.

This is your government, ladies and gentlemen of America - a government
that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Big Business. A government where an agency
as powerful as the U.S. Treasury Department routinely operates like an arm
of the companies such as IBM that it is supposed to be regulating. A
government, in short, that is the victim of a Hostile Takeover.
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Sirota is the author of the upcoming book Hostile Takeover, due in
bookstores Spring 2006. To advance order the book, go to Amazon, Barnes &
Noble or Powell's Bookstore.