The 5 Corporations Ruining America
October 12, 2009 by igorderysh
Over the past 50 years, corporations in America have become constantly more saturated into the fabric of American Life. And we as a people seemed to have embraced this smother wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, some companies aren’t looking out for the good of their countrymen. In a country going to hell in a handbasket, there are five corporations that are trying to make the transition as quick and as painful as possible.
1. Walmart
Walmart’s entire business plan consists of growing their locations to the point where it is the only place that people can shop and they didn’t get to be the single biggest corporation in the world by not meeting their goals.
Consider the upside. Soon we will all be able to buy our guns, milk, the full series collection of “Dukes of Hazard,” and XXL sweatpants in the same location, and feel moral about buying useless crap in a moral environment that does not expose us to the dangers of magazines like Maxim and FHM, music with offensive lyrics, and Superbad. Thank you Walmart.
The great thing is that it wont end there. As the sole retailer in the country, Walmart will be the only place we will be able to purchase cars (only American, of course), books (imagine what three aisles of nothing but the Bible and Ann Coulter books), and birth control (sorry, permanently sold out).
I for one welcome our future retail overlords. We should all be told what we should and shouldn’t buy by the store we’re shopping in.
2. UnitedHealth Group
Many people have not heard of UnitedHealth but odds are good that you are insured by them or one of their many subsidiaries (70 million other Americans are as well). Something just doesn’t sit right with me about a company, or an industry for that matter, whose profit margins relies on paying as little health costs as possible.
Even more unsettling is the fact that UnitedHealth and the others are publicly traded companies who have to answer to their shareholders. In the midst of the healthcare debate, many people have pointed to the corrupt practices of UnitedHealth and the other insurers as an inherent flaw in the industry because they are always denying claims and refusing to pay for healthcare costs. What these people aren’t seeing is the upside in all of that. If we get rid of all the sick people, we can have a superior super race of human beings.
3. News Corporation
There is something really erie about a company so rich that it can buy the Dow Jones. News Corporation, the owner of Fox, dozens of newspapers (including the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal), MySpace, and 15% of the Colorado Rockies, is arguably the single most powerful force in propaganda…er…media in the United States today.
What makes News Corp. so scary, outside of its owner, Rupert Murdoch, who looks like the villain in every season of “24″ (itself a product of News Corp), is the fact that its news division doesn’t seem to see the value in facts.
It’s not every day that a company bases its business model on George Orwell’s “1984″.
4. Goldman Sachs
What is so scary about a financial institution that has received tens of billions of taxpayer dollars in the past year? The fact that this “financial institution” has “engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression” and the fact that our financial sector has been regulated, almost entirely, by former Goldman Sachs executives over that period of time as well.
Former executives at Goldman Sachs include Timothy Geithner (current Secretary of Treasury), Hank Paulson (the last Secretary of Treasury), Robert Rubin (former Secretary of Treasury), Henry Fowler (former Secretary of Treasury), and Josh Bolten (Bush’s Chief of Staff).
Read Matt Taibbi’s terrific piece on Goldman Sachs in Rolling Stone, here.
5. Mega Churches
Sorry, if one of your “chain’s” franchises reaches nearly 100 million viewers and the live service is attended by nearly 20,000 people every week, you are either the Dallas Cowboys or Christianity.
Over the past thirty or so years, religion has become overwhelmingly corporatized. Community churches have been replaced by huge mega-churches. Pastors have become television show hosts. Religion has even taken over an entire political party and was largely responsible for getting Ronald Reagan and the Bushes elected to office.
Believe me, if there is anyone we have to watch out for, it is the guy that keeps yammering about how the Purple Teletubby is gay.
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Attacking News Corp. sounds like sour grapes, eh? You could have easily or perhaps replaced News Corp. with GE (NBC, MSNBC, and not to mention Jeffrey Immelt’s continued dealings with Iran). You say there is a lack of facts which is outlandish at best. The “lack of facts” charge you level is that with the actual news reporting or with the numerous opinion shows. Often liberals such as yourself confuse those two things. I can say that CBS news and its opinion shows both are inaccurate factually. This would be a true statement. NBC and MSNBC are also factually inaccurate and even worse is the fact they choose not to report facts if it blemishes anyone they support through biased materials. Cheers.
The guy accusing the Teletubbies of being gay is Jerry Falwell… and he is dead.
Why not save the ink and simply write anything the republicans like. I am sorry you were abusued as a child by a priest but at least grow a set and tell the truth that you have an Agenda.
This article proves what I’ve always thought: the liberals are the intellectuals who are writing the articles, while the conservatives are the ones who read the articles and then bitch and moan about growing a pair and how the government is trying to brainwash us. Oh well!
This is the single greatest articles I’ve ever read on this website. Way to not be “politically correct”, like the rest of the media and just come out and state the facts.
Wal-Mart kills American businesses, News Corp. is a propaganda factory, Goldman Sachs is a bubble machine, and religion has been co-opted by greedy bastards.
Right-wingers only grasp onto these corps, because “liberals” complain about them, but if they ever stopped playing Devil’s Advocate and smelled the coffee, they’d be just as mad.
I don’t think you realize that United Healthgroup and most other insurers have a profit margin of around 3%, do you? That’s like a grocery store.
Obviously you don’t really have an understanding of our health care system, so maybe think about sitting the next one out?
J
I’m tired of hearing everyone b*tch about Wal-Mart. Give some of that hate to Target. They use the same strategies. I agree with the others.
Ditto on GE. How about any George Soros company and political groups. You can also throw in just about any of the hedge fund companies that have big liberals working them and running them (Al Gore & Chelsey Clinton & a Biden spawn).
Wow that is major cool dude!
RT
http://www.true-privacy.net.tc
You have got to be kidding me
Dumbest thing I have read on the internet…today
Wal-mart saves the average consumer over $3k a year.
You’re telling me I should accept what you say when half of the page is filled with half naked women?
I really hope you didn’t pay someone to work/create this article.
I notice the author of the article gives not one example to back up these accusations, making this article hyperbolic fearmongering nonsense. What is it you said about News Corp, “they see no value in facts?” Apparently, you don’t either. Goldman Sacs repaid all of the TARP money given to them. I know Michael Moore didn’t bother pointing that out in his film. But, anyone with half a brain knows better than to listen to Michael Moore, a bloodthirsty propagandist who’s laughing all the way to the bank.
GE, McDonalds, Disney….Instead you settled for mega churches. When I was homeless the only people who even attempted to help me was the Christian church down the street. You may not agree with the doctrine, but at least they are feeding the hungry and helping the poor. WTF have you done.
I astroturf for an unnamed industry, and am OUTraged.
OUtraged, i tell you. Lol.
The comments here seem to indicate that the “5 corporations” also have a lot of shills who are paid to comment-spam anyone who criticizes them.
What has killed america to my mind as an outsider who has spent a significant amount of time there is the shift from a nation that actually produces something to one that is a giant junkfood/stripmall/drive-in powered economy. The US is a great place but consumerism is killing it. Like most visitors to the US I find it bizarre that the only world super power can have stretch Humvees driving past a street full of homeless people.
It pisses me off when people abuse their power and it happens all the time right under people’s noses. People are either too blind to see it or don’t want to admit to what is really going on behind closed doors.
YOU FORGOT MONSANTO!!!