"He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money."
After looking at the pattern since Eisenhower warned us about the "Military, Industrial Complex"; we can see who is really in charge of this country and it is not the "elected" officials. Heck, the very idea of free elections is a fallacy. Just look how the election was compromised in 2000. The first draft of Eisenhower's farewell address also included the word "Congressional" (which he was forced to remove) and today we can easily add the words "Media" and "Corporate Lobby". While it is true that Eisenhower warned us about this toxic threat to democracy in his farewell address, he did nothing while in office to check it's progress and merely passed the warning down to the next guy, JFK.
Now there is something even more fearsome than the tyrannical military industrial complex. After the military, the largest component of America's National Security State since 9/11, is a great and out of control intelligence apparatus. No one knows how many people are involved, who they are or what they do. We do know that more than half of the intelligence personnel are private contractors and have little or no accountability to the tax payers. Furthermore, the mass of information that is collected by these shadow governments is so great that it cannot even be analyzed.
In the end, this country's power base lies with the Oligarchy and relegates the authority of those we think have been elected to basically two roles;
1) Cheerleaders for the super wealthy power base and,
2) As a buffer between the classes to make the motives of the rich at least somewhat digestible to the majority.
If anyone in particular steps too far beyond their particular given role, they will at best be marginalized with threats to their family and livelihood and at worst eliminated. How often would CBS's Katie Couric consider exposing Big Pharma consumer crimes while enjoying an annual salary of $15 million sponsored by the drug industry? Would PBS's Gwen Ifill report on the war crimes of the corporate empire while gaining free access to Washington power brokers and commanding a comfortable salary from her corporate sponsor Boeing?
And at the top of the food chain, we need only to look at what happened to John Kennedy (see "JFK and The Unspeakable") along with Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy and all the rest. They all were killed as soon as they got too close to the truth and were perceived as too threatening to the Oligarchs.
Furthermore, in our time, the concept of "Plausible Denial" has become so outdated that atrocities can now be committed in the bright light of day. (See Cheney and torture). It is simply more efficient to defer accountability when excuses might get you into trouble. It is this same adage that tells us that dictators make the most efficient leaders.
So Who is the Boss? Just look what happened to JFK and you will have your answer.
