Fascism (State Corporatism) Parsed in Kinder Gentler Terms

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This is a post I wrote  for a disussion on The Lepage Tax Plan The Maine Citizen 

Woodcanoe- the whole plan to me looks like an attack on local sovereignty. Lorring and MRRA have none- the "middleman" (local government) has been eliminated for those two towns.

Ever since The corporate state was established under Governor Longley as the first corporation The Maine Development Foundation, every administration has embraced the corporate state- it allows them to be business developers but business developers are not representatives of the public- they serve business interests only, which the legislature spins as "for the public benefit" which applies to the legislaure's targeted sector only, apparently businesses not in the targeted sector do not serve the public benefit. The state corporations are frequently named as business development corporations- including MRRA and Lorring and the DECD corporation. - What do business development corporations do- they remove existing communities to make way for their own designs. A state owned development corporation is no different- except that it is worse- technically it is the definition of fascism.

Quote:It's the Corporate State, Stupid

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.

David G. Mills
It's the Corporate State, Stupid
11/10/04 "ICH" -- The early twentieth century Italians, who invented the word fascism, also had a more descriptive term for the concept -- estato corporativo: the corporatist state. Unfortunately for Americans, we have come to equate fascism with its symptoms, not with its structure. The structure of fascism is corporatism, or the corporate state. The structure of fascism is the union, marriage, merger or fusion of corporate economic power with governmental power. Failing to understand fascism, as the consolidation of corporate economic and governmental power in the hands of a few, is to completely misunderstand what fascism is. It is the consolidation of this power that produces the demagogues and regimes we understand as fascist ones. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info...le7260.htm

When Governor Longley called in the heads of industry to redesign Maine's system of government, this is a recommendation found in their report:

Quote:2, eliminate the requirement for a local referendum on municipal bond issues. read more athttp://americanpoliticalphilosophy.blogspot.com/2014/11/1977-maine-capital-corporation-seeding.html

This is all sold to the public using financial reasoning only and pretending ignorance of political philosophy by those who are well educated.

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Quote:From the article linked above on Fascism 

But even Britt’s excellent article misses the importance of Mussolini’s point. The concept of corporatism is number nine on Britt’s list and unfortunately titled: “Corporate Power is Protected.” In the view of Mussolini, the concept of corporatism should have been number one on the list and should have been more aptly titled the “Merger of Corporate Power and State Power.” Even Britt failed to see the merger of corporate and state power as the primary cause of most of these other characteristics. It is only when one begins to view fascism as the merger of corporate power and state power that it is easy to see how most of the other thirteen characteristics Britt describes are produced. Seen this way, these other characteristics no longer become disjointed abstractions. Cause and effect is evident.

In Maine they have found a friendlier way to parse "“Merger of Corporate Power and State Power.” they call it "public private relationships" which is to be found in about every charter for a state corporation.

Here it is in the charter for the Maine Development Foundation:

Quote:§915. Legislative findings and intent: "There is a need to establish a new basis for a creative partnership of the private and public sectors ...but which does not compromise the public interest or the profit motive. The state's solitary burden to provide for development should lessen through involving the private sector in a leadership role....... The foundation shall exist as a not-for-profit corporation with a public purpose, and the exercise by the foundation of the powers conferred by this chapter shall be deemed and held to be an essential governmental function.

Compare the Pollyanna rhetoric about there being no compromise of public interest and the profit motive (which really means that the legislature is declaring them to be one and the same) with what is in the statute for the Maine Capital Corporation. which was chartered simultaneously to the Maine Development Foundation by the recommendation of the heads of industry that Governor Longley consulted:

The following is a quote from the now repealed statute"

Quote:This impediment to the development and expansion of viable Maine businesses affects all the people of Maine adversely and is one factor resulting
in existing conditions of unemployment, underemployment, low per capita income and resource underutilization. By restraining economic development, it sustains burdensome pressures on State Government to provide services to those citizens who are unable to provide for themselves.

To help correct this situation, it is appropriate to use the profit motive of private investors to achieve additional economic development in the State.

This can be accomplished by establishing an investment corporation to provide equity capital for Maine businesses and by establishing limited taxcredits for investors in the corporation to encourage the formation and use of private capital for the critical public purpose of maintaining and strengthening the state's economy.(emphasis mine)

This entire idea runs muck over the Maine State Constitution- not only Article IV Part Third Section 14 which prohibits the charter by special acts of legislation of corporations serving state purposes- but also the part that says the legislature shall not transfer the power of taxation in any way

But politicians loved it and found it irresistible because politicians love power and LePage is no different.

Next will the Maine political class embrace George Soros's terminology for the free enterprise system and start calling it "market fundamentalism" ? Not that far from calling local authority "unnecessary middlemen" !