All right students, read the following clues and then decide what country is being described:- The president of this country "mouths the words, but the concepts - I fear - escape him."
- "It's a corporate state."
- In this country there is "a marriage between these corporate entities and the state."
b) Russia
Let's see a show of hands for those who picked the United States. Were you thinking of Bush, Halliburton, Cheney, Exxon, General Electric? Hold on, here's one more clue. When the president of this country came to power "over 30% of the population was under the poverty line; now it’s down to about 17%, 18%."
That does eliminate the US, doesn't it. The correct answer is Russia!
It was laughable on NPR's ATC to hear emminent scholar Marshall Goldman saying so many things about Russia without any sense of how close to home his comments were. There was one striking comment in which Goldman stated that in Russia, "the corporate state," corporations do what the state tells them to do. I couldn't help but think, yes, and in the US the state does what corporations tell them--pick your poison.
It really is sad how debased intellectuals in this country can be. In the beginning of the report Goldman says, "the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute which are funded actually by the US Government and whose purpose is to increase democracy and political participation all over the world." That a scholar could say something so incredibly biased, naive, and untrue is stunning.
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