I was asked a question by a reader about why I thought that the people are being MANIPULATED by the media and by corporations. This is my response:We are a MARKETING/CORPORATION based society. Didn't start out that way. You certainly won't hear anything about corporations or their powers in the Constitution or in any of the founding fathers' writing - other than some, like Jefferson, warning about the powers of the banks.CNBC is OWNED 100% by General Electric, one of the largest corporations in the history of mankind. WHY DO THEY EXIST? To bring you the news? To report on the economy? NO!They exist to make GE money! How do they do that? By having viewers who get bombarded with their ads! Marketing is a form of BRAINWASHING! The reporters on CNBC are selling the economy to you. If you did not believe in the markets or in the economy, then you wouldn't view and you wouldn't make CNBC and thus GE MONEY - that is why they exist - that is their mission despite what any "mission statement" may fool us into believing.Any reporter who speaks or talks NEGATIVELY OF THE ECONOMY will not be allowed to work on air. Sorry, that's just a fact. I have personal experience writing for the local paper... any negative article or headline I wrote would either be changed or not run - again, that's a fact.As a society we have lost complete sight of what a corporation is and what it's supposed to do. They have turned into monsters that now rule business, politics, and even social thinking. IT IS TIME TO REMOVE POWER FROM CORPORATIONS AND RETURN IT TO THE PEOPLE. Corporations are supposed to work FOR society, not against it. Corporations are INVENTIONS OF PEOPLE and we CAN CONTROL what they do, they ARE NOT THEIR OWN LIVING ENTITY when it comes to influencing political and governmental decisions. We are allowing corporations to raise our children and to program their thoughts.Corporations are meant to allow capital to form so that larger things can be accomplished than with a small pool of capital. Originally the concept allowed exploration of the new world so that the wealthy who financed expeditions wouldn't have to risk and expose ALL their wealth on a single expedition. Thus, corporations served society and allowed things to be accomplished that otherwise wouldn't have been.Over time this has morphed into corporations that control ALL OF THE MONEY AND THE VERY CREATION THEREOF. They are now so powerful that they influence all three branches of government. It was never anyone's intention (except for bankers) to allow the creation and control of the money system to fall into the hands of a very few. That is exactly what has happened.While I certainly don't advocate eliminating or even ripping apart corporations (money needs to aggregate to a certain extent), there is one cure for all the problems... that is to simply create a Constitutional Amendment separating corporations and their money from government. In a free market, corporations who fail have to be allowed to fail. That, believe it or not, is what creates PROGRESS. We actually go back in time when we keep corporations alive who have failed.Today, corporations and government are so entangled that our bought and paid for corporate backed politicians are willing to BANKRUPT OUR NATION and sell the PEOPLE down the river. We are BANKRUPT NOW and thus we are going to have to find solutions to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. SEPARATE THE CORPORATIONS AND THEIR MONEY FROM STATE, and it will never happen again.Think through the implications... We could (and probably should) write a book about the benefits of doing so.Corporations and the media would still market and try to influence your thinking, but there would be a check and balance on it, namely the government who would be allowed to function on behalf of the people and could make LONG TERM decisions for the benefit of the people, not just the military industrial complex.Chalmers Johnson – Keynesian Military Spending (6 minutes):Our constitution is good, but it is not perfect. Our founders saw how money can corrupt, but they didn’t see how corporations would come to slowly and quite literally rule the world. PEOPLE RULE THE WORLD, not corporations. MONEY is an invention of the PEOPLE, a means to execute trade, not a means to rule and to possess power over the people at the hands of a few (oligarchs). The creation of money and credit is a basic, if not THE MOST BASIC function of government – it does not belong in the hands of free enterprise. Health care or the manufacturing of automobiles, on the other hand, is a function of free enterprise, not government.Government, and especially the military, could easily be cut in HALF and that should be done IMMEDIATELY. It is literally INSANE (Economic Mass Psychosis) for one country with 5% of the world's population to spend MORE MONEY ON OUR NATIONAL DEFENSE THAN ALL THE OTHER COUNTRIES ON THE PLANET COMBINED! This is not done in the interest of the PEOPLE, it is done in the interest of the Oligarchs who stand behind the world’s largest corporations.FREEDOM AND SECURITY are tied together and are inseparable. You are being marketed (sold) SECURITY and you are SACRIFICING FREEDOM!!! DEBT, credit in banker parlance, does not make you free, it bounds you. Have too much debt and you will lose all your FREEDOM! That is the path we are headed.Ironically, WHEN YOU SEEK FREEDOM, YOU WILL HAVE TRUE SECURITY!!! Your politicians cannot make this decision as they are now completely dependent upon the money that comes from CORPORATIONS! They simply cannot get elected to national office without it!“But Nate, cutting back so drastically on government spending will put people out of work and there will be hard times…” Yes. But that beats the alternative which is complete collapse of our government or world wars or both. Those things are coming if we remain on the path we are presently on. Just look at the history following times of economic upheaval.Money and the economy influence ALL OTHER ASPECTS OF LIFE. It is the foundation for success or failure as a nation. It is what leads to and perpetuates wars. Have it and you can afford to eat and have medical care – don’t have it and the world’s natural resources will go to those who do.Corporations and their money are ruling almost all aspects of your life, weather you think they are or not. The value of your house, the expense of your kid’s college, the declining value of your money (eaten out lately?), the morals and values of society, the respect or lack thereof of our youth, everything. The distortions brought about by both corporations and government, who are COMPLETELY OUT-OF-CONTROL, permeate every aspect of life and distort everything, including government statistics which I have been writing so much about.One more time…The BEA, the BLS, in fact ALL government reports are suspect. All reporting of government statistics should be scrapped. The Fed should be abolished, The central banks and bankers should be removed – as in gone, a new money system should be put in place, there should be a Constitutional Amendment dictating the SEPARATION OF CORPORATIONS AND THEIR MONEY FROM STATE, and finally, there should be a new government agency responsible for collecting and reporting economic statistics and that agency should have a mandate to develop data collection methods that cannot be changed over time and there should also be a mandate to release RAW DATA with every report, there should be absolute transparency in that all the calculations and all collection methods should be easily viewable by anyone. Oh, and NO ONE, not even the President should have access to the information before the public!Chalmers Johnson – DECLINE of EMPIRES: The Signs of Decay (1:03):