Help Me Please on These Two Points
There are things that I sometimes say on the radio, and that I expect to have occasion to say again next Tuesday, in discussing the Tea Party Movement, that I know to be true with a pretty high level of certitude. Nonetheless, on such points, I repeatedly encounter incredulity on these points, people who simply reject my assertions as false.
Here are two such points. I would appreciate your help in substantiating them with the kind of illustrative examples and real data that might make an impact.
1) One point is that, while both Democrats and Republicans are politically owned in part by corporate interests –officeholders from both parties take money from them and carry water for them– the Republicans are overall considerably more allied with big corporations than Democrats. (As I recall, when the Dems are in power, the campaign contributions from big corporate monied interests tend to be somewhat balanced, when the Repubs are in power the great majority of the campaign cash go to them.)
This assertion gets denied. Could anyone supply me with good and reliable information on this question of corporate support as between the two parties?
Also, I would appreciate help documenting the idea –an idea that seems completely blatantly true to me, after following the news for a long time– that the Republican Party supports policies that serve corporate interests, at the expense of the interests of average Americans, far more than the Democrats do.
2) A second point will likely be quite relevant to the discussion of the Tea Party movement, but anyway, it has to do with the role of government. A lot of my local conservatives, like the Tea Party movement, are sold on the idea that “government is the problem,” and oppose the government taking a role in matters economic (or much else).
In addressing this, I would like to be able to substantiate with good historical references the following proposition: During the years (say 1865-1933) when efforts began and gathered strength to create more of a role for government in our economic affairs, THERE WERE GOOD REASONS WHY MANY AVERAGE AMERICANS WANTED GOVERNMENT TO HAVE MORE POWER IN OUR ECONOMIC AFFAIRS. In other words, our industrial, capitalist, national-scale economy –in the relative absence of government– developed serious problems that hurt people.
Could you help me with some of the historical information that substantiates that proposition?
I think of such things as: the emergence of un-competitive markets with the devouring of competitors by the “robber barons” (leading to anti-trust laws); the publication of Sinclair Lewis’s THE JUNGLE (showing the need for health-regulations in the meat-packing industry); the boom and bust cycle that played havoc with the economy and with people’s lives (leading eventually to Keynesian fiscal policies).
Would much appreciate more– things that average people can understand and relate to, that show why “government is the problem” is such a one-sided and over-simplistic view of our problems.
January 29th, 2010 at 1:41 am
number 1: see politico.com http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/32000.html , and WSJ (2007) http://tinyurl.com/ykjv5f6
Number 2 is the subject of JK Gailbraith’s “American Capitalism” where he developed his theory of countervailing power. He talks a lot about how people organised unions, farm marketing boards, and similar collective efforts to protect themselves from original monopoly or oligopoly powers. Government’s legitimate role in such cases is to protect the existence of such organisations when they arise, and perform that role when people cannot or have not done so already.
See Wikipedia for a quick gloss.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Capitalism
January 29th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
That`s quite a mouthful, Andy, but I`m not a researcher. I`ve heard that the US government has, from the beginning been large, as a strategy to subvert the influence of big business which, if busness were perponderantly substantive, compared to the institutions of government, could, theoretically excert undue influence over the populace. Vis a vis US governence, corporate power, these days, as a result of the available capital, are calling the shots.
January 29th, 2010 at 12:56 pm
I have looked at your links, MM, and thank you for your effort here. But have come away from those pieces pretty much empty-handed. If you see something in them that you think I could use effectively for my purposes, I’d appreciate your pointing it/them out.
January 29th, 2010 at 2:10 pm
I’ll try to add some useful quotations or more specific policy decisions later, but I wanted to quickly refer to the Homestead Acts, ending with the Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916. Without a doubt the Homestead Acts represented one of the greatest government interventions in the economy in human history. Many of us are descendants of people who were granted land patents from the federal government.
Philosophical arguments for the Homestead Acts (as argued in D.C. and elsewhere) often centered around the need to provide common people with a measure of power so that they could avoid being crushed “by the mighty.” The draw of the Homestead Acts is unparalleled, being a direct contributor to the millions who came to the U.S. from Europe during this time period.
People did not want the government to provide them with a living; they wanted the government to help them secure the means that would enable them to provide for themselves. When government involvement in the economy is limited to helping people secure the means to help themselves, I think our history speaks for itself. We do consider that to be an American virtue.
January 29th, 2010 at 2:15 pm
I really like the Homestead Act as an example of government doing a positive good, as you suggest, Aaron K. In that same category I might put the GI Bill of Rights, following World War II.
My more immediate purpose here is more along the lines as government as a remedy for PROBLEMS that are/would be created by unchecked laissez-faire capitalism. In other words, to help people to understand that if government were as small and powerless and hands-off the economy as they’ve been told is desirable, THEY THEMSELVES WOULD BE INJURED BY THE CONSEQUENCES.
January 29th, 2010 at 2:45 pm
I’m not sure any history is relevant at this point. Current economic times are so vastly different. Internet….international trade….foreign ownership of US base…and huge sectors of society that so poor and disfunctional that they will never rise, and are proliferating at a much faster rate than the other sectors of society…etc.
The ‘strong’ will probably always take advantage of the ‘weak’…it is human nature. If we aren’t civilized enough at this point in history to realize it takes a village, that if you canabilize the weak, who is going to make your latte for you…well if we haven’t civilized by now…God help us we never will. Dems and Reps are just very large tribes in a very new world.
January 29th, 2010 at 2:53 pm
Based on my understanding of how human systems work, it would be pretty extraordinary if indeed no history were “relevant at this point.”
More specifically, if we want to help people understand the implications of “laissez-faire” economics, it would seem necessary to make reference to some time when something more approximating that supposed “ideal” was being employed, and to point out that the consequences were really rather far from ideal.
January 29th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Oh our human history is relevant for sure, however not necessarily our economic history.
I like this from Krugman “OK, that’s a big if. But it’s not a matter of dollars and cents; it’s about whether America is still America.”
I say no…America the old has ceased to exisit.
That said, I still feel that there is an American dream out there for some who are savvy enough to go the distance. But that could probably be said in any countery. Could Bill Gates have achieved the same if he lived in France?
January 29th, 2010 at 4:15 pm
Here are some numbers from a PAC Study done by the Leadership Institute (The Leadership Institute’s mission is to increase the number and effectiveness of conservative activists and leaders in the public policy process.)
http://pac.leadershipinstitute.org/
Leadership Institute PAC Study
The study is a huge mass of tables and data. In the up front explanation of the study, I found this sentence.
“In sum, these 1188 largest business and association PACs gave $259,835,035 to federal candidates. They gave $88,486,449 to Democrats and gave $169,307,790 to Republicans.”
It’s cool that you might be able to use some information from a conservative organization.
January 29th, 2010 at 4:20 pm
This is excellent, Tony. Precisely the kind of information I need. THank you.
January 29th, 2010 at 7:42 pm
Thom Hartmann on the historic details of original Boston Tea Party and the role of the East India Company.
http://www.thomhartmann.com/2007/11/02/america%e2%80%99s-first-anti-globalization-protest/
Hartmann, in my experience, possesses an ability to find core historical roots of present-day phenomena, and to express his insights in a very readable way.
January 30th, 2010 at 12:02 am
…and, on top of all the straight facts above… most of the MSM are owned lock stock and barrell by the same huge corporations who dole out $’s to keep the People hypnotized.
January 30th, 2010 at 12:36 am
“This government is not rightly called ‘fascism.’ It is more true to call it “Corporatism.” (Who said this…?)
January 30th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
I think an author by the name of John Perkins revived it, Lee Ferrell.
January 30th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
But I think the original man was Mussolini.
January 30th, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Correct answer?
Mussolini,
who defined fascism by saying that it “should rightly be called corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.”
January 31st, 2010 at 8:21 am
Yes, HMJ, this is my understanding of the way Mussolini coined Corporatism as well. Back in late 2004 and into early 2005 John Perkins began talking in public about this unprecedented merger heading towards the 21st Century.
Steve
January 31st, 2010 at 8:36 am
Perkins, btw, as many here may well be aware of, calls it the Corporatocracy. He’s the opposite of a Mussolini, who benefit from global infrastructure and oil projects to the detriment of everyone else, including the American middle class. These modern-day robber barons have successfully driven the lacuna (gap) between the rich and poor to all new historical heights.
January 31st, 2010 at 1:48 pm
Steve,
More pertinent than it might seem at first glance:
There are a growing number of reports that the government has farmed out the development of (recovered and reverse-engineered) extraterrestrial technology to various corporate entities where they can be legally labeled as proprietary “trade” secrets.
January 31st, 2010 at 1:57 pm
The book, The Day After Roswell, is a basic – “ET 101″ – account of how this process began.
“Backed by documents newly declassified through the Freedom of Information Act, Colonel Philip J. Corso (Ret.), a member of President Eisenhower’s National Security Council and former head of the Foreign Technology Desk at the U.S. Army’s Research & Development department, has come forward to reveal his personal stewardship of alien artifacts from the Roswell crash.
“He tells us how he spearheaded the Army’s reverse-engineering project that led to today’s integrated circuit chips, fiber optics, lasers, [and] super-tenacity fibers – and “seeded” the Roswell alien technology to giants of American industry.”
- From Amazon.com
January 31st, 2010 at 2:04 pm
From the 1st chapter, courtesy Amazon.com:
“In the stark light of the military searchlights, Arnold saw the entire landscape of the crash. He thought it looked more like a crash landing because the craft was intact except for a split seam running lengthwise along the side and the steep forty-five-plus-degree angle of the craft’s incline.
“He assumed it was a craft, even though it was like no airplane he’d ever seen. It was small, but it looked more like the flying wing shape of an old Curtis than an ellipse or a saucer. And it had two tail fins on the top sides of the delta’s feet that pointed up and out.
“He angled himself as close to the split seam of the craft as he could get without stepping in front of the workers in hazardous material suits who were checking the site for radiation, and that was when he saw them in the shadow.
“Little dark gray figures — maybe four, four and a half feet in length — sprawled across the ground.
“‘Are those people?’ Arnold heard someone say as medics rushed up with stretchers to the knife-like laceration along the side of the craft through which the bodies had either crawled or tumbled.
“Arnold looked around the perimeter of light and saw another figure, motionless but menacing nevertheless, and another leaning against a small rise in the desert sand. There was a fifth figure near the opening of the craft….”
January 31st, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Ok, thank you, HMJ. I’m not sure I completely understand the point you’re trying to make to me.
January 31st, 2010 at 5:32 pm
What would be your main point, Hanu? Does this information have anything to do with John Perkins or about anything in particular?
January 31st, 2010 at 7:40 pm
Ambrose Bierce defined “capital” like this: “The seat of misgoverment. It provides the pot, the dinner, the table, the knife and fork for the anarchist; the part of the repast he supplies is a disgrace before the meat.”
February 1st, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Hi Steve,
As I see it, the relevance has to do with a merger of military and
corporations/government. In other words , as much as we may intuit the power of transnational corporations, they have have more. The ET technology is now tied up with this manifestation of “fascism.” And, unf
Stephen Greer’s “Hidden Truth: Forbidden Knowledge” has useful information on this, as does Michael Salla’s book, “Exposing U.S. Government Policies On Extraterrestrial Life: The Challenge Of Exopolitics.”
Janine Wedel’s new book, “Shadow Elite: How the World’s New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market” – suggests the overall way in which corporations and government are becoming increasingly interwoven. Although it does not deal with the ET material, it can be used as a primer for understanding how these patterns are currently working.