Democratic Dilemma -- Corporate Populism

Here's how I see the basic problem of the Democratic Party. It is trying to have it both ways.
Can one party reflect both the moderate corporate conservative/Wall St. stance of the "centrists" while also being the party of liberalism and progressive populism?

There is, unfortunately, an inherent contradiction there in the modern economy and a society that has been battered for years with an unchallenged message from the Corporate Pravda and the religion of unfettered "free markets." By buying into that, the DLC types have surpressed the core messages and values of liberal and progressive politics.

Corporate populism is an untenable myth. That doesn't mean we have to be anti-business. In fact, truly populist policies would be good for business too. However, ultimately Democrats ought to choose to be on the side of the majority of people when choices have to be made.


It is not really a question of being "too left." It'a a question of who the Democrats are going to stand for in an economy where the middle class is being undermined, the poor has been pushed off into a corner, and the notion of a diverse market has been replaced by wave after wage of mergers among monopolistic multinational corporations.

Were that not the situation, "centrism" would make sense. If the status quo were in balance, with a real give-and-take between right and left, then the democrats could be a true the party of the center. However, that's not the case. Instead the right and GOP has been taking and taking, while the Democrats have been giving and giving. As a result, what is called the "center" today, is far to the right of the middle.

Such labels are useful, but they are also self-defeating. It's specific issues that matter. Look at the extent to which the average person is disenfranchised. How far from democratic principles we have strayed in our politics and media.



Is wanting to change the horribly distored and unfair health care system we now have a "radical" notion, or is it just common sense and common decency? Is believing that public services are still important, and preferable to complete "privatization," a communistic stance, or is it just an extension of the principles that helped to build America? Is believing that it is time to revive the notion of reasonable economic regulation and anti-trust policies excessively "liberal" or is it simply what is necessary to maintain a truly competative free-enterprise system?

Personally, I belive that returning to "first principles" is both necessary for the nation's health, and politically pragmatic for our side. Especially if the perception of the current "economic recovery" takes hold next year. If Democrats rely simply on "Bush bashing" and superficial challeges and "policy packages" then GW and the GOP will likely be swept back into office, IMO.

That's just my opinion, of course. Any responses?

Sure, maybe in some perfect libertarian utopia, we could have non-crony capitalism, but I've never seen it. At the very least we need a strong government and civil society to keep the cronies at bay.

I wonder if any Democrats will make an issue of the mutual fund frauds? All the propaganda about "free markets" is just that - the insiders always have special rules for themselves. Any Democrat who ignores the HUGE scandals to tell us we need to cut Social Security or whatever new "fiscally conservative" scams they are pushing, should be considered a Zell-Miller Democrat.

/end-rant

I agree Armstead that this corporate sponsorship does indeed present a problem for the Democratic Party. In effect, we are deserting the interests of the majority of Americans for the interests of the few in the corporate world, pretending that they have the interest of the rest of us at heart.

>>>>In effect, we are deserting the interests of the majority of Americans for the interests of the few in the corporate world, pretending that they have the interest of the rest of us at heart.<<<

I agree. A basic problem today is that political leaders are not challenging fundamentally unfair ideas. Instead both parties are perpetuatating the same basic economic messages, with some variations.

Free marketeers, libertarians, and other happy "free enterprise" types are fooling themselves when they expouse that the move toward more corporate influence and less government influence is a removal of "government control" over the marketplace and our lives.

In fact, there are huge government policy structures in place that steer the wealth in this country toward the ultra rich and the big corporation. For example, coal is effectively subsidized by government tax policy. Without that subsidy, the "market" would actually cause consumers to start buying more efficient electrical products, and conserving electricity as a matter of economics.

However I post it in its entirety (see permission below) as understanding its content is ESSENTIAL to this discussion.

Published on Wednesday, December 11, 2002 by CommonDreams.org

The Railroad Barons Are Back - And This Time They'll Finish the Job
by Thom Hartmann


The railroad barons first tried to infiltrate the halls of government in the early years after the Civil War.

The efforts of these men, particularly Jay Gould, brought the Ulysses Grant administration into such disrepute, as a result of what were then called "the railroad bribery scandals," that Grant's own Republican party refused to renominate him for the third term he wanted and ran Rutherford B. Hayes instead. As the whitehouse.gov website says of Grant, "Looking to Congress for direction, he seemed bewildered. One visitor to the White House noted 'a puzzled pathos, as of a man with a problem before him of which he does not understand the terms.'"

Although their misbehaviors with the administration and Congress were exposed, the railroad barons of the era were successful in a coup against the Supreme Court. One of their own was the Reporter for the Supreme Court, and they courted Justice Stephen Field with, among other things, the possibility of support for a presidential run. In the National Archives, we also recently found letters from the railroads offering free trips and other benefits to the 1886 Court's Chief Justice, Morrison R. Waite.

Waite, however, didn't give in: he refused to rule the railroad corporations were persons in the same category as humans. Thus, the railroad barons resorted to plan B: they got human rights for corporations inserted in the Court Reporter's headnotes in the 1886 Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad case, even though the court itself (over Field's strong objections) had chosen not to rule on the constitutionality of the railroad's corporate claims to human rights.

And, based on the eporter's headnotes (and ignoring the actual ruling), subsequent Courts have expanded those human rights for corporations. These now include the First Amendment human right of free speech (including corporate "speech" to influence politics - something that was a felony in most states prior to 1886), the Fourth Amendment human right to privacy (so a chemical company has successfully sued to prevent the EPA from performing surprise inspections - while retaining the right to perform surprise inspections of its own employees' bodily fluids and phone conversations), and the 14th Amendment right to live free of discrimination (using the free-the-slaves 14th Amendment, corporations have claimed discrimination to block local community efforts to pass "bad boy laws" or keep out predatory retailers).

Interestingly, unions don't have these human rights. Neither do churches, or smaller, unincorporated businesses. Nor do partnerships or civic groups. Nor, even, do governments, be they local, state, or federal.

And, from the founding of the United States, neither did corporations. Rights were the sole province of humans.

As the father of the Constitution, President James Madison, wrote, "There is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by... corporations. The power of all corporations ought to be limited in this respect. The growing wealth acquired by them never fails to be a source of abuses." It's one of the reasons why the word "corporation" doesn't exist in the constitution - they were to be chartered only by states, so local people could keep a close eye on them.

Early state laws (and, later, federal anti-trust laws) forbade corporations from owning other corporations, particularly in the media. In 1806, President Thomas Jefferson wrote, "Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost." He was so strongly opposed to corporations owning other corporations or gaining monopolies of the media that, when the Constitution was submitted for ratification, he and Madison proposed an 11th Amendment to the Constitution that would "ban commercial monopolies." The Convention shot it down as unnecessary because state laws against corporate monopolies already existed.

But corporations grew, and began to flex their muscle. Politicians who believed in republican democracy were alarmed by the possibility of a new feudalism, a state run by and to the benefit of powerful private interests.

President Andrew Jackson, in a speech to Congress, said, "In this point of the case the question is distinctly presented whether the people of the United States are to govern through representatives chosen by their unbiased suffrages or whether the money and power of a great corporation are to be secretly exerted to influence their judgment and control their decisions."

And the president who followed him, Martin Van Buren, added in his annual address to Congress: "I am more than ever convinced of the dangers to which the free and unbiased exercise of political opinion - the only sure foundation and safeguard of republican government - would be exposed by any further increase of the already overgrown influence of corporate authorities."

Even Abraham Lincoln weighed in, writing, "We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. The best blood of the flower of American youth has been freely offered upon our country's altar that the nation might live. It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country.

"As a result of the war," Lincoln continued, "corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless." Lincoln held the largest corporations - the railroads - at bay until his assassination.

But then came the railroad barons, vastly enriched by the Civil War.

They began brining case after case before the Supreme Court, asserting that the 14th Amendment - passed after the war to free the slaves - should also free them.

For example, in 1873, one of the first Supreme Court rulings on the Fourteenth Amendment, which had passed only five years earlier, involved not slaves but the railroads. Justice Samuel F. Miller minced no words in chastising corporations for trying to claim the rights of human beings.

The fourteenth amendment's "one pervading purpose," he wrote in the majority opinion, "was the freedom of the slave race, the security and firm establishment of that freedom, and the protection of the newly-made freeman and citizen from the oppression of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him."

But the railroad barons represented the most powerful corporations in America, and they were incredibly tenacious. They mounted challenge after challenge before the Court, claiming the 14th Amendment should grant them human rights under the Bill of Rights (but not grant such rights to unions, churches, small companies, or governments). Finally, in 1886, the Court's reporter defied his own Chief Justice and improperly wrote a headnote that moved corporations out of the privileges category and gave them rights - an equal status with humans. (Last year we found the correspondence between the two in the National Archives and put it on the web. By the time the Reporter's headnotes were published, the Chief Justice was dead.)

On December 3, 1888, President Grover Cleveland delivered his annual address to Congress. Apparently Cleveland had taken notice of the Santa Clara County Supreme Court headnote, its politics, and its consequences, for he said in his speech to the nation, delivered before a joint session of Congress: "As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters."

The Founders of America were clear when they wrote the Bill of Rights that humans had rights, and when humans got together to form any sort of group - including corporations, churches, unions, fraternal organizations, and even governments themselves - that those forms of human association had only privileges which were determined and granted by the very human "We, The People."

But, as if by magic, even though in the Santa Clara case the Supreme Court did not rule on any constitutional issues (read the case!), the Court's reporter rewrote the American Constitution at the behest of the railroad barons and moved a single form of human association - corporations - from the privileges category into the rights category. All others, to this day, still only have privileges. But individual citizen voters must now politically compete with corporations on an equal footing - even though a corporation can live forever, doesn't need to breathe clean air, doesn't fear jail, can change its citizenship in an hour, and can own others of its own kind.

Theodore Roosevelt looked at this situation and bluntly said, in April of 1906, "Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day."

And so now, corporate-friendly Michael Powell's FCC is moving toward lifting the last tattered restrictions on media ownership, allowing absolute concentration of the voices we hear into a tiny number of corporate hands.

Any day now a case involving a multinational corporation claiming the right to deceive people in its PR - its 1st Amendment right of free speech - may be coming before the Supreme Court. (The New York Times corporation editorialized on December 10th that corporations must have free speech rights: the lines are being drawn.)

As much as half the federal workforce is slated to be replaced by corporate workers under a new Bush edict. Government (which doesn't have constitutional human rights of privacy, and so is answerable to We, The People) will then be able to use corporate-4th-Amendment-human-rights of privacy to hide what those workers do and how they do it from the prying eyes of citizens and voters. In a similar fashion, corporate-owned and thus unaccountable-to-the-people voting machines are being installed nationwide; in the last election these machines often produced vote results so different from the polls that pollsters who have been successfully calling elections for over 50 years threw up their hands and closed shop.

This administration is set to complete what the railroad barons pushed the Grant administration to start: to take democracy and its institutions of governance from the hands of the human citizen/voters the Founders fought and died for, and give it to the very types of monopolistic corporations the Founders fought against when they led the Tea Party revolt against the East India Company in Boston Harbor in 1773.

And, in the ultimate irony, the new man in charge of economic policy as Secretary of the Treasury will be a multi-millionaire Bush campaign contributor, chairman of The Business Roundtable (an elite corps of 100 of the nation's most powerful corporate CEOs), and, himself, a railroad baron.

Thom Hartmann is the author of "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights" - www.unequalprotection.com and www.thomhartmann.com. Permission is granted to reprint this article in print or web media, so long as this credit is attached.


http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1211-01.htm


© Copyrighted 1997-2003
www.commondreams.org

NEEDED: A Rural Strategy by John Nichols (from the Nov 3 issue of The Nation).

Wall St. and corporations have been selling out America and American workers for the past 25-30 years. They have made it clear that they have only one loyalty -- their shareholders. If this means that they can make bigger profits by cutting jobs and moving them to China, they will. If this means that they can cut costs by moving corporate headquarters to Bermuda to avoid taxes, they will. If this means that they can get away with screwing the vast majority of hard-working Americans and then come with hat-in-hand to suck up subsidies (paid for by those same hard-working Americans being screwed), THEY WILL.

The Democratic Party has failed, in the long term, by sucking up to these Wall St. interests. Many of the more short-sighted strategists and such will turn to the "success" of Bill Clinton -- but I honestly believe that Clinton's pro-corporate, pro-Wall St. policies boosted by "Citicorp Bob" Rubin, are proving instead to be the party's undoing.

We already have one unabashed pro-corporate party in the Republicans. We don't need another. As another DUer said before, it's becoming the difference between one party who wants to slam the pedal down and drive us off a cliff -- and another who just wants to slow the speed down to 25 mph while following the same course.

>>>The Democratic Party has failed, in the long term, by sucking up to these Wall St. interests. Many of the more short-sighted strategists and such will turn to the "success" of Bill Clinton -- but I honestly believe that Clinton's pro-corporate, pro-Wall St. policies boosted by "Citicorp Bob" Rubin, are proving instead to be the party's undoing.<<<

I agree. By sweeping the deeper destructive changes in the economy under the rig in the 90's, the pro-corporate tilt of the Democratic Party lay down the seeds for what has happened since 2000.

If Democrats stay stuck in the mode of coasting on the superficial prosperity of the 90's, and simply promising more of the same, then our side will be increasingly marginalized if there is the perception of the "Bush boom" continues to build.

Democrats have a lot of positive altrnatives to offer. But they will remain hidden unless we can shake off being corporate parrots.

I posted this on another thread started by Q, but I think it applies here as well. That's where I basically see this "struggle for the soul of the party" headed.

Grover Cleveland could probably be compared in modern times to Bill Clinton. Not that it's a completely 100% accurate comparison, but this is the one that it made by Kevin Phillips in his book Wealth and Democracy. Cleveland took pains to assauge the fears of railroad barons, industrialists and financiers that their interests would be well represented upon his election. Likewise, Bill Clinton, under the advisement of Robert "Citicorp" Rubin, went to great lengths to craft policy that convinced Wall St. that he was going to boost their interests. Both of them, as a result, were in office during economic bubbles centered around speculative finance created by these "business-friendly" policies. While neither of them were really Republicans, they were not exactly champions of working Americans either. They built political careers out of catering to powerful business interests.

William Jennings Bryan was the person who came along and captured the rage and disillusionment of the farmers and laborers all across America. Even though he lost twice to William McKinley, his campaigns helped lay the foundation for the Wilson victories in 1912 and 1916, and even for FDR's New Deal policies in response to the excesses of the 1920's that led to the Great Depression.

Who is our William Jennings Bryan? I'm not really sure. A case could be made for Howard Dean -- not because of populist policies, but because of the way that his campaign is energizing the rage and disaffection of grassroots voters. A case could be made for Dennis Kucinich, except he lack's Bryan's charisma and is probably too much of a rigid ideologue. To be quite honest, I would say that the closest thing we had to a modern-day William Jennings Bryan was the late Paul Wellstone -- an unapologetic liberal who built his success around organizing and energizing the grassroots, sticking up for working folks, and seeking ways to make politics "about the importance of people's lives", as he once said.

But basically, this is the struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party that is taking place. And while I am biased, I truly believe that unless the side built on populism wins out, we will see the demise of the Democratic Party.

I have thought for sometime that we need an outsider, a populist, to challenge the status quo. But would it work? Perhaps we have to start soemwhere, knowing beforehand that we will lose in the shortrun. But, in the longrun, it may save this country.

I get a little nervous about how far he's willing to take it. But the fact that he has gotten this far with what is basically a populist message says a lot.

Kucinich and Sharpton too, although their personas are not "presidential" infortunately.

Even an insider like Kerry could do it -- but he';d have to let go of a lot of the protective armor he has built up to disguise his liberalism.

Paul Wellstone was the one politician who was able to put it all together -- charisma, a fighting spirit, energizing and organizing grassroots, etc. I really think that the Democratic Party lost the closest thing it had to a modern-day William Jennings Bryan when his plane went down.

While I think that Dean is probably currently the closest in the current Presidential crop to embrace this model of "grassroots energizing", he just doesn't seem to recognize the mantra of Paul Wellstone as well that "politics is about the importance of people's lives". Perhaps he'll prove me wrong, and I hope so.

As for Kerry, this is one of the reasons that I don't support him. I really don't find hope for him embracing the unabashed progressive populism that would be required for following this kind of political model. I don't see him as demonstrating the political courage that would be necessary to embark on such an endeavor, based on his past performance in supporting corporate-driven "free" trade and voting for the IWR (however you want to justify it). He just strikes me as a guy who will instinctively fall back on running a "traditional" campaign and playing his cards close to his vest -- and while he's certainly a figure that deserves praise for doing many fine things in his career, he just doesn't have what it takes to lead the Democratic Party in the direction it needs to go right now.

That loss still staggers me. He felt like my senator, even though I live far from Mn.

I followed him for most of the time he was in the Senate, and felt like he was one of those who really was speaking and acting in the way all politicians on our side ought to be.

I agree, Dean seems to be rallying the troops in a similar way. But Dean doesn't have that genuine heart and soul and awareness that Wellstone had....Kucinich has it, but he doesn't have that personal quality of being able to convey hope that Wellstone had.

"Kucinich has it, but he doesn't have that personal quality of being able to convey hope that Wellstone had."

I disagree wholeheartedly. To each his own. :)

With the ending of the inheritance tax, vast fortunes will be built up and the country will end up being ruled by punks who inherit tens of billions of dollars, who will fight for turf.

It's the late 1800's all over again. Teddy Roosevelt will need to be reincarnated to get us back on track.

We learn NOTHING from history. Absofuckinglutely nothing.

I agree. We are rapidly going backward in the WayBack Machine, as the basis of a liberal middle-class society are being stripped away to revert to a polarized society divided between a minority Oligarchy and majority of Proles.

In order to simply stop that reversion, we need to face the fact that it's happening, say it out loud, and offer answers.

and if the Democrats were "speaking truth to power" so many of us would not have left the party. If they were standing up shouting about policies of cheap labor, massive unemployment, using illness and death to enrich the pharmacueticals and insurers, and spending American lives to enrich corporations, they might find more support out there. Meanwhile, our Democratic "leaders" offer us a bone with a few shreds of meat instead of the bare bone offered by the Right. We have been turned into a nation of peasants scrabbling under the tables of the nobility.

edit for spelling

In every time and place, including the Arab bazaar, the Mexican mercado and kids' baseball trading cards there are rules and codes. The only question is how well those codes and regulations promote the general well-being. Our codes now could be summarized as "give a lot of cash to the Republican Party and the government will both guarantee your profitability and minimize your responsibility". This is what I call "crapitalism", and I believe that most people at least subliminally are aware, and resentful, of this.
But where should progressives start in order to combat this? I think with the face of government seen most by the people, the tax code. A real selling point could be a populist tax proposal which a) taxed all income (including cap gains) on an equal basis, b) ended the cap on the FICA so that the wealthy have to pay it on all of their income, and c) vastly larger standard deductions ($10,000 per adult, $5,000 per child, applied AFTER payment of the FICA), adjusting the marginal rates to result in the same gross revenue. The result would be a large decrease for most taxpayers, and a sharp increase for the wealthy 1%. As far as corporations, tax revenue earned in the US so as to minimize the incentive to register offshore, and also tax offshore payrolls to reduce the incentives to take jobs offshore.
Just bringing these very arguably fair proposals before the public would, I think, force the public to see how current "crapitalism" is a game rigged against most people, using their labor not for their own well-being, but for the enrichment of the few.

Great term.

I also think you nailed something important. "I believe that most people at least subliminally are aware, and resentful, of this."

I believe people are subliminally aware of a lot of things that reflect liberal and progressive thoughyt, but since it is seldom articulated in the public sphere these days, they see no support for their own perceptions. That's something we should realize.

:kick:

:kick:

Good work, Armstead

Good work, Armstead

OK, who stole sangh0's keyboard?!?! :evilgrin:

I'm disappointed. I expected a quicker, and funnier response. You're slippin' :evilgrin:

:D

but don't let it happen again. I expect more than just surprise. I demand entertainment too! :-)

I must've missed something. Are you one and the same or two alter egos or total coincidence?

is night and day

which is what prevents you from signing in as sangha. ;-)

these are not the same.

"The normal and proper aim of the corporate community is to make money for its managers and for the owners of business all the better if its members also contribute to the general prosperity. However, business acts on the prevailing business philosophy, which claims that corporate self-interest eventually produces the general interest. This comfortable belief rests on misinterpretation of the theory of market rationality proposed by Adam Smith.

"He would have found the market primitivism of the current day unrecognizable. He saw the necessity for public intervention to create or sustain the public interest, and took for granted the existence of a government responsible to the community as a whole, providing the structure within which the economy functions.

"Classical political thought says that the purpose of government is to do justice for its citizens. Part of this obligation is to foster conditions in which wealth is produced. The obligation is not met by substituting the wealth-producer for the government.

"Business looks after the interests of businessmen and corporation stockholders. Stark and selfish self-interest obviously is not what motivates most American businessmen and -women, but it is the doctrine of the contemporary corporation and of the modern American business school."

"It does not automatically serve the general interest, as any 18th century rationalist would acknowledge - or any 21st century realist."

William Pfaff

http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0126-01.htm

Your first sentence about the Dems "trying to have it both ways" - both corporatist and populist-progressive -- I'm certainly right with you on that.

But let's look at this snippet:
Corporate populism is an untenable myth. That doesn't mean we have to be anti-business. In fact, truly populist policies would be good for business too. However, ultimately Democrats ought to choose to be on the side of the majority of people when choices have to be made.


- What bothers me here is that there really is a conflict between Wall Street's interest, & the interest of the majority of people. You mentioned health care. There certainly is a conflict between the interests of for-profit hospital chains & insurers, and the general population. If the US went to a Western European-style single payer system, it would certainly hurt those big companies.

So, why deny this? Why say that truly populist policies would be good for business too or that It is not really a question of being "too left."? To me, it seems there's a clear conflict of interest between the populist-progressive side, and the corporatist side. And to align with the former -- is indeed taking a "left" position that would NOT be "good for business." On the contrary, it would hurt these businesses, because it would deprive them of huge profit opportunities.

I understand that discussions deteriorate when they reach the point of slinging "left vs right" labels around, so there's always an argument to be made for avoiding that terminology. At the same time, you seem to be taking "left" positions here while going out of your way to avoid the use of that word. Why not admit that if we want to rein in business on behalf of the commonweal, it's a "left" position that's opposed to the interests of big business?

That's what Armstead is getting at here, Rich. When government stops handing advantage to big business, it is small-to-medium sized businesses that are then allowed to flourish.

Small business is the backbone of any economy. Adam Smith recognized it. Even Karl Marx recognized this (most of Marx's work is actually based on Smith's, contrary to popular opinion). Small businesses are engines of the economy that provide the jobs to the citizens of a community, while at the same time pumping money back into the community rather than shipping it off to some far-off headquarters. And owners of small businesses won't commit the same excesses as big businesses because: 1) they have to face the people subject to those excesses regularly, and 2) they live there as well.

This is a winning issue. Tilt the playing field back in favor of small businesses, family farmers, etc. -- as it belongs. Get past the idea of "bigger is better" when it comes to everything.

Decentralization, accountability and growth. That's a winning prescription, IMHO.

You said it better than I could.

believe it must be reined in." One may or may not agree with it. And, even if one agrees with it, one may or may not think it's politically wise to say so, because saying so sounds very "left." It can easily be tarred as being "left" & anti-business, and tends to frighten people. One may wish to avoid frightening people, in hopes of building consensus.

I'm sure Armstead agrees with the phrase. But I was also getting the sense from his post (perhaps wrongly), that he was downplaying the "saying so." The point seemed too important to me, to be entirely happy about seeing it downplayed (if that is in fact what I was seeing).

If he was only talking about small-to-medium sized business, then, in the noble tradition of Emily Latella, "Never mind."

We need to stop promoting policies that promote corporate interests over what's good for small businesses. Small businesses and family farms have always been the backbone of our economy, and they always will be. Small businesses don't ship jobs overseas in order to increase profits -- they stick with American workers. Small businesses don't set up offshore headquarters in Bermuda to dodge taxes -- they pay their fair share. The reprehensible thing is that we've allowed the creation of policies that make these small businesses suffer in order to boost the bottom line of corporations. That's just plain wrong, and we're going to bring it to an end.

Could a message like that be capable of generating a little more positive response?

Quite satisfactory. :-) (Maybe one could add an exclamation point to the end.)

I ditto what IC said. But I'd add something too.


I have enough of the propagandist in me to know how things will strike people. And we can't "bash" business in general if we are to win people over.

But I also sincerely believe that what's in the interests of business does not have to be contrary to the interests of people and society. Even large corporations have a legitimate place in the economic and workings of society.

The problem is when business oversteps its bounds, ursurps the role of otehr values and interests and generally abuses its position.

Since we've experienced about 25 years of an unbroken string of allowing that to happen, just getting back to a reasonable balance again is the most realistic goal IMO. Once we achieve that, we can try to push the envelope.

My reference point is probably the early 60's, which is when I started paying attention. Back then, there was at least more of a balance than we have today. That's nopt to say it was as it shold be -- but I can cleatly see in my mind's eye the whole process that's gotten us to where we are today.

That's why I say if we can at least get back toa place where it's a more level playing field, we can think about what comes afterward.

It costs a lot to train citizens to become productive. The investment in colleges by government, read our taxes, is high. We pay a lot of money for students to come to America to be trained and corporations use these people to export our jobs. Where is our advantage to helping someone overseas make a living from our taxes. Why should corporations be beneficiaries of the cost to train citizens if they do not feel like they really need to keep the jobs in America?

How many in masters programs come to America for education. How many Americans can take advantage of these same masters programs. How many Americans are helped by a mentor to enter masters programs as versus foriegn students. What is the ratio of Americans in masters programs versus foriegn students in masters programs. How many foriegn students move on to be medical doctors as say those born in America? Are these foriegn students really that much smarter, or is there some form discrimination favoring foriegn born at operation among the foriegn born professors teaching in colleges?

I find it strange when I look in phone book and see so many names that clearly indicate doctors of south asian decent. Why is this?

Why does our government keep raising the number of H1B work visas. It seems strange considering the unemployment in the computer industry. Could people in Washington somehow be obtaining benefits by raising the number of these visas. Could the lawyers be getting money for this somehow?

We allow corporations to issue paper to obtain capital, in places called stock exchanges. This is an advantage to corporations. How much of our retirement money is invested in these same corporations that are exporting our jobs.

Do we have any say in how our money invested in these corporations via retirement/401K mutual funds. The people running these companies belong to a closed group. They each have control over our retirement funds invested in other companies. Do they seek the highest profit or do they seek to give support to their buddies. So each can obtain millions being such fine fellows that impress only each other. I think they are ripping all of us off. The capital they use to export our jobs, is ours, not theirs, yet we have no say whatsoever how they use our money invested in these companies.

It cost a lot to build roads to transport goods. It cost a lot to keep them in good condition. It costs a lot to build airports. It costs a lot to coordinate the system to insure airplanes get to where they are supposed to go. Have corporations really invested in these things or do they just pass on the costs to us, the consumers and the workers. Oh, and then we as workers are told we cost to much because we have to support the infrastucture used by these same corporations

It costs a lot to pay for our lawyers. Examine the costs for insurance and consider how much of this cost is buried lawyers fees from everything between driving a car to the buried cost of health insurance like malpractice insurance. Then consider who is paying to train these lawyers. Think how these lawyers influence our leadership in Washington. Actually many in leadership in our government are lawyers. Do we the consumers pay the lawyers? How much tax money goes to lawyers? Can we as a country afford these lawyers.

Do lawyers add value, or are they more like money changers operating on a zero-sum game. I have never seen a lawyer that really created anything except a piece of paper with words on it. But to be fair, I have know many lawyers that I liked personally, I just have never been able to see any value except when dealing with the King. But then again, the King has lots of lawyers too. Maybe the lawyers are more interesting in creating a situation where they are needed. I notice many lawyers get jobs in the government, could this be why government is taking about 40% of the value I create?

I guess to summarize, how much are these corporations really costing us, and are we recieving a corresponding benefit for allowing the corporations to exist? Maybe the real evil is not the corporations, but rather the self-appointed leaders in the corporations.

I suspect the leaders of these corporations are ripping us off. But then again, I am just one of the ignorant masses that is supposed to be ripped off by all those so smart people, my betters. Survival of the fittest baby, sound familiar?

"Here's how I see the basic problem of the Democratic Party. It is trying to have it both ways.
Can one party reflect both the moderate corporate conservative/Wall St. stance of the "centrists" while also being the party of liberalism and progressive populism?"

No. It cannot. The goals are fundamentally opposed.

which is understandable since you seem have an idiosyncratic view of liberalism, at least as practiced for the last two hundred years in the US.

American liberals have always been capitalists and populists. We've always believed in the free market, which includes corporations, natch--while believing that government plays an important role in a)filling in the gaps inevitably left by markets and b) regulating markets in the hope of letting them do all the good stuff they do while preventing most of the bad.

I don't give a shit about labels and you're welcome to have any opinion you want about corporations, but socialists tend to see free markets and public good as mutually exclusive. Liberals and progressives have a far more optimistic view.

Health care policy is a separate issue altogether. I'd argue that putting health care into the realm of the free market is as anti-American and bizarre as putting the army into the hands of the free market. National defense and healthcare are clearly government responsibilities.

The fact that companies are fucking health care up has more to do with bad public policy than the "evil" of corporatism.

:kick: