In 1953 Charles Wilson the CEO of General Motors said: "... for years I thought that what was good fo the country was good for General Motors and vice versa." Today one is confronted with the question of what the impact of the growth of giant transnational corporations has been on the American Republic and its democratic institutions.
I am actually a South African and have been a political junkie for most of my life. During the 1990s I was optimistic if somewhat complacent about American democracy and its future. No alarm bells went off at the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. I also tended to view globalization in a positive light, believing that globalization and technological advancement would help to address the problems of poverty and deprivation in the developing world. I was horrified when in 2003 the United States invaded and occupied Iraq. I started surfing the net and found my way to Dailykos and other political blogs and websites. Since then I have been following the debates and discussions with great interest.
My spirits were lifted on November 6th. It was inspirational to watch democracy in action when voters stood in long lines for many hours in order to cast their ballots, defying voter suppression, Citizens United, the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson and Karl Rove's American Crossroads. One must also mention the thousands of GOTV volunteers who knocked on doors and made phone calls, etc.
For a while now I have been mulling over some ideas. So here goes:
When we read we engage with the written word. We ask questions like: How is language being used? Literally or figuratively? In an emotive or ironic way? What is the purpose of the writing? Narrative, expository, discursive, persuasive, satirical? We might also ask: Is this a statement of fact or a value judgement? or, How does the writer develop an argument? Actually I think that the very act of reading and trying to comprehend what one is reading, exercises our critical faculties.
Television on the other hand is a passive medium. It elicits an immediate (often visceral response) from the viewer. It carries with it the illusion of verisimilitude. Viewers who get most of their information from watching television might not be aware of the way in which the visual images they see on television can distorit a complex reality. The visual medium of television is a powerful tool by which public opinion can be swayed.
When Tea Partiers say: "Keep your government hands off my Medicare", one wonders how much thought they have given to what they are saying.
It is my contention that government by the people and for the people stands between the citizenry and the concentration of power in the hands of the few. And it is also through the pragmatic problem-solving interventions of accountable and responsive government that the advantages of modernity can be made accessible to society at large.
In the article Who broke America's jobs machine Barry Lynn and Phillip Longman say that from 1940 through to 1999 each decade produced a 20 percent net gain in jobs. However in the decade between 1999 to 2009 the net gain in jobs was zero. A variety of theories have been put forward to explain this state of affairs, but the role that monopolization has played, is not getting the attention it deserves.
The authors say the many scholars now accept that small businesses are responsible for most of the net gains in job creation and small businesses also tend to be more inventive, producing more new patents per employee than large firms do. The Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter put forward the theory that monopolies would invest their profits in new R & R to stay ahead of potential rivals. But recent empirical studies have found the opposite to be true. Monopolies tend to use their power and resources to protect their turf. While it is often small start-up businesses that generate the most entrepreneurial activity and innovation.
Lynn and Longman say that the consolidation of many industries today resembles that of the late Gilded Age. And in 1935 the populists in Congress together with the Administration introduced antitrust legislation and the government set out to protect open markets [as opposed to Milton Friedman's "free market"]. Unlike the corporatists the populists believed that government has a role to play in preventing the concentration of power in the hands of the few. The authors say that this led to a remarkably democratic distribution of economic power to citizens and communities across America and it also led to an astounding burst of innovation.
When the Reagan Administration came to power in 1981 one their first targets was the antitrust laws and the enforcement of these laws all but ended. Companies like Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, Genentech were founded in the 1970's, went public in the 1980's and eventually grew big enough to take on IBM. Longman and Lynn say that the dynamic of radically innovative start-up businesses growing in size and challenging the status quo drives most job creation. But the pro-business consolidation policies of the Reagan Administration would eventually upset this dynamic.
The Post Modern President is the title of a wonderful essay Josh Marshall wrote in September 2003. I would like to quote a few paragraphs from the essay:
In any White House, there is usually a tension between the political agenda and disinterested experts who might question it. But what's remarkable about this White House is how little tension there seems to be. Expert analysis that isn't politically helpful simply gets ignored.
The Boys in Striped Pants
Educated, liberal-leaning professionals are apt to see this conflict as an open-and-shut case: Expertise should always trump ideology. This has been the case for over a century, ever since Progressive Era reformers took on corrupt city machines and elevated technocratic expertise above politics. Those early Progressives restructured government by turning functions hitherto run by elected officials over to appointed, credentialed experts. And many of the ways they refashioned government now seem beyond question. Few would challenge, for instance, our practice of assigning decisions at the FDA or CDC to panels of qualified scientists rather than political appointees.
And also:
The sidelining of in-house expertise is nowhere more apparent than on the environmental front. This Bush administration came into office just as the consensus was solidifying among scientists that human activity contributes to climate change. That consensus, however, ran counter to key administration goals, such as loosening regulations on coal-burning power plants and scuttling international agreements aimed at limiting fossil fuel emissions. Rather than change its agenda, the administration chose to discredit the experts. As GOP pollster Frank Luntz wrote in a memo just before the 2002 election: "The scientific debate [on global warming] is closing against us but is not yet closed. There is still an opportunity to challenge the science." The idea that global warming was a reality that actually had to be grappled with simply didn't occur to Luntz. Indeed, when questioned about whether administration policies might contribute to global warming, White House spokesmen direct reporters to the small, and rapidly diminishing, group of scientists who still doubt that humans contribute to the problem. In June, when the EPA released an Environmental Progress report, the administration edited out passages that described scientific concerns about global warming.
In his book "Tough choices: reflections of an Afrikaner African" Frederik van Zyl Slabbert the South African liberal politician said: We do not live in a world where everything is possible and nothing is necessary.
And I think that when grappling with a problem, it is necessary to examine conventional wisdom and to challenge established orthodoxy, but at the same time the idea that human ingenuity and human agency can soar beyond the constraints of nature and also the reciprocity and shared advantages and obligations of society, is based on a fallacy. I also think that there is a HUGE difference between skepticism and the denialism that seeks to shut down reasoned, evidence-based debate betwen people with different perspectives on a problem. David Patrick Moynihan famously said: Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. And in a colummn Downhill with the G.O.P Paul Krugman wrote: "Never mind the war on terror, the [Republican] party's main concern seems to be the war on arithmetic." In his columns and blogs Krugman demonstrates how the market fundamentalism, the teleological thinking, and equating of function with purpose that have taken over the Republican Party often involve attacks on logic and real-world experience.
Over the years the Right has managed to turn the word "liberal "into a swear word for a sizable number of Americans.
In his article Tea Party: Old Whine in New Bottles Kevin Drum says that radical right-wing groups are nothing new to American politics. The Liberty League emerged at the time of FDR and the New Deal; the John Birch Society opposed Kennedy; then there were the culture wars and the Arkansas Project of the Clinton presidency and Obama has the Tea Party. For the most part these groups, their ideas and their "insatiable appetite for conspiracy theories" remained on the fringes of the political landscape. The Arkansas Project, primarily funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, accused the Clintons of all manner of dastardly deeds, including murder and drug trafficking. Drum says that, thanks in part to the modern media, the culture wars did gain some traction, resulting in the Gringrich takeover of Congress in 1994, the Whitewater Investigations, the impeachment of a president in 1998, and eventually sending George W. Bush to the White House.
Kevin Drum says that during the 1990's there were still some moderate Republicans. The past decade has seen a righward shift of the Party, so that the Tea Party has virtually become synomous with the Republican Party.
I have just been thinking that during the 1950's Edward R. Murrow and other journalists took on Joseph McCarthy. Eventually the Republican Party distanced themselves from McCarthy and his demagogery.
The Birther nonsense started on the fringes of the political landscape. Today portraying President Barack Obama as "not a real American" and some-one who could not possibly have America's best interests at heart seems to be part of the Republican political platform.
In 2004 the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth launched a libelous attack on the character of John Kerry. The swiftboating of John Kerry was funded by billionaires like Bob J. Perry, Harold Simmons and T. Boone Pickens. Richard Mellon Scaife has already been mentioned. Americans for Prosperity, an organization linked to the emergence of the Tea Party, was founded by the Koch Brothers. In the article Covert operations Jane Mayer says that the Koch Brothers have been funding organizations involved with various right wing causes, including voter suppression, attacks on public education,and pushing to dismantle the EPA and Social Security.
In 2010 Greenpeace charged that Koch Industries were funding organizations that spread inaccurate and misleading information about climate change science and clean energy policies. From 1997 to 2008 Koch Brothers funded $48,5 million to these groups. ExxonMobile spent $20 million during the same period.
In contrast the financier George Soros has been funding the Open Society Foundation that works to promote open dialogue in society.
It is one thing to be highly critical of what politicians actually do or say when they are in positions of power, it something entirely different to embark on a campaign of vilification and delegitimization of a political opponent based on unsubstantiated rumor-mongering, stereotyping, guilt by association, false equivalencies, impugning of motives, etc.
In 1802 Thomas Jefferson said in a letter:
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their "legislature" should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State.
Today it is with a growing sense of dismay that one watches right-wing talk radio, media outlets like Fox News, plutocrats like Richard Mellon Scaife and the Koch Brothers, the Christian Right and a radicalized Republican Party undermining the conditions that are necessary for modernity.
In her keynote address at the Netroots Nation earlier this year Elizabeth Warren said:
Now, Republicans claim they believe in markets. But as anyone will tell you, a market without rules is not a market; it's the place where the most powerful come to hammer on the least powerful. Progressives understand that markets are like football, that every game needs rules, and the referee blows the whistle to enforce those rules. Without rules and a ref, it isn't football -- it's a mugging. That's the big picture, and that's why I'm running for the United States Senate.
Elizabeth Warren also said : "We don't run this country for corporations, we run it for people".
I don't agree with Mitt Romney when he says: "Corporations are people, too". Democracy is predicated on the premise that people are endowed with certain inalienable rights, e.g. the right to life, freedom of speech and of association, etc. Corporations on the other hand are social constructs and as such are means to an end and not ends in themselves.
President Obama defined the 2012 elections as a choice between two fundamentally different visions for the future of the United States. During a press conference in May the president said: "When you're president, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, then your job is not simply to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everyone in the country has a fair shot."
Liassez-faire capitalists base their theories on the idea that the most successful economies are those where the individual can pursue his or her own interests unfettered by government regulations. The problem with this idea is that we do not live in an ideally competitive world. We live in a finite world. And life's vicissitudes make it impossible for an aggregate of individuals pursuing their own interests in an unfettered way to translate into a just and equitable society.
"You didn't build that!"
In his speech at the RNC Paul Ryan defined President Obama's first term as a "dull adventureless journey from one entitlement to the next, a government-planned life, where everything is free but us".
It is reported that when journalists asked Albert Einstein how he came up with the idea of the theory of relativity he said: "I was standing on the shoulders of giants".
On the one hand conforming to a group can have a stultifying effect on the individual. On the other hand Einstein was acknowledging the role that a scientific tradition and other scientists had played in his thinking.
In an article "Calling all liberals : its time to fight" Benjamin R. Barber says:
Liberals fight first for liberty—not for equality and against liberty, not for community and against individualism. The young people in Zuccotti Park (which they call Liberty Plaza, its original name) talk about their “autonomy” before anything else. Liberty is no single ideology’s privileged ground but the alpha and omega of Western political culture. It is the core of the conservative and liberal visions. The difference is that for liberals, liberty is public. Liberals believe that while private individuals enjoy a right to freedom, only citizens realize freedom by making laws for themselves. Humans are social by nature and live in relationships—families, neighborhoods and communities. We must legitimate our dependent relationships and render them interdependent through democratic institutions and government. It is citizens who are truly free. Consequently, government cannot be deemed an anonymous “them” or bureaucratic “it” that oppresses individuals. For in a democracy, citizens are government. Democracy is not opposed to but is the condition of our liberty. It enables citizens to be autonomous as well as to live under the moral and civic restraints imposed by self-legislation rule of law.
As
Jonathan Chait argues in the article "The Fact finders: the anti-dogma dogma" liberals are not statists in the sense that they see government as an end in itself. Liberals base their ideas on a value system that emphasizes the social nature of humans and the relationships in which they live. Government is the means by which people cooperate to achieve collaboratively that which they cannot do on their own.
President Obama also said that by pointing out to business people that their business activities are dependent upon public investment in infrastructure, research and development and a skilled and educated workforce, does not deny the role that individual initiative and creativity plays in the success of a business.
Joseph Stiglitz has pointed out that by themselves markets produce very little basic research. And government has been responsible for financing most of the important scientific breakthroughs, including the internet, the first telegraph line and many bio-tech breakthroughs.
In his inaugural address in 1980 Ronald Reagan said: Government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem. For 30 years or longer there has been a relentless assault on the role of government in society and the idea of civic responsibility. Today Republicans equate pragmatic problem-solving government intervention with doctinaire socialism. Civic-minded Republicans have been marginalized and the party is dominated by the Christian Right who have a deep hostility to the modern secular state and Corporatists who say they want to shrink government so that it can be drowned in a bathtub.
In July 2011 a Harris poll showed that only 44% of Americans believed in global warming. In 2007 the figure had been 71%. In 2009 a Harris poll found that 73% of Democrats believed that the use of fossil fuels is linked to global warming, compared to 28% of Republicans and 49% of Independents. During 2012 election campaign many Republicans were saying that global warming is a hoax and concern over environmental degradation is a socialist plot and a stalking horse for subjecting Americans to collectivist tyranny! This then is the intellectual climate Democrats have to contend with as they seek to govern the country.
In August 2011 the world looked on in disbelief as the very same Republicans who had cheered George W. Bush on when he started two unfunded wars while lowering taxes at the same time, manufacture a crisis over raising the debt ceiling. Thereby demonstrating that they were quite prepared to hold not only the American economy but also the global economy hostage to their narrow political interests and power plays.
In spite of the number of filibusters in the Senate skyrocketing and almost unprecedented obstructionism on the part of the Republicans, the Obama Administration can point to an impressive list of accomplishments with regard to good governance in the public interest.
Having said this I think that I agree with P M Carpenter when he says:
Reading Krugman's blogging about proposed and counterproposed fiscal-cliff deals is like reading a day-to-day history of the Korean War peace negotiations--"I’m agonizing, big time; as of last night I was marginally positive, right now marginally negative"--so I'd like to offer, to Prof. Krugman, this advice. Endorse no compromise. Not this time.
Ordinarily I'm a big defender of the art. Compromise is, after all, the essence of politics, notwithstanding the intensity of the far right's and activist progressives' commonplace exhortations to just fight, fight, fight to the bitter end, which are more pretentious than strategic.
In today's circumstances, however, I find myself among their ranks, although not for ideological or idealistic reasons. Rather, I believe we've arrived at a critically decisive juncture with respect to the essence of governance and raw power, much as Lincoln did in 1861--a juncture at which he could either compromise the Union into oblivion, or he could crush the South into submission.
I came across a very interesting post by Ernest E. Canning in the comments section at
www.bradlog.com
The problem is not and never has been the size of the federal government per se. The problem is whether government complies with its constitutionally recognized function of promoting the general welfare or is used simply as a tool to secure unchecked corporate wealth and power.
The GOP has never truly been concerned about the size of government. To the contrary, federal spending under every Republican administration since Reagan has far exceeded that under Democratic Presidents.
Republicans love big government when it comes to the military, wars, and controlling the personal lives of ordinary citizens (e.g., the war on women, the war on drugs).
The GOP's true concern is the accountability that accompanies democratic governance and the rule of law.
They and their Wall Street cronies treat the national treasury as if it were their personal piggy bank. They create massive deficits because those provide a great excuse to destroy the New Deal. Outsourcing, a war on unions and the middle class, an unlimited ability to flood the airwaves with the type of political propaganda that only corporate wealth can buy and the elimination of the New Deal safety net all serve as a means to disarm the Democratic opposition --- all with an eye toward oligarchy in which billionaires like Charles and David Koch become the masters of us all.
There was a time when organized labor provided an important countervaling force to the power of the corporations. Today the globalization of the financial markets and the outsourcing and offshoring of jobs have put the trade unions under great pressure. In a post the blogger
Rootless_e chronicles how this sorry state of affairs came about. The Taft-Hartley Act which passed in 1947 despite Truman's veto would eventually have a crippling effect on organized labor. Rootless_e goes on to say: "... government under right wing economic control rewrote corporate and bankruptcy laws to favor Mitt Romney style looters, the tax code was changed to subsidize outsourcing and media was centralized under anti-union mega corporations ..."
In "The wrecking crew: how conservatives rule" Thomas Frank quotes Grover Norquist :
First, we want to remove liberal personnel from the political process. Then we want to capture those positions of power and influence for conservatives. Stalin taught the importance of this principle. He was running the personnel department, while Trotsky was fighting the White Army. When push came to shove for control of the Soviet Union, Stalin won. His people were in place and Trotsky’s were not. . . . With this principle in mind, conservatives must do all they can to make sure that they get jobs in Washington
.
Commentators and analysts have pointed to the way in which the Occupy Wall Street Movement managed to change the national conversation away from deficits to the growing inequality in society and concerns over social and economic injustice. The question arises: How can OWS protests impact on the power relations that influence policy making and legislative programs? Rootless_e argues that there needs to be a greater engagement by the left in the contest for state power [in ways that strengthen the rule of law]. Is this not what happened with the Early Progressives, the Early Populists and the Civil Rights Movement?
The Early Progressives reformed local government tackling corruption and also introduced greater efficiency in government. In their essay Lynn and Longman say that the reforms brought about by the Early Popupulists working with the Roosevelt Administration led to greater democratic distribution of economic power. The Civil Rights Movement fought for the inclusion of marginalized communities and created democratic space for greater diversity in society.
The plutocracy and their allies in the Republican Party have been using electoral politics and the divide and conquer tactics of the culture wars to pursue narrow corporate interests.
The culture wars have been a scourge and a blight on the political landscape. They have led to the radicalization of the Republican Party. One hundred years ago populists were angry with robber barons, monopolists and economic royalists. Today the culture wars have given rise to a right wing populism filled with misdirected anger. The culture wars have made it difficult to have a national conversation on the problems facing the United States today, namely what should America's role be on the global stage; an effective response to the problem of international terrorism; declining social mobility and the redistribution of wealth upwards; climate change and environmental degradation; the regulation of gun ownership.
The extent to which the mainstream media fail to challenge the ahistorical and decontextualized Republican talking points, make it difficult to have a reasoned public discourse on the real reasons for the financial collapse in 2008; or exactly how tax cuts for the rich and subsidies for Big Oil will lead to job creation; or how maintaining the gargantuan American military machine is leading to the erosion of the public sector and vital government functions in the United States.
Technological advancement and modernity have lead to a truly dramatic improvement in the standard of living of large numbers of people over the past 200 years. In his book "The end of poverty" Jeffrey Sachs says that in 1800 the average life expentancy in Western Europe was 40 years.
When the Christian Right and Republicans seek to limit women's access to birth control and health care, do they have any idea how precarious life can be for infants and women of childbearing age in pre-modern society?
Jeffrey Sachs explains how the utilization of new forms of energy, namely fossil fuels led to the take-off of the economy 200 years ago. But the problem is that while industrialization brought with it enormous advantages to society, our well-being, in fact our very existence, is also dependent on the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat.
The emergence of life on earth was a wondrous occurrence. And it has become a matter of great urgency that we face up to the fact that the patterns of production and consumption based on fossil energy have become a major cause of environmental degradation and global warming, thereby endangering many life forms including human life.
As a South African I am also acutely aware of the Januslike role modern technology can play in society and that progress can only bring about meaningful change in society when there are democratic constraints on the exercise of power.
In The Dark Legacy of Reaganomics Robert Parry says:
A half century of wise policies by the federal government – from the depths of the Great Depression through Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, Harry Truman’s Fair Deal, Dwight Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System, John Kennedy’s Space Program, Lyndon Johnson’s civil rights laws, Richard Nixon’s Environmental Protection Agency and Jimmy Carter’s commitment to renewable energy – had created momentum for a resurgent middle class in which average folk could have enjoyed a level of comfort and security unparalleled in human history.
That was the potential payoff from all the achievements and innovations that had been accomplished through investments by the American taxpayers and their government, in collaboration with U.S. industry. Productivity was about to skyrocket.
National Progress
Government-backed projects had extended electricity and communications to all corners of the nation; created a transportation infrastructure that was the envy of the world; spurred development of microprocessors for computers; funded advances in pharmaceuticals, agriculture and science; and opened the door to a new information age with the early development of the Internet.
In an article entitled "The revolt of the Rich"
Mike Lofgren says: "Our plutocracy now lives like the British in colonial India: in the place and ruling it, but not of it".
Parallel to the growth of powerful multinational companies, there have been calls for more and more deregulation, the privatization of the commons, lower taxes and austerity, except when it comes to military expenditure. This has made it possible for the corporate sector to circumvent public scrutiny and democratic accountability. But economic activity does not occur in a vacuum. Are we not seeing a situation where the price society has to pay for the environmental degradation caused by fossil fuels is being shifted away from the corporate sector on to ordinary people? What the are the implications of this for the global economy and also social and political stability?
David Fenton says: Green energy opponents are the real job killers. And he quotes the British economist Nicholas Stern who said of green energy: "These investments will play the role of the railways, electricity, the motor car and information technology in earlier periods of economic history".