American Prospect - The Big Squeeze (high times for Bush Corp. backers)

[Dover]

The Big Squeeze
Republicans have always defended big business. But they’ve never done it quite like this.

By David J. Sirota
Issue Date: 09.01.04





For most Americans, the last four years have represented a low point in our economic history. But for the big-business interests financing the Bush campaign, these have been high times. In previous eras, and even under previous Republican administrations, corporate America was one of a number of players in the public-policy arena. But under the Bush administration, big business is both the player and the referee, having finally won its decades-long campaign to eliminate the boundary between executive suite and public office. No longer does the private-profit motive compete in the legislative process with public good; profit now owns the process, and the middle class is left to the vultures.

We technically have a representative government, but it is far less like democracy than like WWE wrestling -- entertaining theater with colorful characters, much fanfare, and a few body slams, but ultimately a rigged outcome. Industry no longer needs to lobby hard for regulatory rollbacks, because many of its own lobbyists have been appointed federal regulators. Congress openly admits that business writes many of the most important pieces of legislation. The White House slaps an official seal on memos from corporate executives and labels them “presidential policy initiatives.” The vice president is permitted to own shares of stock in a company for which he coordinates government contracts. And the Oval Office is occupied by a man whose major life experience was not public service but money-losing business deals (that somehow seemed to just make him richer and richer). In short, the government is now a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America.

This hostile takeover is no accident. After the crushing defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964, conservative business interests began a campaign to intimidate, infiltrate, and ultimately take over Washington. As David Brock documents in his new book, The Republican Noise Machine, the chief architects of the right’s new strategy laid out an agenda “whereby conservative business interests would create and underwrite a ‘movement’ to front their agenda.” And, slowly but surely, the campaign worked. This Republican Party–big-business nexus massaged its propaganda during the Nixon years, fertilized it under the Reagan administration in the 1980s, and incubated it into legislative experiments after taking over Congress in the 1990s. The George W. Bush era is simply the full-grown, out-of-control, bastard child of this 30-year orgy that’s been running roughshod over the middle class.....cont'd

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=8344

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I think BOTH Parties are very much in the embrace (or stranglehold) of big money. Granted, not all members of the wealthiest class support Bushco and the deep corruption and greed they espouse. Perhaps We The People find ourselves more in agreement, for instance, with the Soroses of that class. But it doesn't change the fact that currently there is NO TRUE REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT in this country, nor can there be as long as the wealthy manipulate the system. PERIOD.

Does anyone really believe that someone from outside their class, their exclusive club, or who has not been groomed and approved by these oligarchs, has a chance in Hell of serving in the White House?
I don't care how much they dress them up as 'populists' or 'socialists', or working stiffs who have lived the American Dream (of achieving wealth) if you scratch the surface you will find that they bear the golden brand of approval from the upper echelons of finance and power.

[Larkspur]

1. Sounds like the corruption we normally see in Latin American governments

Maybe we need Hugo Chavez to help us clean up our act.