The GOP is not pro-business. It's pro-CEO.
Just as Wall Street morphed from a capital funding service industry for American manufacturing into a fiscal manipulation operation benefiting only itself, America's CEO class have morphed from business leaders into board of directors manipulators intent on lining their own pockets at the expense of shareholders, employees and customers--and America.
Business don't make political contributions. CEOs and Wall Street insiders do--mainly to Republican politicians. And the payback they want is whatever helps them in their decades-long campaign to redistribute America's wealth from the middle class into their own pockets.
This has been hugely successful. CEOs made 20X what their low-level employees made back in the 1950s. Now it's more like 400X. And I don't see their business decisions and leadership being 20X better than CEOs' decisions were in the 1950s.
This shift came out of middle class pockets. And they have the brass to claim that President Obama believes in wealth redistribution! They're the ones who do, and this is simple fact, easily verified from nonpartisan sources.
The Republican Party leadership comprises the nimble and devoted servants of these billionaires, who feel no sense of allegiance to this country or even to their own businesses. They've jiggered the rules so that if their business prospers, they prosper. And if their business sags or even fails, they still prosper. Ditto the country as a whole.
Only when the fortunes of the leaders rise and fall with those of their organization do leaders lead well. Otherwise, if they've become uncoupled from their organization's fortunes, they will work for their own ends regardless of how it affects that organization. That's just human nature.
The Democrats are no saints, and I strongly oppose their efforts to help Mexican citizens living here illegally at Americans' expense, as well as their pandering to public employee unions and every ethnic/racial/religious group they can single out for special favors.
But their policies aren't driving America into the ditch.
The real problem is that in their six years of ruling all three branches of government, the Republicans did so much damage to the economy that it will take over a decade to repair it.
Yet presidents are elected every four years, and President Obama can't possibly undo the Republicans' damage in that timeframe. This is the advantage dictatorships like Communist China have over us--their solutions' timeframes can match reality.
So we'll let the foxes back into the henhouse, most likely.
After all, they are the experts on hens.
3 comments:
I've been mulling over this post for a few days now, and finally decided to comment. Here's my first reaction, and it's probably quite predictable, considering my previous comments:
I agree that it's disgusting how the wealth gap in the US has grown. But crucifying the GOP for the bad economy isn't 100% fair. In fact, I think the political pendulum of blaming the other party for a sin has deteriorated our ability to rationally look at the issues. The GOP may have encouraged the move towards richer CEO's, but the left hasn't exactly gone out of it's way to rationally fix this problem. This brings me to my second reaction. This article helped me pull some of my thoughts together:
http://alturl.com/y4zst
I typically tend to attack the root of a problem if I feel the need to disagree. So on this subject, I see the billionaire CEO problem from a political viewpoint also. Clearly there must be some sort of policy/regulation/tax problem that I can fix through the voting process.... But is really the case?
The article I mentioned provides some good points, but the one that struck me most was how our political process has not successfully used the Great Recession as a spring board to resolve major problems in any convincing way. The health care bill was a lukewarm success at best since big Pharma 'won' the PR war, despite the bill being passed. And the above article adequately demonstrates that other social issues are hardly being resolved. The author feels optimistic that the wealth inequality pendulum will eventually swing back in the not too distant future, but I have my doubts. While political fights may be our best hope for "Hope and Change" [for a better future], the last few years have been less than encouraging. While the GOP and Democrats joust for the next public race, the CEO's are maneuvering themselves to either break even or outright win. When the political willpower of the electorate is spent so vigorously while watching promise-making competitions during campaigning, precious little vigor is left over to hold politicians accountable. Thus, the CEO's win, and wealth inequality grows.
This result does not absolve the GOP though. If I had confidence that the Democrats would genuinely face wealth inequality with the attention it deserves, I'd be writing something completely different here. However, I think this does demonstrate a deeper, more systemic problem: Something needs fixing, and our government can't/won't fix it. Too bad we can't vote out the CEO's.
I've been mulling over this post for a few days now, and finally decided to comment. Here's my first reaction, and it's probably quite predictable, considering my previous comments:
I agree that it's disgusting how the wealth gap in the US has grown. But crucifying the GOP for the bad economy isn't 100% fair. In fact, I think the political pendulum of blaming the other party for a sin has deteriorated our ability to rationally look at the issues. The GOP may have encouraged the move towards richer CEO's, but the left hasn't exactly gone out of it's way to rationally fix this problem. This brings me to my second reaction. This article helped me pull some of my thoughts together:
http://alturl.com/y4zst
I typically tend to attack the root of a problem if I feel the need to disagree. So on this subject, I see the billionaire CEO problem from a political viewpoint also. Clearly there must be some sort of policy/regulation/tax problem that I can fix through the voting process.... But is really the case?
The article I mentioned provides some good points, but the one that struck me most was how our political process has not successfully used the Great Recession as a spring board to resolve major problems in any convincing way. The health care bill was a lukewarm success at best since big Pharma 'won' the PR war, despite the bill being passed. And the above article adequately demonstrates that other social issues are hardly being resolved. The author feels optimistic that the wealth inequality pendulum will eventually swing back in the not too distant future, but I have my doubts. While political fights may be our best hope for "Hope and Change" [for a better future], the last few years have been less than encouraging. While the GOP and Democrats joust for the next public race, the CEO's are maneuvering themselves to either break even or outright win. When the political willpower of the electorate is spent so vigorously while watching promise-making competitions during campaigning, precious little vigor is left over to hold politicians accountable. Thus, the CEO's win, and wealth inequality grows.
This result does not absolve the GOP though. If I had confidence that the Democrats would genuinely face wealth inequality with the attention it deserves, I'd be writing something completely different here. However, I think this does demonstrate a deeper, more systemic problem: Something needs fixing, and our government can't/won't fix it. Too bad we can't vote out the CEO's.
PS: What is the maximum length for a comment? Or maybe I need to find some better one-liner answers.... :)
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