OPINION & EDITORIAL
Ties to business reach new lows
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Also by Gabe Cohen:
- Masters controversy requires resolution (April 26, 2005)
- Students notice Grokster verdict (September 13, 2005)
- New media needs legal consideration (October 4, 2005)
- Online Gambling should be legalized (March 11, 2005)
- Morality should not be regulated by government (March 3, 2005)
Related Stories:
- Voting for a man, not against one (September 1, 2004)
- Life after Bush: Holding candidates to a higher standard of rhetoric (September 20, 2007)
- '08 hopefuls test political climate (November 15, 2006)
- As long as we're talking budgets (February 9, 2005)
- Bush opposition needs backbone (October 31, 2006)
by Gabe Cohen
Friday, February 18, 2005
Paramount Pictures’ 2004 remake of “The Manchurian Candidate” described the efforts of a sinister corporation to place a brainwashed candidate in the White House. In November 2004, George W. Bush was elected to a second term as the President of the United States. Now, President Bush is trying to push a $2.57 trillion budget past Congress while cutting 150 federal programs and catering to the desires of big business by increasing corporate tax cuts and privatizing Social Security.
Ties to industry and political cronyism are hardly novel trends in the White House. Teddy Roosevelt, an American icon, almost single-handedly laid the foundation for the construction of the Panama Canal in an effort to advance American financial interests. Warren G. Harding, generally regarded as the most corrupt president in the history of the United States, allowed members of the corporate elite to tap into publicly owned oil wells in the American West for personal financial gain. As late as the 1980s, Ronald Reagan played to corporate interests with substantial tax cuts and an aggressive American economic policy.
Even in light of this remarkably lax historical standard of presidential objectivity, the Bush administration has pushed the bedroom relationship between the executive branch and the Fortune 500 to an all-time low. President George W. Bush is a former Texas oil magnate who once served as the managing partner of the Texas Rangers. Vice President Dick Cheney is the former CEO of multi-billion dollar Halliburton Corporation, an American multinational that deals heavily in energy production, especially petroleum drilling in Eurasia. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is the former CEO of two Fortune 500 companies with interests as varied as broadband communication and pharmaceuticals. Wily presidential aid Karl Rove served as an advisor to tobacco companies from 1991-1996 before re-entering the political fray. Lest we forget, former President George H.W. Bush is a senior advisor to the Carlyle Group, a $20 billion titan with a large investment in the aerospace and defense industries.
Does anyone else see a conflict of interest here?
Had President William McKinley been heavily invested in the corporations providing military equipment for the Spanish-American War, citizens surely would have questioned his motives. If Gen. Douglas MacArthur had been one of the primary stockholders in the company that manufactured the M1 carbine, people might have been interested to know that millions of American troops were outfitted with that rifle in the ’50s. The situation that lies before us today is a glaring example of the very same trend, but time and again the general public meekly submits to the wishes of an executive branch beholden to American corporatocracy.
The point is not that powerful members of the Bush administration are financially beholden to various Fortune 500 companies. As realists are quick to point out, that’s simply political reality. What’s terrifying about the current administration is their complicity with big business on a level unprecedented in the wide scope of American political history.
The practical policies of the Bush administration reflect this disturbing trend. The president signed a $136 billion corporate-tax cut bill on October 22 that received virtually no media coverage. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans (read: CEOs) are now taxed 26.7 percent of their income, as opposed to 33 percent in 2001. Nevertheless, we lament over a skyrocketing deficit. Media consolidation has risen to an all-time high, with a single corporation having the ability to control up to 39 percent of any given media market.
The brilliant Athenian political philosopher Aristotle tellingly remarked in his Politics that “every state should be so administered and so regulated by law that its magistrates cannot possibly make money.” Instead, America has entered an era of increasing corporate unaccountability. The energy industry has created an Enron. The accounting industry has created an Arthur Andersen. Now, as Congress considers the fiscal year 2006 budget, we as voters should ask one crucial question: did we elect a man based on his foresight, leadership abilities and character, or on his stock portfolio?
Gabe Cohen (gacohen@wisc.edu) is a sophomore majoring in journalism.
Anonymous (February 18, 2005 @ 9:26am):
Bill Gates for President!
Campaign slogan, "He doesn't need any bribe money".
Anonymous (February 18, 2005 @ 9:34am):
There are plenty of greedy politicians on bothe sides feeding at the corporate trough.
It's sad that we can't get back to part-time politicians - people successful enough in the "real world" and willing to take on the burden of public service as a good deed - not as a path to power and wealth.
Putting the "Millionaire Next Door" in charge wouldn't be to everyones taste, but it couldn't be any worse than what we have now.
***
The Millionaire Next Door vs. the Politician in Washington
http://techcentralstation.com/021805B.html
This is not a class war -- many of the politicians, lawyers, and academics on the left earn incomes that are in the top 10 or 20 percent of all Americans. Rather, it is a values war, between a group whose core values are thrift and self-reliance and a group whose core values are paternalism and redistribution.
Anonymous (February 18, 2005 @ 10:37am):
Exactly how has Enron not been held accountable? They are bankrupt, many officers will go to prison, those that do not will never work again. How has AA not been held accountable? They took a terrible financial hit, and can likely never do business again. These "market failures" if you will, have been eliminated. They have in fact been held accountable.
Only in government do failures of this magnitude continue to be subsidized.
If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.
Anonymous (February 18, 2005 @ 11:07am):
Calvin Coolidge once said that the nations business is business.
It is hard for me to react to everything because this opininon piece is frought with misleading statements.
1. Privatized social security will help corporate America. This is true, but it investment in general helps corporate America, and that investment helps the American economy. More than 50% of working adults are invested in corporate America in some way. As a result, people who live modestly will retire as millionaires. The same is true for the partial privatization of Social Security. It will increase the rate of return for people participating in the program. Anyone under thirty years old is an idiot if they are against the proposal as it stands because we all stand to have an extra couple thousand dollars per year to invest in a private fund that will yield 7-10% returns over the long run. That means that from 22 years of age to 65 years of age, the age of retirement and the reception of social security benefits, we will all be millionaires in today's dollars. All the while, the solvency of social security will be preserved. Oh, but that's right. It is all for corporate America. Therefore it must be bad. Let's not forget that corporate America is the largest provider of health care and insurance and retirement pensions, giving security and health to millions of Americans.
2. It is a long-standing tradition for advisors to the President to be successful business people. The thought is that success in business may translate to success in governemnt, especially where budgets are concerned.
3. When companies have extra money, i.e. money that the government did not take from them in the form of taxes, that money is re-invested in capital and labor, helping the economy. This was proven under Kennedy and again under Reagan. Under Reagan (1981-1988), unemployment dropped from about 9% to 5% and inflation dropped form 13% to 4%, marking the greatest era of peace time economic growth in the history of the United States. Consult an almanac. The rich became richer, the middle class became rich, and the poor became middle class. Those are FACTS that the left in this country wishes to hide and lie about. There was not a massive increase in homelessness or a massive amount of people becoming poor. Those are lies. The truth is like kryptonite to the left.
I am going to summarize this opinion piece for everyone. Corporate America is evil. Any involvement with corporate America is therefore evil. Anything that may help corporate America is pandering to corporate fatcats and a selling out of normal Americans, who by the way happen to have a very vested interest in the success of a variety of corporations, but let's not talk about that. That would undermine the the opinion. That would undermine the solvency of the left in America.
Anonymous (February 18, 2005 @ 11:48am):
From the Chicago Tribune (a traditionaly conservative paper)
"Q: Wouldn't creating individual accounts require more government debt?
A: Yes. If the accounts are funded out of existing payroll taxes, as the president proposed, then creating the accounts would require Social Security to tap the trust funds even sooner. That is because the system would need to keep paying current beneficiaries while also funding nascent accounts for people who probably will not retire for decades. The borrowing costs of Bush's plan would be more than $1 trillion in the first 10 years of a fully phased plan, and then $3.5 trillion in the next 10 years. The White House believes the costs will even out over the next 75 years--that any debt incurred will be balanced by gains later--but in the short term the country's debt burden would rise. The costs would really begin to soar about the time Social Security is projected to begin withdrawing money from the trust funds"
Yeah, that sounds like a great idea to help our economy.
Anonymous (February 18, 2005 @ 12:25pm):
Speaking of ties, The Mendota Beacon actually broke a story online about D.C. funding ties to The Madison Observer. It's at http://www.mendotabeacon.com/breakingnews.html
Anonymous (February 18, 2005 @ 1:39pm):
Most people receiving SS think that they are getting back the money that they personally put in, with interest. This would only be the case under a private, personal account system. The phoney, so-called trust fund has nowhere near the amount of the current unfunded future liabilities. Besides that, the "assets" are all IOUs from one US government agency to another. It's axactly like an insurance company buying its own bonds and calling them assets.
So, the system must be changed to what Bush suggests in order for reality to agree to what politicians have fooled most people into believing is already in place.
Anonymous (February 18, 2005 @ 1:45pm):
When companies have extra money, i.e. money that the government didn't take from them in taxes, it is re-invested in capital and labor. Unfortunately, that capital and labor is increasingly in the developing world.
The only people who see a real benefit from corporate welfare are the relatively few who run the corporations or own dividend paying stock. The concentration of large sums of money in the pockets of the few is not economically efficient and it does not serve the U.S. economy.
We have heard about trickle down benefits for many years, but in an increasingly global economy the argument is dead. Voodoo economics is just that, a belief system with little more than rhetoric and theory behind it. If this was ever a rational theory, globalization has destroyed it.
P.S. Please tell George that I refuse to pay back his campaign contributors with my garaunteed retirement money, I would rather take a little less than gamble on the idea that the stock market, in its current or any form, will exist in 50 years.
Anonymous (February 18, 2005 @ 4:44pm):
"the relatively few who ... own dividend paying stock."
That's because we don't have personal accounts - containing dividend paying stocks!
ps. You'd be better off trying to accumulate some of those dividend paying stocks, rather than planning to sponge off the government.
***
"The concentration of large sums of money in the pockets of the few is not economically efficient and it does not serve the U.S. economy."
The the US government qualify as "the few"? They took in all that excess SS tax and then LENT IT BACK TO THEMSELVES!!!
This is truely a case of evil self-dealing if ever there was one.
If the excess SS taxes had been invested in evil corporate stocks and bonds the economy would be in great shape and there would be actual assets in the SS "trust fund" - and more of them!
If SS (actually FICA - Federal Insurance Contributions Act) was an insurance company, everybody involved would be liable to go to jail for criminal malfeasance.
***
"...my garaunteed retirement money"
You are a true moron if you think that SS is "garaunteed". It can be changed at any time - just ask me, there was a time I thought that retirement age would be 65 - surprise, it's not! Oh yeah, there was a time when SS wasn't subject to income tax - that was changed too.
Anonymous (February 18, 2005 @ 5:04pm):
At least Bush didn't take campaign contributions from the ChiComs and give nuclear grade plutonium to the North Koreans.
Anonymous (February 18, 2005 @ 11:12pm):
So the Herald finds yet another lefty to regurgitate arguments from moveon.org and the debates on cable news (we've heard Halliburton mentioned how many times in the past year?... geez at least find another company to tarnish). I'm so impressed. This is not to say that I don't like reading perspectives from the left, but at least get more people like Hunter who has original thoughts and good writing skills.
Oh and one other thing. Whoever said that the Tribune is a conservative newspaper has either never read it in about 50 years or is using the Madison Observer as his basis for comparison.
