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Regulatory capture is how fascism hits your doorstep
American Thinker ^ | 4 Jun, 2023 | John Dale Dunn

Posted on 06/04/2023 4:06:20 AM PDT by MtnClimber

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has raised the issue of regulatory capture in the matter of pharmaceutical company "capture" of the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, all powerful agencies in the public health sphere. He always reminds us of the financial entanglements and the resultant political relationships that are combined to make regulatory capture, a cooperative relationship that approaches collusion and the appearance of an old enemy of our representative Republic: fascism. He says it is destroying American freedoms and even economic vitality and must be extinguished.

That administrative state is even more of a problem for the citizens because of regulatory capture — the control of agency activities created by the industries or non-governmental agencies that influence agency regulatory activity to the disadvantage of the citizen-consumer.

The sham appearance of agency review by supposedly independent adviser experts is akin to regulatory capture, but there is a lot more discussed in an article by Jeffrey Tucker, founder of the Brownstone Institute and regular columnist for the Epoch Times.

Mr. Tucker starts his essay with examples of how small businesses and farmers and general activity are impaired and made more expensive by the administrative/regulatory state. The regulatory state has its allies in the regulated areas. The trend to mergers and acquisitions makes for large entities that have the ability to influence government much more than the middle-class person, professional, or small business–owner. Mr. Tucker provides some detail:

- The production, processing, transportation, and sale of food are heavily regulated, and that results in large interests controlling food with quasi-monopolistic power.

- The Food and Drug Administration is heavily dependent on the pharmaceutical companies for its budget. That means the Pharma dog wags the FDA tail on many matters....

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Society
KEYWORDS: bigpharma; deepstate; fascism; regulations
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1 posted on 06/04/2023 4:06:20 AM PDT by MtnClimber
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To: MtnClimber

And they dare to call conservatives fascists.


2 posted on 06/04/2023 4:06:29 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of Colorado scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

Totalitarianism has many tentacles, DEI and ESG being two more of them.


3 posted on 06/04/2023 4:24:15 AM PDT by FreedomForce
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To: MtnClimber
Excellent article and every word of it is true.

But what on Earth can be done about it?

When the big-business, big-labor, big-government, big-healthcare, and the military-industrial complex controls every facet of life, trust-busting isn't exactly an option.

4 posted on 06/04/2023 4:36:06 AM PDT by RoosterRedux (See my FR homepage for a link to the entire Bible narrated by David Suchet on youtube. FREE!)
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To: MtnClimber

So Kennedy just discovered this?

His family pushed it for half a century


5 posted on 06/04/2023 4:39:59 AM PDT by Regulator (It's fraud, Jim)
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To: MtnClimber

Progressive leftists employ alinsky tactics in virtually EVERYTHING they do, think and say. If you haven’t already or even if you had in the past...read “rules for radicals” to truly understand what normal thinking people are up against. These enemies are more than just radicals...they are ideologues bent on YOUR destruction in every aspect and will sacrifice their own selves to accomplish the goal. Knowing ones enemies and how they think is the only way to anticipate their moves before they make them. Most conservatives think if you ignore the radical people and just go about living life that eventually they go away. Keep in mind friends...dodo birds are extinct for a reason. Just fyi.


6 posted on 06/04/2023 4:41:26 AM PDT by Qwapisking ("IF the Second goes first the First goes second" L.Star )
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To: MtnClimber

“Regulatory capture” is a term created by would-be fascists who felt stymied because regulatory agencies have not (until now) acted with impunity. The truth is, historically, regulators were and are politically connected administrators, nothing more, with no particular knowledge or understanding of whatever industry or activity they intended to regulate. Industries basically have to tell regulators how to regulate them, and that’s how it should be it you want a functioning economy, and the alternative is a royal cluster-F if a woefully ignorant regulator avoids “capture” and decides to do whatever they want, which is where we are headed.


7 posted on 06/04/2023 5:02:48 AM PDT by TimSkalaBim
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To: MtnClimber

later


8 posted on 06/04/2023 5:06:04 AM PDT by unread ("It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required." W. Churchill.)
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To: MtnClimber
Repeating the quote in part: ",,,this system constitutes not a free market but a corporatist structure more worthy of Mussolini's Italy than the country that once embraced free enterprise. Once you look carefully at what's really going on under the hood of the regulatory state, you can't help but be stunned."

Italian Fascism was born out of Italian socialism, allied to National Socialism which the Nazi leadership many times said was "Aryan socialism" to contrast the power it sought from Marx, which it called "Jewish," and both the Nazis and Italian Fascists worked, as the last century's Soviet and Sino Communists as officially anti-capitalists.

Today's Democrat Party shelters anti-capitalists and it shelters the Democrat Socialists of America, and speaks so often in Marxist lingo and the postmodern claptrap which followed in the history of the Left.

This is why today legacy media screams "right wing" in order to confuse the public. If the contest was between big, coercive government and small, restrained government, the differences would be crystal clear. This is why the American Left -- today's Soviet -- hollers "right wing." They have precious little more to say and their inner city "leadership" is showing them fools, grifters and outright criminals. As the "rubes" awaken to this reality, their power will fail, or become outright dictatorial. Time will tell.

9 posted on 06/04/2023 5:10:45 AM PDT by Worldtraveler once upon a time (Degrow government)
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To: Regulator

They still are.

Check out how the Kennedys are involved with ESCOs. And what allows that to make money for them.


10 posted on 06/04/2023 5:14:19 AM PDT by mewzilla (We will never restore the republic if we don't first secure the ballot box.)
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To: MtnClimber

Power is in government. Knowledge is in industry. Let’s make a deal. It’s a win-win for the participants. Consumers and small business lose out.

De-regulate.


11 posted on 06/04/2023 5:24:41 AM PDT by ChessExpert (Required for informed consent: "We have a new, experimental vaccine.")
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To: MtnClimber; metmom; 4everontheRight; 4Liberty; 5thGenTexan; 45semi; 101stAirborneVet; 300winmag; ...
Incremental steps slowly erode our Constitutional Rights to freedom, happiness, and human rights, which can lead to Fascism.
The Federal government is and example of this incremental creep, generally accomplished through "over-reach".
Government is supposed to protect us,.. not harm us.

12 posted on 06/04/2023 5:41:37 AM PDT by Tilted Irish Kilt
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To: mewzilla

Thanks.

I didn’t find out a lot about the Kennedy’s but I did not know what an ESCO was. Explains a lot about things going on where I am and why the local CommieCrats push it.


13 posted on 06/04/2023 5:49:41 AM PDT by Regulator (It's fraud, Jim)
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To: MtnClimber

The DOJ and the FBI regulate the criminal class. Regulatory capture applies to them too.


14 posted on 06/04/2023 5:49:46 AM PDT by AdSimp
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To: AdSimp
The DOJ and the FBI regulate the criminal class. Regulatory capture applies to them too.

So it would seem.

15 posted on 06/04/2023 5:57:22 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of Colorado scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: Worldtraveler once upon a time

Good post.


16 posted on 06/04/2023 7:55:25 AM PDT by Rusty0604 (Desperately looking for new conspiracy theories as all the old ones have come truep)
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To: MtnClimber; All
"Regulatory capture is how fascism hits your doorstep"
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument

I've unilaterally “amended” the first numbered clause in the Constitution to reflect information from the OP concerning unconstitutionally big federal government.

"Article I, Section 1: All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives [and non-popularly-elected bureaucrats running Federal Reserve, IRS, EPA, BLM, FDA, NIH, CDC, etc.]."

Consider that the crook lawmakers that misguided voters unthinkingly elect to DC long ago discovered the following. Lawmakers could avoid taking responsibility not only for the constitutionally limited federal government powers that voters trusted them with, but they could also get way with stealing the vast powers of the sovereign states, abusing those powers by using them to dictate oppressive federal domestic policy in the following way.

Crook federal lawmakers learned that they could protect themselves from the wrath of the voters by establishing constitutionally undefined, so-called federal regulatory agencies run by non-popularly elected bureaucrats, such agencies undoubtedly helping to foster the emergence of career lawmakers.

Sadly, when non-elected federal bureaucrats order citizens to “jump,” post-17th Amendment ratification, constitutionally low-information citizens reply with "how high?"

The bottom line is this. Constitutionally undefined, so-called "federal regulatory agencies" wrongly weaken the constitutionally enumerated voting power of qualified citizen voters.

Patriots need to be prepared for 2024 primaries.

17 posted on 06/04/2023 11:08:19 AM PDT by Amendment10
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To: MtnClimber

“I’m from the government and I’m here to help you” 🤪


18 posted on 06/04/2023 11:09:28 AM PDT by immadashell (Save Innocent Lives: Ban Gun Free Zones)
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To: immadashell

It’s a disturbing look at what is happening in our once free, but increasingly authoritarian, nation. If you’re as concerned about this trend as am I, please take 30 or so minutes and watch this message.
https://www.djameskennedy.org/truths-that-transform


19 posted on 06/04/2023 11:15:17 AM PDT by Dick Bachert (CONS)
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To: MtnClimber

It’s a disturbing look at what is happening in our once free, but increasingly authoritarian, nation. If you’re as concerned about this trend as am I, please take 30 or so minutes and watch this message.
https://www.djameskennedy.org/truths-that-transform


20 posted on 06/04/2023 11:16:21 AM PDT by Dick Bachert (CONS)
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