Our Most 'Corporate' President?

Wall Street Journal ^ | January 21, 2004 | HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.

[OESY]

His drubbing in Iowa won't change one thing: Howard Dean set the tone of the Democratic campaign on an issue even beyond Iraq, and that's insisting George Bush is uniquely "beholden to corporate interests." Here is Mr. Dean blaming the president for the landmark business scandals of our time: "Our business culture is a disaster in this country. And this president's largely responsible for it . . . He just winks and nods."

[OESY]

Jenkins does not go far enough. To offset the popularity and effectiveness of Republicans in raising hard money among small contributors, Democrats have increasingly relied on contributions from corporations, labor, NGOs and wealthy individuals like Soros. To mask their tactics, they blame corporate coziness on Republicans. But their ideological base demands, and responds positively, to all attempts to demonize business, including the vast numbers of small business people who have always been responsible for the major part of job growth and who have been major benefactors of the Bush tax cuts that encourages them to make investments and to hire workers. The Democrat base is united in wanting to rollback the tax reductions on "wealthy" small business people, if not all taxpayers. If their leaders say otherwise, it doesn't matter. The base won't allow it a deviation in policy of class warfare. If it hurts the economy sufficiently by election time, they win.

In summary, Democrats are antibusiness, as Joe Lieberman has often lamented. Driven by ideology, they seek to hurt those who hire. Furthermore, their "jobs program" can be encapsulated as a one-two punch of Kyoto and trial lawyers -- both of which would force businesses to layoff or fire workers and eventually close either by regulation or bankruptcy. Democrats looked successful under Clinton because they benefited from not only Reagan's economic policies (characterized by the media as "trickle-down supply-side Reaganomics") but also JFK's (characterized as "a rising tide lifting all boats"). Whatever the contrived characterization, the policy and the effects were the same: retain funds in the more productive private sector, thereby stimulating the economy, generating new business and personal income, and not incidentally new tax revenues. When Democrats rail against the deficit, which Clinton helped created by bursting his own bubble -- by attacking telecom, biotech and high tech companies like Microsoft, as well as the auto, tobacco, beer, gun and other industries, they demonstrate they haven't a clue as to what makes economic sense and, instead, prefer to play politics and pander to their angry base.

[CasearianDaoist]

FDR fostered Big business as we no it - he did to fight WWII. Moderen "Big Business" goes hand in hand with "Big Government" and "Big Labor."

The real businesses that the Dems hate are the small and medium sized ones: It leasd the serfs to dangerous ideas above their stations.

[CasearianDaoist]

no it = know it, sorry

[Dog Anchor]

"The Bush presidency is the realization of our founding fathers' fear - that one day economic power would seize political power. Enron epitomizes this fear, corporate power run amok. The executives at Enron misled the public
and their employees to line their pockets with millions of dollars while employees lost their jobs, lost their health insurance and lost their pensions," Dean said. "President Bush has brought the Enron model from Texas to Washington. He's implemented an economic plan for the country with
reckless tax cuts based on false economic assumptions that benefit the wealthiest in our society at the expense of ordinary working Americans. The President's economics are Enron economics."
- Howard Dean

"We grew heartily to distrust the reformer who never denounced wickedness unless it was embodied in a rich man. Human nature does not change; and that type of 'reformer' is as noxious now as he ever was. The loudmouthed upholder of popular rights who attacks wickedness only when it is allied with wealth, and who never publicly assails any misdeed, no matter how flagrant, if committed nominally in
the interest of labor, has either a warped mind or a tainted soul, and should be trusted by no honest man."
-Theodore Roosevelt

---

[uncbob]

Never mind that the clean-up has been unprecedently speedy under the Bush Justice Department, with two dozen Enron culprits already in jail or indicted. Never mind that the previous record accounting fraud, Cendant, blew up halfway through Mr. Clinton's second term and we're still waiting for the principals to face trial later this year.

NO NO NO not NEVER MINM

GOP shouild be saying this in ADS on TV and also add ERON was a big Clinton Gore supporter

[gov_bean_ counter]

The Clinton Administration acted affirmatively on something like 18 of 20 requests from Enron for some sort of government intervention/assistance. This cannot be repeated by Republicans too often.

[Steve_Seattle]

Excellent post.

[Steve_Seattle]

"GOP shouild be saying this in ADS on TV and also add ERON was a big Clinton Gore supporter."

The GOP does need to fight back on this because the Dems think they can score points (and often do) just by saying the word "Enron." The Bush team needs to get the facts out; maybe they're saving it for the debates.

[LOC1]

The Democrats whine that Bush makes policy to benefit "special interests." Just who are those "special interests?" Certainly Enron cannot be counted among them. Haliburton has been investigated and found not to have done the wrongs for which the media castigated them. So who are the "special interests?" The answer is "you and me." The democrats can't stand that.

[Willie Green]

"Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains."

--Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G. Spafford, 1814. ME 14:119

"I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

--Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1816. FE 10:69

To the detriment of domestic business, George W. Bush's allegience is to transnational corporatism. His regulatory, social welfare, taxation, immigration and trade policies all combine to undercut American industry and the wages & benefits of the American Middle Class workforce for the benefit of those corporations who gleefully export their workforce and import foreign goods and labor.

[bolobaby]

The thing that makes me most angry is that these democratic candidates denounce Bush's ties to "special interests" as they stand amongst a crowd of union supporters. The news shows run these clips continuously.

Um... why can't the average American see the blatant hypocrisy here? What is a union if not a SPECIAL INTEREST?

That recent study on the source of funding by party shows that democrats are more beholden to big business than the republicans could ever hope to be. You have to face facts, of course, that organized labor IS a (very) big business... hollywood entertainment IS a (very) big business... trial lawyers ARE a (very annoying) big business. Sigh...

I guess I can't understand why people are so willing to call consulting firms big business but not labor unions. They both serve practically the same exact function - to negotiate for and to provide labor resources.

[CasearianDaoist]

I do not know about "the average voter" or if there is such a thing. But look at the brutal facts: For over 40 years the socialists have controlled education at all levels and the media.

You know, Reagan converted me to a conservative and I had to give a long hard look at my life and what I had supported - I had to do some real soul searching and it was not comfortable, believe me.

It is hard for people who have been steeped in immorality for year to face it, even if they were unwittingly lead to such immorality.

[OESY]

"We grew heartily to distrust the reformer who never denounced wickedness unless it was embodied in a rich man. Human nature does not change; and that type of 'reformer' is as noxious now as he ever was. The loudmouthed upholder of popular rights who attacks wickedness only when it is allied with wealth, and who never publicly assails any misdeed, no matter how flagrant, if committed nominally in the interest of labor, has either a warped mind or a tainted soul, and should be trusted by no honest man."
-Theodore Roosevelt

Good quote. Further, the Dems can't blame Bush for the recession in 2001 right after they vaporized $4-5 trillion in stock market capitalization. To do so would argue that the Great Depression was exclusively FDR's when everyone knows that FDR's tax hikes and Congress' passage of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were major factors that contributed to the severity of the economic downturn -- not just the crash itself.

[KevinDavis]

I'm sure Pat would have done a better job.

[OPS4]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1062220/posts

Well at least George W. Does not affect communism in his speaches.

Read this thread.

Ops4 God BLess America!

[OESY]

Thanks for the link. Let's get it e-mailed around America!