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Great post!

The Rockefeller/Roosevelt/Morgan cabal set Americans up when it/they pushed for the creation of the Interstate Commerce Comission and the soon after double whammy of the Federal Reserve along with the Fed'l taxing authority under the 16th Amendment. The very crux of the empowerment, and of the enrichment, of the political and social elites so well illustrated in the very recent book "Do as I say - not as I do" which reveals such hypocrites like Striesand and her $22,000/year water bill (for her huge lawns), or the tax evading Kennedy Trusts, or the fact that Kerry paid a mere 12% on millions of income; and which all of whom are huge critics of repealing the death tax and raising taxes.

TR, who succeeded Rockefeller's hand-picked predecessor McKinley, played to the gallery vis his attack of the Std Oil monopoly, while behind the scenes he demanded increased campaign contributions from Std Oil!

In 1907 Judge Landis fined Std oil $29 million. Two weeks later began the great panic of 1907, and in 1911 the SCOTUS ordered Std Oil's dissolution.

In retaliation to the welfare and "liberal crowd", Wall Street, and the Fedl Govt's campaign against Std Oil, Rockefeller saw the power of "philanthropies" in their effectiveness in destroying him. As he had done in building Std Oil, he saw the benefit in compromising with his enemies and joining forces with them, all the while engineering to master and destroy them.

They were cheaply bought off, and he took them over lock, stock and barrel, beginning with taking in hand the social service and "uplift" organizations, which he eventually organized through the New York Tuberculosis & Health Assoc., under Harry L. Hopkins, into a nationwide Social Service Trust. Such control not only muzzled his santimonious critics, but covered all his activities with the cloak of respectibility and thus allowed the tapping of the gullible charitable to the tune of $4 Bil/year, a penny of which was NEVER spent on a TB patient.

The Rockefeller "philathropies" were conceived solely for the dual purpose of removing the curse from the Rockefeller name while enabling the Rockefeller/Std Oil interests to carry on without interference from a hostile public or the Govt. Tons of money was spent influencing media, the Universities and Govt. And these were the guys responsible for mucking up the Middle East over oil.

Bear in mind that between the CW and the turn of the century America and her consumers prospered with ever falling prices in commodities such as oil, steel and in telephone and freight rates; small competititors where cramping the profits the Std Oils, the AT&T's and US Steel's. Hence the ICC, to rescue their profits, by fixing rates at the consumer's expense. (Remember what fixing oil prices in the 70's did for us)

These were the powers that talked America into WWI, which scholars say without which devastation, the rise of Hitler and WWII would never have happened.

Just as much as greedy politicians buying votes with OPM for "the common good", their industrialist enablers were the prime movers in the creation of the 20th Century Welfare/Warfare State we yet suffer mightily under, and it's unfathomable opportunity costs to the wealth of generations of Americans, still ongoing in a Govt that intervenes in markets & costs way too much.

The Commerce, Gen'l Welfare & Equal protection clauses were re-interperated by judicial fiat to further enable an unlimited Govt for and by the corporate, social (media/academe) and Govt elites.

For almost a century now our great public "educators" have indoctrinated generations into believing that Laissez-Faire capitalism was the main source of America's greatest problems, when in fact it was over-reaching Govt in every respect.

A great read that should cause even leftists to reconsider the above cancer of anti-capitalism is well told by Ray Childs in his intellectually honest essay "Big Business and the Rise of American Statism", which I heartily commend to all: http://praxeology.net/RC-BRS.htm