"The
interrelationship of business to business is no longer as important as is the
interrelationship of business with government" echoed the National Association
of Manufacturers when, in 1974, it moved its offices from New York City to
Washington, DC. Corporate Public Affairs
Offices in Washington, DC grew from 100 in 1969 to more than 500 by 1978. Lobbying firms grew from 175 in 1971 to near
2,500 by the mid-1980s. In the decade
from the late 1970's corporate Political Action Committees (PAC's) more than
doubled that of union PAC's support in congressional races growing from less
than parity to $3 of corporate support for every $1 of union support. Business outspent labor, again 3 to 1, and
organized the largest letter writing campaign in history, some 8 million pieces
of mail, to uphold, under a Democratic Congress, two of President Ford's vetoes
of bills favorable to consumers and labor.
The Office of Consumer Representation was rejected. Also rejected was the Common Situs Picketing
Bill which would have repealed those parts of the Taft-Hartley Bill that made
union organizing more difficult.
With the growing
rift between organized labor and business management, President Carter formed a
Labor-Management Group from which United Auto Worker's President Douglas Fraser
frustratingly resigned in 1978. In his
letter of resignation he stated, "I believe leaders of the business community,
with few exceptions, have chosen to wage a one-sided class war today in this
country--a war against working people, the unemployed, the poor, the minorities,
the very young and the very old, and even many in the middle class of our
society." He added, "The new flexing of
business muscle can be seen in many other areas. The rise of multinational
corporations that know neither patriotism nor morality but only self-interest,
has made accountability almost non-existent. At virtually every level, I
discern a demand by business for docile government and unrestrained corporate
individualism. Where industry once yearned for subservient unions, it now wants
no unions at all. Our tax laws are a scandal, yet corporate America wants even
wider inequities. The Republican Party
remains controlled by and the
Democratic Party heavily influenced by business interests. The reality is that
both are weak and ineffective as parties, with no visible, clear-cut
ideological differences between them. Because of business domination, I would
rather sit with the rural poor, the desperate children of urban blight, the
victims of racism, and working people seeking a better life than with those
whose religion is the status quo, whose goal is profit and whose hearts are
cold."
Expanding on Fraser's
class war observation, Paul Krugman has more recently written it is " class warfare of the rich against the middle class." He points to
four major elements to this: tax cuts for the rich; a decline in the
inflation-adjusted minimum wage (which peaked in 1968 at $10.04 in 2010
dollars); union-busting; and the deregulation of financial markets.
Between 1999 and 2009, the net jobs gain in the American workforce was zero. In the six previous decades, the number of jobs added rose by at least 20% per decade. Then there's income. In 2010, the average middle-class family took home $49,445, a drop of $3,719 or 7%, in yearly earnings from 10 years earlier. In other words, that family now earns the same amount as in 1996. In this lost decade, according economist Jared Bernstein, poor families watched their income shrivel by 12%, falling from $13,538 to $11,904. Even families in the 90th percentile of earners suffered a 1% percent hit, dropping on average from $141,032 to $138,923."
Income inequality has never
been greater in our country. The gap
separating the extreme rich from the professional class, the middle class, the
working poor and those in poverty is as wide today as it was in 1929 just
before the advent of the Great Depression. Income inequality resulting from the policies of the
business/corporate/wealthy-elite is a growing concern of many. Too, the political malfeasance, the political
corruption, that lead to the housing bubble, financial weapons of mass
destruction, the banking collapse and subsequent bailout is under increasing criticism,
It is probable that none of
this would have happened had not our judicial system embodied corporations with
personhood. Two recent decisions have
worsened an already bad situation. In the case of First National Bank v. Bellotti, the Supreme
Court's 1978 decision ensured freedom of speech for corporations. Its 2010
decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission further ensured
corporate spending for political purposes. In his dissent of the latter
decision, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, "the Court's ruling threatens to
undermine the integrity of elected institutions..." as if it were not already
undermined. The conservative jurist, the
late Justice Byron White, dissenting in the earlier 1978 corporatist decision,
was prescient in his recognition of what is reality today; failure of the State
to prevent special interests from consuming the State itself.
Corporations,
Justice White wrote, are "in a position to control vast amounts of economic
power which may, if not regulated, dominate not only the economy but also the
very heart of our democracy, the electoral process." The state, he continued, "has
a compelling interest in preventing institutions which have been permitted to
amass wealth as a result of special advantages extended by the State for
certain economic purposes from using that wealth to acquire an unfair advantage
in the political process. The state need not permit its own creation to consume
it."
The concern of Justice
White is today's reality. Senator Dick
Durbin said it best, "The Banks own the Senate". What he meant of course was
special interests own the entire Congress to which I would add, the
Administration as well and through them both, the Supreme Court too.
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