A 1980 broadcast highlights economic concentration and its historical relationship to fascism. The issue of the “1%” versus the “99%” is not new.
After discussion of the American corporate connections to the Third Reich, this program concludes with analysis of the perils of the concentration of economic power.
Several minutes in length, the conclusion of that program can be accessed here: Listen.
Of paramount significance, is the possibility that concentration of economic power in the United States might eventually produce for Americans what it did for Germans in the 1930’s.
The fact that many of the most important U.S. companies and individuals were deeply involved with Nazi industry and finance informs us that such a possibility is not as remote a sit might appear at first.
(These same interests attempted to overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt in a coup attempt in 1934, seeking to install a government modeled on Mussolini’s “corporate state.” Mussolini and his fascisti are pictured at right.)
With the very able assistance of co-host Mark Ortiz, Dave recorded the first of the archive shows, Uncle Sam and the Swastika (M11), on Memorial Day weekend of 1980 (5/23/80).
The program echoes at the distance of thirty years the warning that James Stewart Martin sounded in his 1950 book All Honorable Men. Noting how attempts at breaking up Hitler’s German economic power base had been foiled by the Germans’ powerful American business partners, Martin detailed the same pattern of concentration of economic power in the United States that had led to the rise of Nazism in Germany.
In 2005, Uncle Sam and the Swastika was distilled into For The Record #511. Since then, the American and global economies have tanked and may well get worse. The significance of an economic collapse for the implementation of a fascist cabal figures significantly in the several minutes of this excerpt.
At more than 30 years’ distance from the original recording of Uncle Sam and the Swastika, the questions raised in this broadcast loom large. Will the “calm judgement of business necessity”–fascism–that Martin foresaw in 1950 come to pass?
We should note that Mussolini termed the fascist system–which he christened–“the corporate state.” Another way of conceptualizing it would be to think of fascism as “capitalism on full auto.”
Housekeeping Note: Comments 1-50 here.
Comments 51-100 here.
The New York Times has a big new piece on the 158 ultra-wealthy families that have been taking full advantage of the post-Citizens United era of unlimited secret political giving. Surprise! They mostly give to Republicans and mostly made their fortunes in the financial and energy sectors. And they really, really, really want to get rid of the regulations in those sectors.
Plus, they’re doing all this, not for themselves, but for the little guy (LOL) so more new fortunes can be created once all those pesky regulations are done away with. Yep, they’re capturing the political system and deregulation the economy for the little people. Or at least that’s what they’re telling us. Surprise:
Aha! So the 158 ultras-rich families (who are mostly from the energy and finance sectors, are mostly giving to Republicans, and who provided most of the seed money raised by candidates in both parties) are doing all this ‘giving’ because they feel that deregulations will make it easier for the little guys to also get wealthy. Oh how philantrophic of them:
And in addition to their drive to deregulate for the little guy *guffaw*, these families have also taken it upon themselves to provide a helpful “financial check on demographic forces that have been nudging the electorate toward support for the Democratic Party and its economic policies”:
Presumably they’re doing all that for the little guy too.
So now we get to see how successful the American Oligarchy is going to be in dismantling the financial regulations that were put in place following the meltdown. And just remember, if they’re successful in turning the regulatory clock back to 2007, don’t think of it as a disaster waiting to happen. Just think of all the new family fortunes from little guys like yourself that can be made while they re-crash the financial sector:
“The biggest piece of the super-rich-super-donor story is money from the financial sector. And there has, as the chart above shows, been a huge swing of finance capital away from Democrats to Republicans that began in the 2012 election cycle — that is, after the passage of financial reform. Basically, we’re looking at the people who brought you the financial crisis trying to buy the chance to do it all over again.”
And they’re doing it all for the little guy. Yep.
Here’s a reminder that the privatization of the US justice system hasn’t just involved privatizing prisons and policing: thanks, in part, to a 2011 Supreme Court ruling, the profit motive is increasingly getting to work its market magic during actual legal hearings too. Especially for cases that would call for a class action lawsuit in a non-privatized legal system:
That’s quite a trend to just sort of sneak up on the American public over the last decade:
“All it took was adding simple arbitration clauses to contracts that most employees and consumers do not even read”
Yep, that’s all it took to basically overturn a foundation of the justice system…tricking people via the fine print. Well, that and the Supreme Court’s repeated stamps of approval.
And in case you were curious, yes, Chief Justice John Roberts was involved with the effort to expand arbration to consumers and employees (it was originally intended just for business) back when he was a corporate lawyer. He’s building one hell of a legacy.
You know how the Koch’s have been trying to sell themselves are friendly oligarchs with things like their advocacy for sweeping criminal justice reform. Well, while it certainly is great whenever anyone calls for sweeping reforms to a justice system that imposes incredibly harsh sentencing for low-level offenses, this is the Koch brothers we’re talking about here. So…surprise!…it’s not just the low-level offenders that the Kochs want to keep out of jail:
“These are not esoteric matters…There is absolutely no reason for the otherwise laudable criminal justice reform bill to contain any measure to weaken already feeble standards for corporate criminal prosecution.”
Well, there may be no good reasons for an otherwise laudable criminal justice reform bill to contain any measure to weaken already feeble standards for corporate criminal prosecution. But there are reasons. Around 900 million of them.
While it was inevitable that the privatization of workplace justice via arbitration clauses was going to grow by leaps and bounds following the Supreme Court’s 2011 ruling on the topic, as the article below points out, that the parallel growth of temp workers is only going to add a few more leaps and bounds to the privatization of workplace justice.
The article also points out another key consideration with respect to the growth of arbitration clauses designed to replace legal recourse for employees: In terms of the public knowing about workplace abuses that the public should know about, knowledge of the abuses that get arbitrated by the privatized justice system tends to remain private too:
“You’re creating an atmosphere where the people who have direct control over me don’t really have any great incentive to provide for my safety”
That does appear to be the case.
Of course, if you listen to the industries employing these arbitration clauses, the waivers against suing aren’t actually about preventing lawsuits. It’s just about being more efficient and cost effective! Also, despite the fact that arbitration clauses make it much less likely that the public will find out about systematic abuses, no one would benefit from restricting the widespread use of arbitration clauses other than the trial lawyers:
Yes, restricting this sudden explosion of arbitration clauses for low-wage and temp workers in industries like food processing would only benefit trial lawyers. And no one else.
Private justice. It’s an oldie but a goodie
American workers have long been both unhappy and largely clueless about the size of the pay gap between corporate CEOs and average workers. Well, the CEO compensation information for S&P 500 CEOs is in for 2015. And unless the average worker assumes the average S&P 500 CEO got a raise worth 10 times the average employee’s annual compensation, they’re probably less unhappy than they should be but certainly more clueless:
“One bright spot, experts say, is the rise in the number of companies that tie CEO pay to how well their stocks perform. “There’s progress generally in aligning compensation with shareholder returns,” says Stu Dalheim, vice president of governance and advocacy at Calvert Investments, whose mutual funds look for socially and environmentally responsible companies. “But I don’t think this compensation is sustainable long term, because the U.S. population is increasingly focused and aware of the disparity.””
Huh. So encouraging CEOs to jack up their stock prices in order to maximize their personal compensation is seen a good thing again. That’s, uh, a bit retro. But, ok, maybe directing their corporation to buy back their own shares at record levels was the kind of innovation the US economy needed. Great job CEOs!
And assuming wise investments like spending almost all of their profits on stock buybacks in recent years ends up being the kind of decisions that generate real wealth for the corporations, hopefully some of that can finally trickle down to the clueless workers before they finally realize just how thoroughly they’ve been scammed.
Or maybe these innovative CEOs will prove their worth by devising schemes that actually avoid the need to raise their employees’ wages at all while simultaneously projecting a nice and caring caring. That would be kind of impressive.
Yeah, maybe it’ll be the latter kind of innovation…
Using the First Amendment right to free speech to justify sleazy corporate practices is unfortunately nothing new for American law. Especially for the Roberts court after Citizens United used the First Amendment to flood the US political system with unprecedented amounts of money. So, with that in mind, check out the latest sleazy attempt to misuse the First Amendment:
“This coalition of business and attorney groups and states brought forward a number of arguments, from the DOL lacking authority to pass the rule to the rule exceeding the DOL’s estimated compliance costs by $59.99 billion over 10 years. (The DOL estimated the rule would cost all employers and consultants a total of approximately $826,000 per year; the plaintiffs estimated it at $60 billion over 10 years.) Additionally, in line with the growing use of the First Amendment against government regulation of business, the plaintiffs argued that the rule violated the employers’, lawyers’, and consultants’ free speech, expression and association rights. The Judge concluded that some union busters may not offer their services as freely, and some attorneys may leave the field, if their identities and the terms of their arrangements were disclosed.”
So if businesses are forced to disclose who they are hiring for their union busting services as the law is intended to require, this would be a violation of their free speech rights because they would presumably be too embarrassed to hold these discussions if they were forced to acknowledge them.
Well, maybe that explains the plaintiffs’ estimates that closing this loophole would cost business $60 billion over the next 10 years (And that’s compared the Department of Labor’s estimate of less than $1 million over a decade for the entire business community). Just imagine how much money is being spent on the shadow union-busting industry. Especially with this loophole in place. What if some of these companies just couldn’t carry on in providing these services because of the damage it would do their brand image? If there was a huge shadow union-busting industry, perhaps it’s somewhat conceivable that it could cost that industry total of $60 billion over a decade.
Although that $60 billion still seems like a gross overestimate where the lawyers were just being silly for the purpose of legalistic flair. Then again, think about all the times we never hear about companies like Walmart hiring companies like Lockheed Martin for their union-busting services. That can’t be cheap.
One of the Democrat-appointed members of the Federal Election Commission just resigned after writing a scathing report. The report has a message to the public about the message the FEC is sending to US politicians: thanks to the systematic inaction at the FEC – due to unified opposition to meaningful FEC action by Republican appointees on the Commission – the FEC is basically telling every politician in America that the FEC isn’t going to do its job so feel free to go wild with the dark money:
“Republicans, however, don’t appear eager to address the issue of money in politics, even though 84 percent of Americans believe it has too much influence. Earlier this month, a GOP-controlled House committee voted to end public financing of presidential campaigns, as well as eliminate the agency that ensures the integrity of U.S. elections.”
Yep, the same message that the GOP-appointed wing of the FEC is sending to politicians across the US – that the FEC has no interest in seriously enforcing campaign finance law – just happens to be the same message the GOP-controlled House is also sending to politicians across the US. Although note that the message the GOP-controlled sent was more like “feel free to violate campaign finance law and hack voting machines, we won’t really look into it.”
And that laughably leaves Donald Trump as the only major GOPer left who has at least expressed an interest recently in getting the flood of dark money out of American politics. At least that’s what he said during the campaign. So will he follow through with pledge? Well, let’s just say that Trump appears to have ‘found Jesus’ (Republican Jesus) on the issue of campaign finance and blocking the avenues of dark money flowing into US elections. So probably not.