Posted on 06/16/2014 3:33:17 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The primary election defeat of House majority leader Eric Cantor by the little-known Tea Party conservative David Brat has shocked business and financial elites as well as politicians and pundits. Conservative intellectuals such as Tim Carney have been arguing for a while that the right should adopt a new populism that targets “crony capitalism” and the collaboration of public and private elites at the expense of workers and small businesses.
Brat is the first conservative candidate to have achieved a major electoral success by taking this line. He denounced Cantor for being too close to Wall Street and K Street, explained business support for immigration reform as a ploy for cheap labor and demonized the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable.
In his views about the minimum wage, Social Security and Medicare, Brat is a fairly conventional libertarian, but he became the first candidate to oust a sitting House majority leader since the post was created in 1899 not by speaking the libertarian argot of Ayn Rand and Friedrich von Hayek but by deploying the populist language of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and William Jennings Bryan.
With that kind of talk, Brat and like-minded militants on the right are undermining the philosophy of market populism that has united the Main Street and Wall Street wings of the Republican party since the days of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. Market populism recycles the ideology of classic Jeffersonian populism—but expands the definition of the virtuous, self-reliant yeoman to include not only small business owners but also big business executives and capitalists. According to market populism, the virtuous yeomanry consists of family farmers and small, owner-operated businesses—and CEOs of multinational corporations and billionaire investment bankers and heirs and heiresses who inherited their wealth, like Paris Hilton.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
The problem with the elites of the US is that they never had experienced a workers revolt where they are thrown out, their property seized, put imprison or worst. Since our politicians and business leaders never faced one, they continue to disregard what social instability they create on society when they make their decisions. So far Americans can handle the chaos they created, but all things have limits. King is a boat, people are the sea, if the boat rocks too much, the sea will sink the boat. This is an old Far East Asian saying. Wise rulers have heed this. In Communist China at least their leaders understand this (due to 2300 years of dynastic history plus another 2100 years of pre dynastic history) and make room in their ruling philosophy to insure that the average man in China has atleast a job. The US is not old enough yet to experience this lesson, the way things are going within my childrens’ lifetime the elites in this country will experience what it is like to lose power to an angry hungry mob they created thru their greed.
Amnesty isn’t even the biggest issue to big business. Deficit spending to support purchasing is!
The welfare checks end up in their cash registers.
The words in the article are what’s important, not the author’s name. Leftists believe the opposite as we see every day.
Actually I think you are mistaken: Big Business actually likes regulation and high taxes, provided they have loopholes by which to avoid paying the latter (which established large corporations generally do). Both create an impediment to new competitors entering the market. Big Business -- run by professional managers, rather than its owners, the actual capitalists -- is at heart fascist, not capitalist.
This is one reason the Koch brothers are so exceptional -- they run their own closely-held corporations, and thus think like capitalists rather than professional managers, and take pro-market positions politically as a result, rather than "pro-business" positions which more often than not expand state power to get a short-lived market advantage.
They should, because crony capitalism is a violation of equal protection.
And because it is theft.
And because it is socialism.
“Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole — with their common aim of legal plunder — constitute socialism.
Now, since under this definition socialism is a body of doctrine, what attack can be made against it other than a war of doctrine? If you find this socialistic doctrine to be false, absurd, and evil, then refute it. And the more false, the more absurd, and the more evil it is, the easier it will be to refute. Above all, if you wish to be strong, begin by rooting out every particle of socialism that may have crept into your legislation. This will be no light task.”
— Frederic Bastiat, the Law, 1850
If you study the richest zip codes in the US
They give more on average to the Dems than the white population votes Dem
Which tells me...truly rich lean democrat....upper middle class....not so much
“...entire regions of the country can be blighted for years or decades, by the decline of some industries and the rise of others. All modern societies recognize that the answer is not to blame the victims and tell them to get religion and work harder, but rather to devise no-fault social safety nets for the millions who can be tossed into poverty by tsunamis in the stock market or the labor market...”
He’s off the mark here, perhaps deliberately — I note the “false choice fallacy”, a hallmark of leftists. Less corporatism, a better choice, is the middle ground here.
Earlier in the article he implicitly acknowledges its presence and the recognition by the rest of us that the fraudulent H1B visa system, well-known and well-abused tax scams on Wall Street, a legal system contaminated by lobbyist bribery, and TBTF banking (and by extension the Federal Reserve), all not just enabled but encouraged by the government, are problematic and unfair to a functioning economy.
“Amnesty isn’t even the biggest issue to big business. Deficit spending to support purchasing is!
The welfare checks end up in their cash registers.”
Depends on the business. DEFINITELY the biggest lobby group in support of Food Stamps is Big Food, for sure. They seem to think that people will starve themselves without food stamps...I guess.
But others, like Big Ag, and Big Tech, want the cheap workers...for sure.
They hate him...... They can’t believe the wlls of their ivory tower are crumbling
Lets not forget the economic development funds/agencies/departments that all states have. Government takes taxpayer money and gives it to companies and industries of their choosing. Government does not have a winning record of picking winners and losers. It also creates unnatural competition for the guys who have to survive without help.
The green energy “industry” will collapse without subsidies and tax breaks that others don’t get.
“Big Business actually likes regulation and high taxes, provided they have loopholes by which to avoid paying the latter”
Valid point on the regulations. If you need experts in 10 different areas due to regulations, it does get very difficult to grow a small company to compete with a big one. And there is DEFINITELY a history of big-business collaborating with the government (Democrat and Republican) to screw over consumers and competitors by having government force down unneeded regulations. But Republicans have a (slightly) better record of standing up to this.
Gimme a boycott list. Hit ‘em where THEY live.
“All modern societies recognize that the answer is not to blame the victims and tell them to get religion and work harder, but rather to devise no-fault social safety nets for the millions who can be tossed into poverty by tsunamis in the stock market or the labor market—safety nets including workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance, and programs for retirees like Social Security and Medicare.”
This is only true if you Define “modern societies” in terms of “societie” that accepts theses U.N. mandated “Social safetnet terms.
yes that’s right, FDR put various forms of Socialist Security into the the UN charter as a way to push other country’s into the same mistake he made.
Also with respect to industrial economic changes producing unemployment as a result of mismatch between production and consumption. There is such a thing as Micro-industries to take advantage of the excess, just as there is or rather should be permitted such a thing as alternative industries.
The author who sounds like a liberal may be right however about one thing. Big Business and their money will not be drawn to our cause because in the case of many big Business their position depends upon the isolation from competition Federal Rules and regulations provide them.
Sadly in many cases their business is also depended upon outright Federal funding and subsidies.
Yeah, amnesty is important. But it’s secondary to the deficit spending that drives the need for those cheap workers.
Without food stamps Nabisco and it’s snack food buddies wouldn’t need the workers they have. Only food-stampers buy snacks.
A bad economy is a great uniter of Dems and business.
His ‘Leadership’ votes for debt and spending increases hurt Cantor fatally with his electorate though amnesty was so prominent in the campaign.
I have been asking since 2010, when would the tea party direct it's ire @ "K-Street" which is the petri dish for "crony capitalism" IMHO because that is where all the tax breaks etc are cultivated...
Maybe Mr. Brat was reading my post :-). Seriously, it is about time someone runs against K-Street / Crony-Capitalism....
Anyone like to name any big corporations that are pro-Conservative? Most of them are pro Liberals
When was corporate America not a Democrat bastion?
RE: Anyone like to name any big corporations that are pro-Conservative?
Wal-Mart?
Koch Industries?
Conservatives and libertarians are all for business. But not for government and business joined at the hip, to the detriment of taxpayers and workers.
The Chamber of Commerce is not interested in free markets; they are interested in government intrusion into the markets to give them an edge.
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