-By Dan Scott
The current anger over the AIG bonus money is bringing a long-standing issue to a boil, Corporatism. Corporatists are politically connected business people who influence government policy and laws to financially benefit themselves. One of the marks of a corporatist is that they have fed from the government trough so long that the company losses its ability to compete in the market place. Feeding at the government trough becomes an addiction, and like all addictions binds it’s user’s life to be defined by it. Once addicted, there is no life outside and thus all attempts to reduce their dependence is met with screams of pain from withdrawal and claims you are the villain for inflicting that pain. Whether the company stands or falls is based strictly on government funding. AIG, GM and Chrysler come to mind.
The Democrat Party has had a long-standing love affair with the Corporatist as typified by Senator Christopher Dodd’s (D) less than transparent insertion of language specifically allowing taxpayer funds to pay for bonuses. Notice that only one political party was allowed to write that law in secret to the exclusion of any other voice or oversight. The relationship between Christopher Dodd and AIG has been lucrative for both parties to say the least. Say what you will about AIG being broke now, but prior to 2008’s meltdown of the market they were making money hand over fist. The supercharging of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) under Clinton made billions for the investors of AIG it’s officers and employees (including those who ran Freddie Mac – Rahm Emanuel and Fannie Mae – Franklin Raines). In this light, the CRA was a Congressional Quid Pro Quo for financial campaign supporters of politicians like Dodd, Obama and others in a mutual self enriching scheme at the expense of the country and specifically the poor. Let’s not forget that Barrack Obama was the lawyer for ACORN who forced Citibank to make unsound loans under the CRA. Makes you think of why Bears Sterns gave over $500,000 to Barrack Obama, a junior Senator with no supposed connection or benefit to them. They were connected alright, Obama’s legal work set the framework for companies like Bears Sterns for a lucrative business in CDOs up until the debacle. AIG provided the insurance on those CDOs because they all were mislead by the officials (political appointees such as Franklin Raines and Rahm Emanuel) into believing the mortgage based financial instruments had the FULL FAITH AND BACKING OF THE US GOVERNMENT, i.e. the taxpayer.
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Corporatism, Corruption and Fascism”
During the late presidential campaign, vp candidate Joe “gimme a f*ing break” Biden visited with his friends at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in Iowa. Joe was in The Hawkeye State to participate in some union campaign boilerplate called
According to
Apparently the long knives President Obama has out for the blood of CEOs and high paid executives does not apply to the bigwigs at The New York Times. In a March 11 piece ABCnews.com posted a
We’ve talked about it several times here on the blog; the hostile takeover of smaller unions. It has been Andy Stern’s main modus operandi (President of the Service Employees International Union or SEIU). The idea is to roll into the territory of a local, smaller union, make back room deals with the employers to get their assistance, and then lead a forced take over of that smaller union eventually to vote it out of existence. Thereby the little unions that might stand in the way of the mega unions are eliminated and the mega unions now controlling everything from the top down get more even more massive.
With apologies to the many fine folks at law that visit these pages, and those of my colleagues on the web that ply the law, today I am going to act the vulgar Shakespearian and advocate to “first kill all the lawyers.” Well, if not kill them exactly, then at least put many of them out of work — not that I am any expert on Shakespeare, he says to a chorus of “you betchas.” Still, the thought comes to mind because of a recent
The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), the union friendly law currently sitting idle in Congress awaiting a Big Labor financed president to get around to addressing it, has some very interesting supporters. We’ve been told, of course, that we shouldn’t worry about Barack Obama and his followers, that they are just as American as anyone else. That claim of red-blooded Americanness is a bit hard to reconcile, however, where it concerns the EFCA.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune is often called the “Red Star” Tribune by residents of Minneapolis for its long-time, virulently left-wing outlook. Many has been the time when the editorial board of the Star Trib has carried water for political candidates shilling for big labor.
Union shill Ron Gettelfinger wants you to know that 