A Quiet Revolution In Business Lobbying

[struggle4progress]

Chamber of Commerce Helps Bush Agenda

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 5, 2005; Page A11

After brief pleasantries on the phone the other day, Thomas J. Donohue got down to business with a top health insurance executive. "We're in a new year and a new time," Donohue said smoothly. "Can we put you on the list and get your money?"

The executive said yes, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was $100,000 richer. So, in effect, was President Bush's push to rein in trial lawyers and lower taxes.

The chamber is at the forefront of a quiet revolution in business lobbying. Corporate groups now raise big money to advance broad issues, largely to help the Republican president enact his fiscal agenda. That's a long step away from what trade associations traditionally did: concentrate on narrow concerns while shunning partisan spats.

The big money has become commonplace in day-to-day lobbying, and few people are more responsible for that than the outspoken Donohue. When he became the group's president in 1997, the chamber took in only about $600,000 from its largest corporate members. Last year, collections for that category, called the President's Advisory Group, totaled $90 million. <snip>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64725-2005Feb4.html

[autorank]

1. Behaving like there is no tomorrow.

They are doing this more and more. It is amazing, their audacity. They act like their folks will be in power forever. Don't they know that (a) this is never true (even w/a tin foil hat) and (b) that the favorite game in DC is getting even. I'd hate to be any of these associations or any of their major doners when we retake the whole thing ala '94. It will be extremely ugly for them. I can't wait!

[Mel]

2. this is just more proof

Mussolini said that fascism should more properly be called "corporatism" since it was, under Mussolini, a blending of state and corporate power.
We are so there!

Just what the hell is it going to take for people to wake up?

It sure would of been nice if this story would of ran on page 1 instead of 11, don't you think?

I'd like to see what the poster tom_paine has to say.

[TexasLawyer]

4. Some of the 14 signs of fascism

A must-read article for everyone!

Fascism Anyone?
Laurence W. Britt

http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/britt_23_2.htm

<snip>

Beyond the visual, even a cursory study of these fascist and protofascist regimes reveals the absolutely striking convergence of their modus operandi. This, of course, is not a revelation to the informed political observer, but it is sometimes useful in the interests of perspective to restate obvious facts and in so doing shed needed light on current circumstances.

For the purpose of this perspective, I will consider the following regimes: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia. To be sure, they constitute a mixed bag of national identities, cultures, developmental levels, and history. But they all followed the fascist or protofascist model in obtaining, expanding, and maintaining power. Further, all these regimes have been overthrown, so a more or less complete picture of their basic characteristics and abuses is possible.

Analysis of these seven regimes reveals fourteen common threads that link them in recognizable patterns of national behavior and abuse of power. These basic characteristics are more prevalent and intense in some regimes than in others, but they all share at least some level of similarity.


<snip>

9. Power of corporations protected. Although the personal life of ordinary citizens was under strict control, the ability of large corporations to operate in relative freedom was not compromised. The ruling elite saw the corporate structure as a way to not only ensure military production (in developed states), but also as an additional means of social control. Members of the economic elite were often pampered by the political elite to ensure a continued mutuality of interests, especially in the repression of “have-not” citizens.

<snip>

13. Rampant cronyism and corruption. Those in business circles and close to the power elite often used their position to enrich themselves. This corruption worked both ways; the power elite would receive financial gifts and property from the economic elite, who in turn would gain the benefit of government favoritism. Members of the power elite were in a position to obtain vast wealth from other sources as well: for example, by stealing national resources. With the national security apparatus under control and the media muzzled, this corruption was largely unconstrained and not well understood by the general population.

[GetTheRightVote]

3. They will all pay one day because we were meant to be free

our fore fathers made it so

:kick: