A Conservative Defense of OWS

[Full-Auto]

Topline Results of Oct. 9-10, 2011, TIME Poll | Swampland | TIME.com

Check what the PEOPLE are saying about the #OccupyWallStreet movement.

Note Q8 to Q13

The Q's before that about Obama and the Democrats paint a much GRIMMER story for ze RepubliCON$

LOL!

If thats the best you got. Your side is the one in trouble.

If you say so brah..

I'd take the raw data and numbers over your hard RW ideology and wishes any and every day of the week.

I hope you're feeling comforted in it.

LOL!!!

LOL I looked at the numbers.

Change cologne Desperation number 5 is so yesterday.

 

[flacaltenn]

This is probably the most ignorant statement in the history of written language. Corporations, by their nature, care ONLY for profit, for what is written on the bottom line on a balance sheet, for what shareholders get in profit... you seem to have a romantic view of corporations as actually caring for people they don't know or see. My only questions, where did you adopt this view? It would be nice to be so blissfully ignorant and actually believe the world is a good place.

You obviously don't much about the economic system we live in do you?

WE are defending Capitalism because we know that the NATURAL restrainsts on unmitigated mayhem are stronger and more durable than measly selectively enforced govt regulation. When the Massey coal mine killed a dozen or more workers it had been closed 14 times by regulators who CONTINUED to let them operate. Did those regulators ever get punished? No.. Did the Govt regulators who wrote waivers to the deep water operations on that BP rig ever get punished? No...

Everyday -- business is restrained thru NATURAL Capitalist mechanisms.. Like for instance..

1) Customer perception and satisfaction.

2) Stakeholders who excercize control, like stock/bond holders, banks, Boards.

3) Criminal liability law.

4) Competition.

5) Contract law..

I shouldn't have to explain to you how EACH AND EVERY ONE of these items works.. But EACH one has a powerful moderating influence on business behaviour. And when companies IGNORE these restrainsts --- they SHOULD be punished by the system itself without the neccessity for politicians to grandstand and claim credit.

Let me know WHICH restrainsts on business you DON'T understand. They all are moderating influences on profit. PROFIT alone does not drive the market.

Where did you get the idea that "corporations care only about profit"? Did Starbucks screw AGAIN today? Did Home Depot reach into your paycheck and rob you?

Wow dude. Takes some serious skill to spin and twist and blame the government for Massey and BP. Well done. Karl Rove would be proud.

Now, as for profits, if a company could ignore an environmental regulation and pay $1M in fines, but make an extra $2M in profit, what do you think they would do?

WOW DBStupid.. I'm glad you like my comments on Massey and BP. What's been bothering me about that is why the GOVT regulators closed that Massey mine down 14 TIMES just prior to it killing 12 miners. Don't we pay the regulators to STOP that kind of thing? Is the mental midget who signed them off the 14th time STILL a GS-11 with benefits? Did he get an award for his vigilance and excellence in duty?

YES -- I AM absolutely convinced that we are getting POOR performance from all that "regulation".. ESPECIALLY when 1st rate DICKHEADS like Barney Frank send the regulators home to protect Fannie/Freddy..

But you're changing the subject. I just gave you several DAMN good reasons why corporations have NATURAL restrictions on their behaviour. OUTSIDE of GOVT regulation. And so maybe as the OP suggests, I'd be more inclined to support the OWS crowd in attacking CORP/GOVT collusion if they understood that GOVT is the primary source of the POWER <--> MONEY stream --- not business. They also need to realize how ineffective and unaccountable GOVT attempts to control and regulate the market really are.

BTW:: I always try to answer questions.. Regarding whether the corp would ignore a regulation and take the fine. I'm SURE that they would weigh ALL of the things I listed. Would it hurt reputation and customer image? Would the Stockholders be pissed at that legal proceedings? Could their competition use the incident against them? NOT losing reputation and customers might be worth FAR MORE than the $1Mill profit..

 

[Si modo]

....

The Tea Party was a response to a black president.

No, it wasn't.

You speak from ignorance.

But, you speak.






I have been to several Tea Party events and helped organize many others. I know for a fact that you have no idea what you are talking about.

Yet, you talk.

 

[flacaltenn]

....

The Tea Party was a response to a black president.

No, it wasn't.

You speak from ignorance.

But, you speak.






I have been to several Tea Party events and helped organize many others. I know for a fact that you have no idea what you are talking about.

Yet, you talk.

I think it's more like spew.. "Talking" implies transmission of ideas or information. He's been shown facts about the T.P. Black organizers, and long lists of black speakers, and even black chapter founders for the T.P. and tends to forget anything that disturbs his little partisian fantasyland...

 

[Londoner]

The bastards inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue are the ones responsible for doling out our money.

Yeah, you're right. Government just magically hands out pork and no-bids and bailouts to business out of the goodness of its heart. Government officials would never take a systematic bribes under cover of lobbying and campaign donations, nope, they're too honest.

Do you know what the most common post congressional profession is? Lobbyist. There is no difference between business and government. Eli Lilly staffs congress and Halliburton staffs the vice presidency.

Government and all federal agencies are owned by big business. Who do you think cultivates candidates for elections? Who do you think funds elections? Who do you think forces primary challenges on politicians who don't play ball with business? Where do you think the last two Fed chiefs and treasury secretaries came from? Hint: Paulson worked for Goldman Sachs. Guess where the lion's share of his TARP went? Son, I hate to tell you this: Big Business and Big Government are one; they are self-supporting. Profits get pumped into Washington so that it will keep the subsidies, bailouts, and regulatory favors coming. The low income wage moron is the only one out of the loop. Money makes the world go 'round. Never underestimate selfishness and the drive for money. Businessmen and politicians want the same thing: mo' money.

(You've been lied to by talk radio, which is owned by the same people who own government)

 

[DontBeStupid]

....

The Tea Party was a response to a black president.

No, it wasn't.

You speak from ignorance.

But, you speak.






I have been to several Tea Party events and helped organize many others. I know for a fact that you have no idea what you are talking about.

Yet, you talk.

Saying the Tea Party is all about racism is as unrealistic as saying that racism has nothing to do with it.

And I have never said the Tea party is all about racism.

 

[Contumacious]

The bastards inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue are the ones responsible for doling out our money.

Yeah, you're right. Government just magically hands out pork and no-bids and bailouts to business out of the goodness of its heart. Government officials would never take a systematic bribes under cover of lobbying and campaign donations, nope, they're too honest.

That is all true,

But the narcotized populace continues to elect the same corrupt scumbags.

What can I say?

.

 

[Si modo]

....

The Tea Party was a response to a black president.

No, it wasn't.

You speak from ignorance.

But, you speak.






I have been to several Tea Party events and helped organize many others. I know for a fact that you have no idea what you are talking about.

Yet, you talk.

Saying the Tea Party is all about racism is as unrealistic as saying that racism has nothing to do with it.

And I have never said the Tea party is all about racism.

Right. You said "the Tea Party was a response to a Black president".



And, you speak from ignorance.

I don't.

But, you still speak.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

A Conservative Defense of Occupy Wall Street

I'd long suspected the financial crisis, policy foibles, chronic unemployment, and general corruption of our politics would sooner or later fuel a measure of social unrest in this country as it has elsewhere. We are not immune to a deadening of hope fused with deep-seated suspicion of having been essentially swindled via policy decisions resulting from broken politics that denies a sense of genuine progress and possibility.

. . .


With Occupy Wall Street, those protective of the status quo may be more rattled than they had by the Tea Party, which in its aim to minimize government's role, carried an agenda convenient with Wall Street's current mood. This is because OWS are directing their ire squarely towards the real elites of the country, rather than their bought-and-paid marionettes sitting in Washington. These elites are seen to have benefited from emergency large-scale existential rescues -- all necessary exigencies to avoid a second Great Depression, our titular leaders would have it, and remind us often -- with little accountability, genuine gratitude or fundamental change emitting from the financial sector post the Government's ministrations.

The point is not that TARP has been profitable. The point is that the TARP windfall (given the fungible nature of cash) also served to better allow for convenient de-levering on the government's dime. Without tracking of TARP funds, or clarity about the Federal Reserve's policy decisions and generous emergency lending operations, one cannot help feeling something has become well rotten in Denmark. Given this backdrop, Occupy Wall Street, cleverly, is squarely aiming its attentions at the realer powers behind the supposed throne -- that is, where the money is.

Beyond this, they are likely smarter, and with more idealistic energy, than their Tea Party analogues. Ranging from younger near anarchists to older protesters with almost Eisenhowerian politics (repulsed by income disparities reminiscent of the "robber baron" era) they are a disparate bunch, to be sure. They represent the majority of the population wallowing in dire economic straits amidst a materially shrinking middle class, chronically elevated unemployment, dangerously poor career prospects for youths alongside sky-rocketing college tuition, and seemingly endless sums of wasted monies on fundamentally flawed wars of choice. To top it off, you have the perceived injustices of TARP and such banker-welfare largesse.

Speaking to several of these protesters today, I met MBA students who cannot find jobs (one even told me his GPA at business school, a respectable 3.2) and law students in a similar predicament. As money gets wasted in epic fashion overseas for desperately flawed "provincial reconstruction teams" in Iraq and risible Government-in-a-Box initiatives in Afghanistan, these kids are staring at mountains of debt and an equally daunting lack of viable employment prospects (the MBA student was underemployed working as a barista at Starbucks). So there are intelligent faces and voices in these crowds--not just aimless rabble-rousers out for a rise--and I can sense this movement becoming more contagious. For instance, I detected among several of the more junior police officers perhaps some degree of sympathy for the protesters.

These are our young, screaming out in need, meriting not kettling and reprimands, but job prospects and dignity.

I visited the OWS movement in my own town. I received one leaflet from someone who had come South from across the river. It talked about regulatory capture and how corporations use government regulations to shield themselves from free market competition. At the end it had links to libertarian sites like Reason Magazine.

Anyway, its very easy to sympathize with both the proto-Tea Party and OWS, once you realize the essential overlap.

There is some overlap between the OWS movement and conservative principles, but that Venn diagram is inaccurate. OWS is not upset that large corporations lobby the government for more power, they are upset that the government is not writing more regulations that control corporations. They believe that government regulations are the solution, when the fact is that government regulations are the reason that corporations are spending money on the government.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Yeah OWS and the Tea party have alot of the same gripes and blame many of the same people. The only difference is that OWS claim that the elites are responsible (yanno the 1%) where the Tea Party seems to believe that the poor are to blame (or programs for the poor)

Both hate TARP, both are tiers of the same old shit but the tea party thinks that Obama is responsible for TARP

That was incredibly ignorant.

OWS doesn't know who to blame, the TEA Party blames the government.

 

[ClosedCaption]

Let me fix this for you.. The ONLY reason the 47% that pay no income tax comes up AT ALL --- is to illustrate how ridiculous the leftist demand (and Obama fixation) that the "rich pay their fair share is"...

Beyond that --- you won't find more than 2 or 3 Conservatives or Libertarians on this board that will tell you that the poor ought to be paying income tax tomorrow. It's not even in the top 20 things to consider. IN FACT -- Libertarians at least would like EVERYONE to be paying less. And there's where you're in the way.. Cutting the budget IS NOT an excersize in punishing the poor. Because we SHOULD BE STARTING with corporate subsidies and handouts. THAT'S what OWS should reach out with. A statement of the BILLIONS in cuts that could be made tomorrow that libertarians at least would endorse.

It WILL take a NEW political organization of more than 2 parties to fix this. We need choices BESIDES the T.P. who are confusing subsidy cuts with tax increases. A 3rd party right now that just pledged to take away the Congressional Cash piggy bank to industry would win in all 50 states.

REALLY? Then explain this:

Huntsman Criticizes Bachmann, Perry - Washington Wire - WSJ

This goes beyond just pointing out hypocrisy, he wants to add them to the tax rolls. From the story:

And he agrees with the new Republican orthodoxy that the half of American households no longer paying income tax – mainly working poor families and seniors – should be brought onto the income tax rolls.

“Marco Rubio was right when he said we don’t have enough people paying taxes in this country,” he said, referring to the senator from Florida.

EASY ONE...

A) Huntsman is a BIG GOVT Republican. The kind that LOVES huge revenue streams.

B) He doesn't have a chance of getting the nomination from a party that started to tire of Bush's big govt agenda.

C) He's dead as doornail in funding. Ain't NO Conservatives gonna PAY FOR a tax-raising Repub..

BTW: Weren't you leftists bitching about REPEALING ALL of those nasty BUSH tax cuts?? Including the ones that would change the 47% back to 39% not paying income tax? Hypocrits. Those folks had better know which team is on their side eh??

So you didnt see the name Marco Rubio? Or that it states that is the new Republican Orthodoxy? Right?

 

[Kuros]

A Conservative Defense of Occupy Wall Street

I'd long suspected the financial crisis, policy foibles, chronic unemployment, and general corruption of our politics would sooner or later fuel a measure of social unrest in this country as it has elsewhere. We are not immune to a deadening of hope fused with deep-seated suspicion of having been essentially swindled via policy decisions resulting from broken politics that denies a sense of genuine progress and possibility.

. . .


With Occupy Wall Street, those protective of the status quo may be more rattled than they had by the Tea Party, which in its aim to minimize government's role, carried an agenda convenient with Wall Street's current mood. This is because OWS are directing their ire squarely towards the real elites of the country, rather than their bought-and-paid marionettes sitting in Washington. These elites are seen to have benefited from emergency large-scale existential rescues -- all necessary exigencies to avoid a second Great Depression, our titular leaders would have it, and remind us often -- with little accountability, genuine gratitude or fundamental change emitting from the financial sector post the Government's ministrations.

The point is not that TARP has been profitable. The point is that the TARP windfall (given the fungible nature of cash) also served to better allow for convenient de-levering on the government's dime. Without tracking of TARP funds, or clarity about the Federal Reserve's policy decisions and generous emergency lending operations, one cannot help feeling something has become well rotten in Denmark. Given this backdrop, Occupy Wall Street, cleverly, is squarely aiming its attentions at the realer powers behind the supposed throne -- that is, where the money is.

Beyond this, they are likely smarter, and with more idealistic energy, than their Tea Party analogues. Ranging from younger near anarchists to older protesters with almost Eisenhowerian politics (repulsed by income disparities reminiscent of the "robber baron" era) they are a disparate bunch, to be sure. They represent the majority of the population wallowing in dire economic straits amidst a materially shrinking middle class, chronically elevated unemployment, dangerously poor career prospects for youths alongside sky-rocketing college tuition, and seemingly endless sums of wasted monies on fundamentally flawed wars of choice. To top it off, you have the perceived injustices of TARP and such banker-welfare largesse.

Speaking to several of these protesters today, I met MBA students who cannot find jobs (one even told me his GPA at business school, a respectable 3.2) and law students in a similar predicament. As money gets wasted in epic fashion overseas for desperately flawed "provincial reconstruction teams" in Iraq and risible Government-in-a-Box initiatives in Afghanistan, these kids are staring at mountains of debt and an equally daunting lack of viable employment prospects (the MBA student was underemployed working as a barista at Starbucks). So there are intelligent faces and voices in these crowds--not just aimless rabble-rousers out for a rise--and I can sense this movement becoming more contagious. For instance, I detected among several of the more junior police officers perhaps some degree of sympathy for the protesters.

These are our young, screaming out in need, meriting not kettling and reprimands, but job prospects and dignity.

I visited the OWS movement in my own town. I received one leaflet from someone who had come South from across the river. It talked about regulatory capture and how corporations use government regulations to shield themselves from free market competition. At the end it had links to libertarian sites like Reason Magazine.

Anyway, its very easy to sympathize with both the proto-Tea Party and OWS, once you realize the essential overlap.

There is some overlap between the OWS movement and conservative principles, but that Venn diagram is inaccurate. OWS is not upset that large corporations lobby the government for more power, they are upset that the government is not writing more regulations that control corporations. They believe that government regulations are the solution, when the fact is that government regulations are the reason that corporations are spending money on the government.

You speak for OWS now? The leaflet I got was fairly libertarian and attacked gov't regulations as being tools of large corporations.

The Tea Party got captured by powerful interests very quickly. Let's see if OWS can continue to oppose private-public collusion.

I will still vote for Ron Paul if he's the Republican nominee.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

A Conservative Defense of Occupy Wall Street



I visited the OWS movement in my own town. I received one leaflet from someone who had come South from across the river. It talked about regulatory capture and how corporations use government regulations to shield themselves from free market competition. At the end it had links to libertarian sites like Reason Magazine.

Anyway, its very easy to sympathize with both the proto-Tea Party and OWS, once you realize the essential overlap.

There is some overlap between the OWS movement and conservative principles, but that Venn diagram is inaccurate. OWS is not upset that large corporations lobby the government for more power, they are upset that the government is not writing more regulations that control
corporations. They believe that government regulations are the solution, when the fact is that government regulations are the reason that corporations are spending money on the government.

You speak for OWS now? The leaflet I got was fairly libertarian and attacked gov't regulations as being tools of large corporations.

The Tea Party got captured by powerful interests very quickly. Let's see if OWS can continue to oppose private-public collusion.

I will still vote for Ron Paul if he's the Republican nominee.

OWS does not print leaflets, what you got was printed by someone who is trying to cash in on something.

 

[Kuros]

There is some overlap between the OWS movement and conservative principles, but that Venn diagram is inaccurate. OWS is not upset that large corporations lobby the government for more power, they are upset that the government is not writing more regulations that control
corporations. They believe that government regulations are the solution, when the fact is that government regulations are the reason that corporations are spending money on the government.

You speak for OWS now? The leaflet I got was fairly libertarian and attacked gov't regulations as being tools of large corporations.

The Tea Party got captured by powerful interests very quickly. Let's see if OWS can continue to oppose private-public collusion.

I will still vote for Ron Paul if he's the Republican nominee.

OWS does not print leaflets, what you got was printed by someone who is trying to cash in on something.

Its just some guy from Indiana who showed up to present his views. People are disgusted about the bailouts and the imbalance of power and wealth in this country. Its not really a partisan thing.

 

[newpolitics]

Corporations put CUSTOMERS before profit. They put their REPUTATION before profit. Because profit is impossible if you lose either one of them. I'm kinda tired of the free market being modeled as a free for all for profit. Because there are at least 6 fundamental inherent constrainsts on what corporation can do in order to realize a profit if they want to thrive. They have to make LOTS of stakeholders happy.

This is probably the most ignorant statement in the history of written language. Corporations, by their nature, care ONLY for profit, for what is written on the bottom line on a balance sheet, for what shareholders get in profit... you seem to have a romantic view of corporations as actually caring for people they don't know or see. My only questions, where did you adopt this view? It would be nice to be so blissfully ignorant and actually believe the world is a good place.

You obviously don't much about the economic system we live in do you?

WE are defending Capitalism because we know that the NATURAL restrainsts on unmitigated mayhem are stronger and more durable than measly selectively enforced govt regulation. When the Massey coal mine killed a dozen or more workers it had been closed 14 times by regulators who CONTINUED to let them operate. Did those regulators ever get punished? No.. Did the Govt regulators who wrote waivers to the deep water operations on that BP rig ever get punished? No...

Everyday -- business is restrained thru NATURAL Capitalist mechanisms.. Like for instance..

1) Customer perception and satisfaction.

2) Stakeholders who excercize control, like stock/bond holders, banks, Boards.

3) Criminal liability law.

4) Competition.

5) Contract law..

I shouldn't have to explain to you how EACH AND EVERY ONE of these items works.. But EACH one has a powerful moderating influence on business behaviour. And when companies IGNORE these restrainsts --- they SHOULD be punished by the system itself without the neccessity for politicians to grandstand and claim credit.

Let me know WHICH restrainsts on business you DON'T understand. They all are moderating influences on profit. PROFIT alone does not drive the market.

Where did you get the idea that "corporations care only about profit"? Did Starbucks screw AGAIN today? Did Home Depot reach into your paycheck and rob you?

Oh, I don't know... from watching the news. From learning about factory farming, hydraulic fracturing and its incredibly devastating environmental effects, the bottled water industry stealing water from ecosystems without anyones permission who live there, the fast food industry, the oil industry, how they killed the electric car, how Halliburton failed to provide for our troops which resulted in their many American deaths while over billing the American taxpayer unscrupulously all the while telling us we must support our troops, and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on... animal abuses, worker abuses, environmental abuses.

there are literally far too many examples to even count, and many I am not even aware of. The problem with corporations, and the whole reason behind their existence, is that there is no personal accountability. They have "limited liability,' in order to protect the people at the top, perfectly exemplified by what happened with the economic collapse. They have no incentive to car, and EVERYTHING is shaped by incentive in an economic system. I went to school for business. I know how this shit works, so don't try to school me. It works the other way around. Natural markets don't work because there are far too many information problems, and corporations have far too much overreach into the political process to create their own rules and also have no restraint with regard to international boundaries, which make them almost impervious to international law if they are careful, as with Casino Jack in his dealings in Indonesian factories. You're faith in the natural market presupposes too many things that simply do not exist in reality, such as perfect information, which does not exist. For instance, do you know where your meat comes from? Do you know about debeaking, tail docking, castration, ear clipping, ear cutting, and teeth pulling as well as the myriad other miserable conditions that animals live through on factory farms only to be killed inneffectively and torturously? No. They don't want you know, but most consumers would never naturally want to be complicit in this process, yet due to complete lack of transparency, they are, and it takes viewing a movie such as EARTHLINGS (youtube, free) to get past the greedy money-making machine that is corporatism to find out about. Corporations decieve to maintain profit. They use market to promote a false demand for products we don't really need. We don't need nearly as much meat as they make it seem. Milk is terrible and cancer causing, and the food in general that is being marketing to us on a near constant basis is killing us, but then guess what... you have big pharma right there to cash on all of the sickness our food industry is causing, with a pill for every ailment they can make up through marketing. They have no shame, and no boundaires, because the people running these corporations at the top are sociopaths, plane and simple, and their only duty is to shareholder profit, and the better they do this, the more money they make. Just look at what happened during the financial crisis. There is no incentive to care for the health or well-being of the society at large, only to make them feel like they are getting something they really want, even when it may be bad for their health. It is just one big sales pitch, and everyone has bought it hook, line, and sinker, and it is the reason this country is falling in health, prosperity, reputation, and cultural integrity... the media corporations even profit off of splitting us apart, with the right hating the left, and the left hating the right, and each sticking to their respective news stations so they can gather huge marketing and advertisement dollars. It ALL comes down to money. It has only ever been about money. Any view more romantic than this is simply self-delusion to make the world seem like a more palatable place in order to ease your mind. Back in the day, when companies were small, they had to actually care about their customers, but these goliaths are so big now, that the game has fundamentally changed, and it is simply about fooling everybody into buying shit they think they need, and it is because of this simple fact, that we are going down. Stop buying shit like zombies. Think for yourself.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

You speak for OWS now? The leaflet I got was fairly libertarian and attacked gov't regulations as being tools of large corporations.

The Tea Party got captured by powerful interests very quickly. Let's see if OWS can continue to oppose private-public collusion.

I will still vote for Ron Paul if he's the Republican nominee.

OWS does not print leaflets, what you got was printed by someone who is trying to cash in on something.

Its just some guy from Indiana who showed up to present his views. People are disgusted about the bailouts and the imbalance of power and wealth in this country. Its not really a partisan thing.

You are the one trying to make it partisan, I am pointing out that, as a movement, it has no goals and no direction, just a bunch of misdirected angst. They do have a few legitimate complaints, but the call to eliminate all debt proves how unrealistic they are. People from both sides want to find things they agree with these people about, and it is actually easy because they have so many gripes, but they have to look at everything they are doing and not miss the forest for the trees.

 

[Kuros]

OWS does not print leaflets, what you got was printed by someone who is trying to cash in on something.

Its just some guy from Indiana who showed up to present his views. People are disgusted about the bailouts and the imbalance of power and wealth in this country. Its not really a partisan thing.

You are the one trying to make it partisan, I am pointing out that, as a movement, it has no goals and no direction, just a bunch of misdirected angst. They do have a few legitimate complaints, but the call to eliminate all debt proves how unrealistic they are. People from both sides want to find things they agree with these people about, and it is actually easy because they have so many gripes, but they have to look at everything they are doing and not miss the forest for the trees.

I don't know about eliminating all debt, but I do think what Iceland did should be repeated.

 

[flacaltenn]

The bastards inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue are the ones responsible for doling out our money.

Yeah, you're right. Government just magically hands out pork and no-bids and bailouts to business out of the goodness of its heart. Government officials would never take a systematic bribes under cover of lobbying and campaign donations, nope, they're too honest.

Do you know what the most common post congressional profession is? Lobbyist. There is no difference between business and government. Eli Lilly staffs congress and Halliburton staffs the vice presidency.

Government and all federal agencies are owned by big business. Who do you think cultivates candidates for elections? Who do you think funds elections? Who do you think forces primary challenges on politicians who don't play ball with business? Where do you think the last two Fed chiefs and treasury secretaries came from? Hint: Paulson worked for Goldman Sachs. Guess where the lion's share of his TARP went? Son, I hate to tell you this: Big Business and Big Government are one; they are self-supporting. Profits get pumped into Washington so that it will keep the subsidies, bailouts, and regulatory favors coming. The low income wage moron is the only one out of the loop. Money makes the world go 'round. Never underestimate selfishness and the drive for money. Businessmen and politicians want the same thing: mo' money.

(You've been lied to by talk radio, which is owned by the same people who own government)

No - I haven't been mugged by talk radio.. I've been informed by reading sources from ALL sides of arguments. But we really do need to find out what sewer YOU stalk for your news and research..

You can't convince any rational person that the tremendous power and influence that Congress wants to exert on every corner of the marketplace wouldn't continue in the ABSENCE of corporate campaign cash. Favors would STILL go out due to the locations of businesses in their districts, or the proximity of BIG individual donors as INVESTORS in those corporations. The OVERWHELMING examples of corporate/govt collusion fit into THESE scenarios and others that PROVE the problem is usurped power to meddle in market winners/losers. NOT that corporate money CREATES policy direction.

In fact -- the policy direction already exists. Leftists want you to believe that NO ONE would be supporting expanded domestic oil production if it wasn't for those evil oil companies shoveling influence and cash. Simply isn't so.. There is a predisposed PRINCIPLED cohort of supporters for such policies.

Guess you missed the thread I posted -- http://www.usmessageboard.com/4271747-post1.html

Campaign finance: Corporate money and elections | The Economist

This brings us back to the question my colleague raised last week of how much campaign spending by private parties influences political outcomes. My colleague cites a 2002 paper by three MIT political scientists that finds that campaign contributions have little influence on candidates' political actions, which are overwhelmingly determined by party and by the convictions of voters in their districts. (They restate a provocative 1972 question by political scientist Gordon Tullock: "Why is there so little money in political campaigns?"...given that an investment of a few million dollars could, one imagines, affect billions of dollars in government spending.) They argue that political giving is not a form of vote-buying, but a form of political participation.

Still, the question remains: what are the mechanisms through which rich people's political opinions influence politicians' policy decisions? It's not a simple matter of BP giving boatloads of campaign cash to politicians who then vote for more offshore drilling, or creating ads themselves that say "Vote for Candidate X"! Or not usually, anyway. With members of congress constantly complaining that they spend at least half of their time flying home to fundraise, I find it hard to believe that campaign contributions aren't a big part of the story. Every political science paper I read on the subject says "more research is needed". But the thing is, one thing Citizens United seems to have done, so far, is eliminate much of the data we would need to do that research. Massive anonymous campaign spending makes it impossible for neutral researchers to figure out who's spending the money that influences campaigns. We don't know how money affects our electoral system, and, unless Congress passes some new electoral-transparency laws that this Supreme Court can uphold, we probably never will.

Like I said it's not really CLEAR that the campaign cash is the CAUSE of the GOVT/CORP collusion. The CAUSE is that when the subsidies CAN go out -- a feeding frenzy results. Cut the chumming and parasites can live off the wild again..

(So what sources have polluted your thinking? I'd like to avoid thinking like a 20th century progressive.)

 

[flacaltenn]

This is probably the most ignorant statement in the history of written language. Corporations, by their nature, care ONLY for profit, for what is written on the bottom line on a balance sheet, for what shareholders get in profit... you seem to have a romantic view of corporations as actually caring for people they don't know or see. My only questions, where did you adopt this view? It would be nice to be so blissfully ignorant and actually believe the world is a good place.

You obviously don't much about the economic system we live in do you?

WE are defending Capitalism because we know that the NATURAL restrainsts on unmitigated mayhem are stronger and more durable than measly selectively enforced govt regulation. When the Massey coal mine killed a dozen or more workers it had been closed 14 times by regulators who CONTINUED to let them operate. Did those regulators ever get punished? No.. Did the Govt regulators who wrote waivers to the deep water operations on that BP rig ever get punished? No...

Everyday -- business is restrained thru NATURAL Capitalist mechanisms.. Like for instance..

1) Customer perception and satisfaction.

2) Stakeholders who excercize control, like stock/bond holders, banks, Boards.

3) Criminal liability law.

4) Competition.

5) Contract law..

I shouldn't have to explain to you how EACH AND EVERY ONE of these items works.. But EACH one has a powerful moderating influence on business behaviour. And when companies IGNORE these restrainsts --- they SHOULD be punished by the system itself without the neccessity for politicians to grandstand and claim credit.

Let me know WHICH restrainsts on business you DON'T understand. They all are moderating influences on profit. PROFIT alone does not drive the market.

Where did you get the idea that "corporations care only about profit"? Did Starbucks screw AGAIN today? Did Home Depot reach into your paycheck and rob you?

Oh, I don't know... from watching the news. From learning about factory farming, hydraulic fracturing and its incredibly devastating environmental effects, the bottled water industry stealing water from ecosystems without anyones permission who live there, the fast food industry, the oil industry, how they killed the electric car, how Halliburton failed to provide for our troops which resulted in their many American deaths while over billing the American taxpayer unscrupulously all the while telling us we must support our troops, and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on... animal abuses, worker abuses, environmental abuses.

I just have to say that if you weren't so brainwashed by whatever media/print sources you consume -- you're outlook would be far more rational. Still didn't tell us where you got "the Monsanto is charge of the EPA" turdlet. Same with this paragraph.

WHO killed the electric car? Did it ever occur to you that even TODAY with all the product introductions of EVs into the market that it's STILL not quite ready for primetime? No conspiracy there -- it's engineering and marketing problems. Tough shit about the "fast food industry". It's called economic freedom and folks get to exercise choice. You want the power to BAN stuff you don't agree with. Everything from circumscism to pet shops is under attack in Leftist paradises like San Fran and Berkeley. Go live there and suffer thru the tyranny of folks who want LAWS to remove choices. There is a valid scientific debate on fracking. And many leftist propaganda sources have lied and embellished stories about reported hazards. YES -- it should be monitored. NO -- it's not impossible to frack and protect the water table..

You're missing the point that these are DEBATES.. Not indictments.

there are literally far too many examples to even count, and many I am not even aware of. The problem with corporations, and the whole reason behind their existence, is that there is no personal accountability. They have "limited liability,' in order to protect the people at the top, perfectly exemplified by what happened with the economic collapse. They have no incentive to car, and EVERYTHING is shaped by incentive in an economic system.

Not true -- I just give you a list of considerations and restraints on free-market biz. They CARE about reputation. They CARE about customer satisfaction. They CARE about living up to contracts and keeping themselves out of court. They WORRY about competition.

I went to school for business. I know how this shit works, so don't try to school me. It works the other way around. Natural markets don't work because there are far too many information problems, and corporations have far too much overreach into the political process to create their own rules and also have no restraint with regard to international boundaries, which make them almost impervious to international law if they are careful, as with Casino Jack in his dealings in Indonesian factories.

That is the saddest thing. Can you get your money back? This is perhaps the best argument argument I've ever heard for Student Loan forgiveness -- because BOY were YOU screwed by higher education..

Then you go on to hit on MILK as near murder. The reason why we don't give the keys to GOVT POWER to the marginalized morons like you -- is that EVERYONE knows the damage that you could do. And that there is SOLID proof that the CAUSE of GOVT collusion is too much power in the hands of inept and corrupt politicians. And anti-freedom, tyrannical ban-ners like yourself are not ever gonna get near that power.

Not all of us want to live in the dirt and scavenge for survival. If THAT'S why you hate Corporations -- try going Amish...

 

[Londoner]

The problem with corporations, and the whole reason behind their existence, is that there is no personal accountability. They have "limited liability,' in order to protect the people at the top, perfectly exemplified by what happened with the economic collapse. They have no incentive to

Bingo.

They have no incentive to protect the economy or the public in instances where higher profits hang in the balance. If they can make money off risky garbage that eventually blows up and destroys the economy, they will. Remember: uncle Milton said that for efficiency sake corporations should only be concerned with higher profits, not extra-market fluff like social consequences. This is seductive to a point, that is, I don't want my Dentist to save my soul, I just want him to focus on my teeth. But at what point does the methodical institutionalization of greed lead to perverse incentives? If profit is the only incentive, what prevents him from lying or "doctoring" my diagnostic results? [The typical response is that regulations and self-interest will prevent this. Regarding regulations: what if the the anti-government revolution has largely destroyed government's ability to impose any rules - because the profit motive has spread to rule-makers, who need funding for re-election? that is, what if the Reagan Revolution has literally hollowed out the regulatory function of the state?]

Regarding self-interest: it is true that my Doctor has an interest in being honest and giving me good service. However, it is absurd to think the system cannot find a way around this, especially where higher profits are concerned. For instance, what if the medical institution - driven by a desire to expand their list of marketable diseases - has set-up a system where drug companies routinely give Doctors an incentive to invent new diseases (in order to push high-margin drugs), e.g., what if the profit motive has lead to the expansion of standard depression into an encyclopedia of highly profitable mood disorders? At what point does profit - decoupled from social consequences at every level - move the incentive away from the interests of patient and toward the wallet of the doctor and career of the politician, who depends on drug company campaign donations? Once we let greed fully out of the bottle and institutionalize it at every level, where does it stop?

Greed is good when it drives you to build live-saving technology. But - on the other side of the coin - it's bad when it causes you to rig regulations, create fraudulent financial products, bribe doctors to sell unnecessary drugs, and bribe politicians to rig laws and regulations. In short, we've been living on the other side of the coin for too long, that is, business and politics has colluded to screw the consumer; they have found a way to completely detach greed from positive social outcomes - now, tragically, the economy only serves the few, who fund elections and staff government with functionaries of their profit. We need a post-Reagan formula for regulating the corrupt side of greed. This means we have to redesign rules and regulations to more properly align incentives with job creation (rather than "get rich quick" derivatives and speculative garbage). Tragically, the proponents of unrestrained profit were able to convince us to design a system where massive profits could be made from risky garbage that added no value to the real economy of goods and services. We created a phantom Wall Street casino which functioned apart from Main Street. We see evidence of this when we compare the profits of the investor class to middle class wages and purchasing power over the past 30 years.

Reagan promised that the profits on top would trickle down, but we've seen solid jobs trickle away and wages remain stagnant. Tragically, talk radio is used by business to cover-up the reality of Reaganomics: rising profits & disappearing jobs.

The Limited Liability of the postwar years has shifted to very Limited Liability since Reagan, who convinced us that diminishing the burden on capital would raise more profits and thus produce gains for the rest of us (in the form of innovation, jobs, and lower prices). Who would have though that reducing the burden would mean: taking regulators out of the room when Arthur Anderson did Enron's taxes? And who would have thought that putting those regulators back in the room - to ensure Enron didn't hide losses - would be called "socialism". In short, the initial logic of deregulation (which made some sense in transportation and communications) turned into a corrupt mess under energy and finance, where they put the Fox in the hen house.

How did they get away with creating such a hugely corrupt, inefficient, job destroying system, you might ask? Big business captured Conservative information sources and convinced voters of the most pernicious myth of all: no regulations would lift our boats even higher. Even minimal regulations, we are told, is socialism.

Don't you find it ironic that Limited Liability would not be possible without Big Government laws and protections? Tragically, the talk radio right doesn't see how dependent the market is on big brother. We are living the consequences of their ignorance.