Category: Citizens United (Page 3 of 13)

Plutocracy or Democracy?

May 2, 2015 / MCDC

From a 4/26/15 lecture in Sperryville, Virginia, by Vernon Gras, Professor emeritus, English and Cultural Studies, Geroge Mason University.

“Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor”

March 22, 2015 / MCDC

Subsidies considered excessive, unwarranted, wasteful, unfair, inefficient, or bought by lobbying are often called corporate welfare.^[1] The label of corporate welfare is often used to decry projects advertised as benefiting the general welfare that spend a disproportionate amount of funds on large corporations, and often in noncompetitive, or anti-competitive ways. For instance, in the United States, agricultural subsidies are usually portrayed as helping honest, hardworking independent farmers stay afloat. However, the majority of income gained from commodity support programs actually goes to large agribusiness corporations such as Archer Daniels Midland, as they own a considerably larger percentage of production.^[21]

Alan Peters and Peter Fisher (Associate Professors, Graduate Program in Urban and Regional Planning, University of Iowa)^[22] have estimated that state and local governments provide $40–50 billion annually in economic development incentives,^[23] which critics characterize as corporate welfare.^[24]

Some economists consider the recent bank bailouts in the United States to be corporate welfare.^[25]^[26] U.S. politicians have also contended that zero-interest loans from the Federal Reserve System to financial institutions during the global financial crisis were a hidden, backdoor form of corporate welfare.

Strategies of the One Percent Revealed

March 20, 2015 / MCDC

Libertarianism is for petulant children: Ayn Rand, Rand Paul and the movement’s sad “rebellion”

March 1, 2015 / MCDC

Libertarians fancy themselves radicals, and yet their rallying cry can be reduced to “You’re not the boss of me!”

Libertarians believe themselves controversial and cool. They’re desperate to package themselves as dangerous rebels, but in reality they are champions of conformity. Their irreverence and their opposition to “political correctness” is little more than a fashion accessory, disguising their subservience to—for all their protests against the “political elite”—the real elite.

“As one digs deeper into the national character of Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: How much money will it bring in?” ~Alexis De Tocqueville

Ayn Rand is the rebel queen of their icy kingdom, villifying empathy and solidarity. Christopher Hitchens, in typical blunt force fashion, undressed Rand and her libertarian followers, exposing their obsequiousness toward the operational standards of a selfish society: “I have always found it quaint, and rather touching, that there is a movement in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.”

Libertarians believe they are real rebels, because they’ve politicized the protest of children who scream through tears, “You’re not the boss of me.” The rejection of all rules and regulations, and the belief that everyone should have the ability to do whatever they want, is not rebellion or dissent. It is infantile naïveté.