On Wed, Nov 18, 2020 at 01:49 PM, Roger Kulp wrote: > > [T}here is the whole embedded structure of corporate lobbyists, the > government to lobbyist pipeline, and the entire toxic environment that was > more or less institutionalized in the wake of Citizen's United. None of > which were in place in FDR's day. .
Roger--not sure what you mean by this. There were AFAIK corporate lobbyists and influence buyers and peddlers a-plenty in the runup to the New Deal, from the lobbyist-fueled Teapot Dome bribery and oil leasing scandal--which would have brought down the Harding administration if Harding had lived--right up to 1946, when the notorious lobbying activity of FDR's Tommy "the Cork" Corcoran among others, per The Christian Science Monitor (see link ( https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2009/0928/the-lobbyist-through-history-villainy-and-virtue ) ) had so greased the infamous "revolving door" that in 1946 the Federal Regulation of Lobbying Act was passed to control the traffic. If I read you correctly, you are pointing not to the actual increase of Swampery over the decades--which remains to be demonstrated here--but rather its institutionalization through measures purportedly designed to control it. I had an uncle whose one-horse law offices were lodged over an Ohio state liquor store in a small town in Ohio, who always claimed that Prohibition had succeeded in curbing the worst excesses of America's endemic--and patriotic--alcoholism through measures like regulating liquor sales. To this day, the sort of public leglessness that characterized eg Stalin's Soviet Union--where freedom consisted in the right to get cheaply plastered in public as often as you liked and also led to the public payday debauchery that was universal in the USA pre-Prohibition, but which now is confined to the youth of the privileged classes, in universities and Fort Lauderdale and in post-collegiate privileged/gentrified enclaves like DC's Logan Circle--is virtually nonexistent in much of the USA. The importance of this IMO lies in its usefulness as an illustration of "progress" as defined by Whiggery in the broadest sense, which remains even post-Trump one of the leading sales points of the "advanced" capitalist mindset as vs. the "childish" if not actually "sinful" railing of "Marxist" leftism in all its sinister forms. I imagine a Bidenist would make some similar point about lobbying and campaign finance as vs, the old manly foot-on-the rail, gangster-style, cigar-smoke-infused procedures of the past. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#3684): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/3684 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/78316349/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
