Wednesday, June 04, 2014

where business interests ARE political interests...,


billmoyers |  In this excerpt from Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, authors Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson explain the significance of the Powell Memorandum, a call-to-arms for American corporations written by Virginia lawyer (and future U.S. Supreme Court justice) Lewis Powell to a neighbor working with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

 In the fall of 1972, the venerable National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) made a surprising announcement: It planned to move its main offices from New York to Washington, D.C. As its chief, Burt Raynes, observed:
We have been in New York since before the turn of the century, because
we regarded this city as the center of business and industry.
But the thing that affects business most today is government. The
interrelationship of business with business is no longer so important
as the interrelationship of business with government. In the last several
years, that has become very apparent to us.[1]
To be more precise, what had become very apparent to the business community was that it was getting its clock cleaned. Used to having broad sway, employers faced a series of surprising defeats in the 1960s and early 1970s. As we have seen, these defeats continued unabated when Richard Nixon won the White House. Despite electoral setbacks, the liberalism of the Great Society had surprising political momentum. “From 1969 to 1972,” as the political scientist David Vogel summarizes in one of the best books on the political role of business, “virtually the entire American business community experienced a series of political setbacks without parallel in the postwar period.” In particular, Washington undertook a vast expansion of its regulatory power, introducing tough and extensive restrictions and requirements on business in areas from the environment to occupational safety to consumer protection.[2]

In corporate circles, this pronounced and sustained shift was met with disbelief and then alarm. By 1971, future Supreme Court justice Lewis Powell felt compelled to assert, in a memo that was to help galvanize business circles, that the “American economic system is under broad attack.” This attack, Powell maintained, required mobilization for political combat: “Business must learn the lesson . . . that political power is necessary; that such power must be assiduously cultivated; and that when necessary, it must be used aggressively and with determination—without embarrassment and without the reluctance which has been so characteristic of American business.” Moreover, Powell stressed, the critical ingredient for success would be organization: “Strength lies in organization, in careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations.”[3]

Powell was just one of many who pushed to reinvigorate the political clout of employers. Before the policy winds shifted in the ’60s, business had seen little need to mobilize anything more than a network of trade associations. It relied mostly on personal contacts, and the main role of lobbyists in Washington was to troll for government contracts and tax breaks. The explosion of policy activism, and rise of public interest groups like those affiliated with Ralph Nader, created a fundamental challenge. And as the 1970s progressed, the problems seemed to be getting worse. Powell wrote in 1971, but even after Nixon swept to a landslide reelection the following year, the legislative tide continued to come in. With Watergate leading to Nixon’s humiliating resignation and a spectacular Democratic victory in 1974, the situation grew even more dire. “The danger had suddenly escalated,” Bryce Harlow, senior Washington representative for Procter & Gamble and one of the engineers of the corporate political revival was to say later. “We had to prevent business from being rolled up and put in the trash can by that Congress.”[4]

Powell, Harlow, and others sought to replace the old boys’ club with a more modern, sophisticated, and diversified apparatus — one capable of advancing employers’ interests even under the most difficult political circumstances. They recognized that business had hardly begun to tap its potential for wielding political power. Not only were the financial resources at the disposal of business leaders unrivaled. The hierarchical structures of corporations made it possible for a handful of decision-makers to deploy those resources and combine them with the massive but underutilized capacities of their far-flung organizations. These were the preconditions for an organizational revolution that was to remake Washington in less than a decade — and, in the process, lay the critical groundwork for winner-take-all politics.

8 comments:

Dale Asberry said...

On social issues, he was a moderate, whose votes often surprised his backers.


The last vestiges of WASPishness?

CNu said...

lol, not likely. Powell was a Virginian confederate aristocrat through and through.

Constructive_Feedback said...

Wow CNu - you seem to believe this chart.


The best show from "The Bev Smith Show" was when a Black economist who had written a book about America's debt crisis - Will Gates - saw that Ms Smith was giving him several hits about bashing the RIGHT WING on the debt - caused by tax cuts - and he FLIPPED THE SCRIPT on her and said that THEY ALL ARE LIARS.


He said that CLINTON DID NOT CREATE A SURPLUS!! This was because Washington agreed to not count the money that they took from Social Security and counted toward "The surplus".


The FACT remains that the USA has $17 Trillion in debt
AND the Federal Reserve is holding $4.5 Trillion in FAKE MONEY that was generated over the past 5 years to abstract the economy from the painful truth.

Constructive_Feedback said...

CNu:


As a person who monitors the antics of Bill Moyers (me) - do you find it strange that when it comes to "Winner Take All Politics" he always focuses on the NATIONAL POLITICS - but can't seem to TREAT ANY Black Progressive Official Or Influencer who takes his interview seat (as with "Democracy Now") as if they should be accountable for the LOCAL RESULTS in the areas that they have strong influence?


If you look at the local zone of Kansas City, Philly, Atlanta, Detroit, Chicago, Newark, Camden, Miami, Houston, Birmingham and Memphis - the key GOVERNMENT SERVICES that develop "the least of these" are in the hands of FAVORABLE PEOPLE that the populous voted into power.


Yet for some reason - instead of hearing any point of CULPABILITY - there is always the tendency to EXPAND THE POLICE TAPE.


As it stands - instead of MANAGING "BLACK STUDENT EDUCATION" we see a POLITICAL STRUGGLE for "EQUAL FUNDING IN EDUCATION".
Do you at least see the distinction between the two?
If you are an ELECTED CONFIDENCE MAN who has FAILED to develop the constituents as promised - you can tell them that YOU DID NOT GET EQUAL FUNDING from the STATE LEGISLATURE and trick the masses into FIGHTING OUTWARD and you will never be fired.

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ken said...

Did you see the video of our commander and chief working out?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2648339/Who-sneaked-camera-Obamas-hotel-gym-Security-questions-Polish-tabloid-runs-photos-President-working-out.html

Vic78 said...

Someone can't handle her shit.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/04/opinion/dowd-dont-harsh-our-mellow-dude.html?_r=1

CNu said...

Corporate tax-evasion tops $2.1 Trillion off-shore http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/09/us-usa-tax-offshore-idUSBREA3729V20140409

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