XPost: soc.culture.europe, soc.culture.irish, soc.culture.new-zealand   
   XPost: soc.culture.scottish   
   From: tartan_army@msn.com   
      
   Fall of the Rovean empire?   
   Drunk on power, the Republican oligarchs overreached. Now their entire   
   project could be doomed.   
   By Sidney Blumenthal   
   Oct. 06, 2005 | For 30 years, beginning with the Nixon presidency,   
   advanced   
   under Reagan, stalled with the elder Bush, a new political economy   
   struggled   
   to be born. The idea was pure and simple: centralization of power in   
   the   
   hands of the Republican Party would ensure that it never lost it   
   again.   
   Under George W. Bush, this new system reached its apotheosis. It is a   
   radically novel social, political and economic formation that deserves   
   study   
   alongside capitalism and socialism. Neither Adam Smith nor Vladimir   
   Lenin   
   captures its essence, though it has far more elements of Leninist   
   democratic-centralism than Smithian free markets. Some have referred   
   to this   
   model as crony capitalism; others compare the waste, extravagance and   
   greed   
   to the Gilded Age. Call it 21st century Republicanism.   
      
   At its heart the system is plagued by corruption, an often unpleasant   
   peripheral expense that greases its wheels. But now multiple scandals   
   engulfing Republicans -- from suspended House Majority Leader Tom   
   DeLay to   
   super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff to White House political overlord Karl   
   Rove --   
   threaten to upend the system. Because it is organized by politics it   
   can be   
   undone by politics. Politics has been the greatest strength of   
   Republicanism, but it has become its greatest vulnerability.   
      
   The party runs the state. Politics drives economics. Important party   
   officials are also economic operators. They thrive off their   
   connections and   
   rise in the party apparatus as a result of their self-enrichment. The   
   past   
   three chairmen of the Republican National Committee have all been   
   Washington   
   lobbyists.   
      
   An oligarchy atop the party allocates favors. Behind the ideological   
   slogans   
   about the "free market" and "liberty," the oligarchy creates   
   oligopolies.   
   Businesses must pay to play. They must kick back contributions to the   
   party,   
   hire its key people and support its program. Only if they give do they   
   receive tax breaks, loosening of regulations and helpful treatment   
   from   
   government professionals.   
      
   Those professionals in the agencies and departments who insist on   
   adhering   
   to standards other than those imposed by the party are fired, demoted   
   and   
   blackballed. The oligarchy wars against these professionals to bend   
   government purely into an instrument of oligopolies.   
      
   Corporations pay fixed costs in the form of legal graft to the party   
   in   
   order to suppress the market, drastically limiting competitive   
   pressure.   
   Then they collude to control prices, create cartels and reduce   
   planning   
   primarily to the political game. The larger consequences are of no   
   concern   
   whatsoever to the corporate players so long as they maintain access to   
   the   
   political players.   
      
   The sums every industry, from financial services to computers, spends   
   on   
   lobbying are staggering. Broadcast media firms spent $35.88 million in   
   2004   
   alone on lobbyists in Washington, according to the Center for Public   
   Integrity. Telephone companies spent $71.97 million; cable and   
   satellite TV   
   corporations, $20.22 million. The drug industry during the same period   
   shelled out $123 million to pay 1,291 lobbyists, 52 percent of them   
   former   
   government officials. The results have been direct: The Food and Drug   
   Administration has been reduced to a hollow shell, and Medicare can't   
   negotiate lower drug costs with pharmaceutical companies. In the 2004   
   election cycle, the drug industry paid out $87 million in campaign   
   contributions for federal officials, 69 percent of them flowing to   
   Republicans.   
      
   Whereas almost all lobbying before the Bush era was confined to   
   Capitol   
   Hill, now one in five lobbyists approaches the White House directly.   
   Consider the success story of one Kirk Blalock, a former aide to Karl   
   Rove   
   as deputy director of the Office of Public Liaison, where he   
   coordinated   
   political links to the business community. Now, one year out of the   
   White   
   House, he's a senior partner in the lobbying firm of Fierce, Isakowitz   
   and   
   Blalock, boasting 33 major clients, 22 for whom he lobbies his former   
   colleagues in the White House. Indeed, the Bush White House boasts 12   
   former   
   lobbyists in responsible positions, from chief of staff Andrew Card   
   (American Automobile Association Manufacturers) on down.   
      
   "The number of registered lobbyists in Washington has more than   
   doubled   
   since 2000 to more than 34,750," reports the Washington Post, "while   
   the   
   amount that lobbyists charge their new clients has increased by as   
   much as   
   100 percent."   
      
   Macro- and microeconomic policies are subordinate to the circular   
   alliance   
   of oligarchy and oligopoly. Government expenditures have raced to the   
   fastest pace of increase under Bush since President Lyndon Johnson's   
   Great   
   Society. But the spending is not intended to prime the economic pump.   
   Nor is   
   it invested mainly in public goods such as infrastructure or schools;   
   nor is   
   it used to expand the standard of living of the middle and working   
   classes,   
   whose incomes and real wages are rapidly shrinking. Instead it is   
   poured   
   into military contracts and tax cuts heavily weighted to the very   
   wealthiest, who do not in turn invest in productive capital. As a   
   result,   
   the largest budget surplus in U.S. history has been transformed into   
   the   
   largest deficit, whose bonds are principally held by Asian banks, a   
   shift   
   that presages a strategic tilt of global power and long-term threat to   
   national security. The illusion that as the post-Cold War unipolar   
   power the   
   U.S. faces no countervailing forces is undermined by the   
   administration's   
   constantly draining deficits. Thus 21st century Republicanism reverses   
   the   
   policies that brought about the American century.   
      
   Under Ronald Reagan, the unanticipated consequences of supply-side   
   economics -- instead of tax cuts fostering increased government   
   revenues,   
   they blew a black hole in the budget -- has under Bush been a   
   conscious   
   policy following the Reagan lesson. The reason is to apply fiscal   
   pressure   
   on government, making its regulations more pliable for manipulation in   
   the   
   interest of oligopoly and therefore the Republican political class.   
   Just as   
   macroeconomic policy is the plaything of politics, so is microeconomic   
   policy. Environmental degradation, lowered public health and urban   
   neglect   
   are indifferent byproducts.   
      
   The Republican system is fundamentally unstable. Bush has no economic   
   policy   
   other than Republicanism. As the economic currents run toward an   
   indefinable   
   reckoning, the ship of state drifts downstream.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)