IP: Enron's America

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> To: farber () cis upenn edu
> Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2002 15:49:53 -0800 (PST)
>
> From: tv () sprex com (Thomas Veatch)
>
> Dave,
>
> With Enron's evident ownership of government policy-making in its
> areas of business concern, the Enron bankruptcy scandal is bringing to
> public attention a previously unrecognized level of systemic
> corruption of America's elected government.  We see business writing
> government policies in its own interest, instead of representatives of
> the American people working in the interest of the American people as
> a whole.  This makes it worth revisiting a post-election essay
> (11/21/2000) I wrote drawing some inferences from the close races that
> seem to now be endemic to our system.  The same message now comes from
> a different direction.  So maybe it's true.
>
> The essay is at this URL.
>
>         http://www.tomveatch.com/election.parity.html
>
> And here is an excerpt.
>
>         ...
>
>         It is clear that political issues divide into consumer issues
>         that bring in the votes, and corporate issues that bring in
>         the money. These two types of issues overlap slightly, with a
>         few consumer issues being adequate to raise significant
>         financial support for campaigns, such as, perhaps, the NRA's
>         support for anti-gun-control candidates. But for the most part
>         in today's electorate, consumer and corporate issues are
>         independent: Corporations largely don't care about abortion
>         rights policies, gun control, educational vouchers, minority
>         rights, etc., which various consumer constituencies *do* care
>         about very much.  And consumers in our comfort-oriented
>         political age largely don't care that much about the arcana of
>         trade agreements, business regulations, and corporate welfare,
>
>         ...
>
>         As models improve and candidates continue to competitively
>         adjust their platforms, the margins of victory will correspond
>         to the decreasing error of the models.
>
>         But this parity depends on the strength of the two-party
>         system in its ability to blackmail voters even at the extreme
>         edges to stay within the system, voting for, as they will
>         always consider it, the lesser of two evils. This strength is
>         constituted by the inability of third parties to be taken
>         seriously, which fundamentally comes from their inability to
>         attract corporate funding. Thus the foundation of the parity
>         we observe is the simultaneous funding of both -- and none
>         other than -- the two major parties by and for the benefit of
>         corporations and their issues, insuring against the rise of
>         alternative parties, particularly those that may threaten the
>         corporate-issue monopoly.
>
>         ...
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Tom Veatch
> Ph.D. Linguistics, U Penn, 1991.
> tv () sprex com
> 1210 NE 124th St, Seattle WA 98125
> tel: (206) 367-7741

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