Down at the Crossroads: Cory & the US Chamber
ABC’s Jon Karl noted that Booker had just likened his colleague from Massachusetts to Trump. “I most certainly did not. She is my friend,” Booker replied. “Well, that’s what she’s saying,” the interviewer replied.
“Let her discuss and debate her positions,” Booker answered. “I'm telling you right now: We do not need a president that is going to use their own personal beliefs and tell you which companies we should break up.”
The Daily 202: Rejecting calls to break up Facebook, Cory Booker seeks to restore a norm that’s eroded under Trump – Washington Post
By JM Hamilton (5-18-2019)
Senator Booker made some interesting comments last weekend, on ABC’s This Week, concerning Senator Warren. The bottom line, Senator Booker appeared to be aggrieved/incensed that presidential candidate Warren – like other POTUS candidates, and our current president – had called out some US cartels and monopolies (that not only dominate the economy, but thanks to the current state of campaign finance laws, in effect own federal & state governments).
Specifically, one of my favorite presidential candidates, Senator Warren, had called upon Amazon, Facebook, and Google to be broken up.
Most un-presidential, Mr. Booker alluded and downright Trumpian.
Spoken like a Senator, who’s behind in the polls against Warren, behind the times, and is, perhaps, way too cozy – like all Clintonistas and establishment Dems – w/ the corporate oligarchy. Change is everywhere these days. And while candidate Booker maybe unhappy with paradigm shift, how are things going to improve, if America’s leadership doesn’t identify a key source of America’s problems: US cartels & monopolies.
All this reminds me of how true change often happens in America, often derived from presidential leadership and when we least expect it (through contrived events, political malpractice, often for political gain, and on rare occasion, because an opportunity for doing the right thing presents itself). To that end, some key political events in my lifetime that altered the course of history and the nation:
August 2, 1964, Gulf of Tonkin: A false flag event utilized by LBJ to launch America into Vietnam. Setting a template for the Bush (W) administration and neocons for generations to come.
February 21, 1972: POTUS Nixon visits communist China, setting off the normalization of relations, which ultimately leads to China’s admittance into the WTO, and China becoming the world’s manufacturer.
August 22, 1996: Personal Responsibility of Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 is signed into law by POTUS Clinton. Thanks to a democrat, entitlement spending for the economically disenfranchised, and those in need, has been under assault ever since (either directly or indirectly through austerity).
November 12, 1999: The Gramm-Leach–Bliley Act (GLBA) is signed into law by POTUS Clinton. GLBA ended Glass-Steagall and removed the last vestiges of keeping commercial banks, investment banks, security firms, and insurance companies separate; stripped the SEC of regulatory authority over bank holding companies; and set in motion the 2008 financial crisis. The ramifications of the financial crisis & the GLBA – not the least of which is catastrophic national debt, and Wall Street banking’s further consolidation into cartel – are with us to this very day.
October
7, 2001, Operation Enduring Freedom: POTUS
Bush (W) launches airstrikes – not against Saudi Arabia, whose citizens flew
into the World Trade Center & the Pentagon – but against
Afghanistan. In 2003, citing another false flag allegation (this
time, weapons of mass destruction were the pretext), the Bush Administration
invades Iraq. To this very day, and some $6 trillion dollars later,
the US remains mired in endless war, no WMD were ever found, and Hussein was
not responsible for the formation of Al Qaeda. Neocon John Bolton, who played no small role
in the Bush White House & was a cheerleader for the War on Terror, is today
POTUS Trump’s national security advisor. Mr.
Bolton’s plans for Iran are very much in the news.
January 20, 2017: POTUS Trump is sworn into office, and on Trump’s third day, he signs an executive order w/drawing America from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade negotiations. Hence, ushering in the end of free trade – as we’ve known it for decades – and in particular, multilateral trade agreements. The Chicago School of Economics’ free trade, globalism, & neoliberalism dogma (and against the interests of the multinational international order) are called into question, as never before.
The key point that runs through many of the aforementioned moments in history is that a Democratic & Republican President acted against their political party’s established & understood norms (at least as comprehended by the electorate), and in the process irrevocably changed the course of the nation and their political party’s ideological & political trajectory. In other words, only an ardent anti-communist, like Nixon, could have gotten away w/ the opening of relations w/ communist China. Only POTUS Clinton could have turned loose Wall Street greed, as a business model, and rolled back government assistance for the poor. Having spent part of the 20thcentury as isolationists, it took George W. Bush – w/ the help of neocons – to launch America into bankrupting & endless warfare (enriching the MIC, at the expense of austerity for the American people); and nearly two decades later, Americans have precious little to show for these foreign adventures, but catastrophic national debt, US military war dead, and a foreign civilian/collateral damage body count that appears to be merely the MIC's operational model.
Likewise, say what one will about POTUS Trump (as many liberals know, there’s plenty to say), it took a Republican president to finally standup against: America’s cartels & monopolies (globalism defined); their primary advocate, the US Chamber of Commerce; and begin to challenge and rollback free trade as we have known it. Trump set in place a marker, for both establishment political parties, to question: what have decades of Corporate & Wall Street rule done to this country and our democratic government? (There is little doubt that progressives have been asking these same questions about the ramifications of free trade, globalism, and kleptocracy for decades, and advocating change; but POTUS Trump was the first to obtain power, and – disagree w/ his methods, sure – actually act upon the problem.)
Many of these key events not only reversed political norms for the party in charge of the executive branch, but would also come to be adopted, co-opted, or were already the established position of the political party out of power. Hence, further backing the belief that when it comes to economic and FP matters, there is little that separates the two established political parties (both are in the thrall of donor demands).
Senator Booker, arguably, has not caught up w/ the times; he’s still down at the crossroads working out a Faustian bargain w/ monopolies and the US Chamber. The senator and many establishment Dems still believe - or up until very recently believed - that a neocon/neolib agenda remains perfectly acceptable.
How dare Senator Warren question monolithic multinationals and threaten to breakup some of America’s most powerful monopolies, despite the fact that many of these organizations define diseconomies of scale, and all too often present great ethical challenges & failure. Mr. Booker deserves attention for his allegiance to multinational America, the private equity business model that has eviscerated the American Dream, and the funding he takes in from these very organizations. In fairness to Senator Booker, he’s not alone. There are many other Dem candidates engaged in similar idolatry and with similar histories: that is, resigned acceptance that pay to play is the norm, in order to get things done; and we, as a nation, must bend over backwards to provide the corporate and multinational community anything and everything they ask for (despite the offshoring of jobs, the hollowing out of the middle class, and the wage & wealth inequality that has resulted).
Progressive politicians – like Senators Sanders & Warren, and Representative Gabbard – can believe in America and capitalism, but also believe that in their present incarnation, and excesses of same, American democracy and capitalism must be reformed, so as to work for everyone. It is only natural then, and appropriate, for Senator Warren to call out the tech utilities, and America’s monopolies, as so many other candidates have done.
Identifying America’s key problems – the unchecked power of monopolies, and corporate rule - doesn’t make Senator Warren a bad POTUS candidate, or even Trumpian.
The fact is cartel, globalism, monopoly, and neoliberalism have been disastrous for the American economy, labor, and our government; but simultaneously, a limitless gravy train for politicians from both establishment parties. This fact has yet to be fully accepted by many members of the political establishment (particularly candidate Biden, who would return the US to the very same playbook that has ruined the nation).
Hence, the bizarre optics of Senator Booker – a social liberal – clinging to and embracing what William F. Buckley once called Anarcho-Totalitarianism (aka the disaster that is the unregulated laissez faire economy, further weaponized by financialization and record private & public sector debt).
That is to say, the neolib agenda.
The Republican party’s schism, and the Tea party movement, arrived nearly a decade before the Democratic party’s populist revolt, led by Senators Sanders & Warren. But the impact is the same, the realization that biz as usual – as conducted by multinational America, & their advocate, the US Chamber – is no longer acceptable.
Messrs. Biden & Booker, and House Speaker Pelosi, et al., please take note. You’re swimming against the tide of history.
Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2019
