Larry Flynt on the People vs. Wall Street
Over at the Huffington Post, Larry Flynt quotes Jefferson, FDR and David Rockefeller in continuing the theme of the Wall Street takeover of government, and calls for a national strike:
The real war is not between the left and the right. It is between the average American and the ruling class. If we come together on this single issue, everything else will resolve itself. It’s time we took back our government from those who would make us their slaves.
Flynt has the diagnosis right, but his prescription is naive. Flynt calls for “real campaign-finance reform and strong restrictions on lobbying,” akin to requiring regular trimming of pet tiger claws (how’s that McCain-Feingold working for ya?). The only way to limit the ability of banks and mega-corporations to run the government for their own interests is to severely limit the powers of that government to hand out largess, which is exactly what our Founding Fathers tried to do all those years ago with a little thing called the Constitution.
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August 22nd, 2009 at 7:21 am
Here’s some campaign finance reform that would help:
* Individual congresscritters can only take direct campaign donations from registered voters who live in their district/state.
* Individual congresscritters can only spend their campaign money on their own campaign, and cannot donate to another congresscritter or anybody else. (this is apparently how Pelosi/Waxman helped get their cap and tax bill through the House, by personally paying off politicians to vote for it).
Sure, plenty of outside campaign cash will be spent in a congresscritter’s district/state, but none could directly be sent to buy off the congresscritter. This would be a nice incremental improvement, common sensical and easily implemented.
As for the bailouts, yes, you have to cut off the crooks. Give them nothing. Bush failed us, and paved the way for Obama’s further failures.
August 22nd, 2009 at 11:12 am
Well there is not really anyway to get rid of these governments programs and expansion. All you can really hope for is to slow it down. Reagan made the the government a lot larger too, not smaller like people like to claim.
The whole “take back the power (government)” thing I’m not sure I buy into that much as a battle cry.
Mises Article on why Fascism and Communism are actually the exact same thing= big government. I think it’s OK to think of fascism or National Socialism as a big-government movement of the political Right wing whereas communism is a big-government movement of the political left.
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Also if you still don’t buy into the fascism=communism thing, take a look at the political compass diagram of the last UK election cycle.
The British Nationalist Party is typically categorized as extreme right-wing, but if you look at their stances on economic issues, they are way to the left of the New Labor Party and even the Liberal Democrats and almost like a Green Party on economic issues, but in the words of the artcle:
“The truth is that on issues like health, transport, housing, protectionism and globalisation, their economics are left of Labour, let alone the Conservatives. It’s in areas like police power, military power, school discipline, law and order, race and nationalism that the BNP’s real extremism – as authoritarians – is clear.
This mirrors France’s National Front. In running some local governments, they reinstated certain welfare measures which their Socialist predecessors had abandoned.”
Political compass of of the BNP in the UK link
August 22nd, 2009 at 11:31 am
Also this Obamacare thing does not have the votes to pass, and probably it never will.
I’ve come to the conclusion that they will have to use the nuclear option to do it if they want to have any chance, and even then it still may not work. At least the senate is gummed up so it prevents them from working on other legislation though, which is always a plus.
August 23rd, 2009 at 5:39 am
There is a grain of truth in what Flynt says. The battle is actually between the powerful entrenched interests and the people.
It is the same within the GOP – a battle between those in the Beltway and Manhattan who want to more the GOP to the left and the grass roots who want to keep it more conservative. In 2012 will it be Romney (the establishment’s choice) or a true conservative?