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Rampant institutional theft by the GOP establishment isn't mitigated by the fact that Democrats are worse at it.
12/22/13, "Crony Capitalists Seek Protection,"
Mitch McConnell, Senate Republican leader, confessed to big business
bureaucrats that he and other Establishment Republicans want to remain
their link to government money and favors. According to a Wall Street Journal
story (December 16), he asked them to open their wallets lest his kind
be overwhelmed — not by Democrats, but by those smelly little Tea Party
conservatives — the real threats to the government spending and regulations by which big business thrives.
The confession was almost that forthright: “said one person at the
McConnell fundraiser, held at a Capitol Hill townhouse. ‘The main
message he was pushing was: Get involved, mainly to teach those who are
primarying incumbents that it is not helpful to run against incumbents
who are champions for the industry.’”
McConnell is just one of the dozen Republican Establishment senators
who are facing challenges by conservatives, who are backed by
organizations such as the Club for Growth and the several pro-life
organizations. These challengers, always underfunded by huge margins,
nevertheless frighten the well-heeled likes of McConnell because they
bring to politics a source of votes that money can’t buy: credible
commitment to substance. According to John Boehner, House Republican
speaker and a stalwart of that Establishment, such challengers or merely
the prospect that they might appear, have convinced many Republican
congressmen to pay more attention to issues than to the Establishment’s
priorities.
Money is the Establishment’s main weapon against challengers with
small bank accounts but big followings based on issues. And indeed, big
business is stepping up its defense of threatened Republican
Establishmentarians.
Big money is forthcoming from classic sources for classic reasons. The Journal
story continues: “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business
groups have been stepping in to help business-friendly Republicans
aligned with the GOP leadership… a sign of worries that tea
party-aligned candidates might try to eliminate tax breaks and spending
favored by businesses.”
The bargain is classic, and classically corrupt: Politicians vote
taxpayer money to cronies, who then recycle part of the money back to
the politicians. The corruption is especially evident in McConnell’s
case. He made his confession and plea to representatives of the defense
industry, who told the Journal’s reporter that their cooperation with
the Establishment against the conservatives was all about mutual support
for national defense: more money means more defense."...
[Ed. note: It's freely acknowledged that endless US 'wars' merely transfer US taxpayer dollars to cronies and organized crime.].
.
(continuing): "But the corruption
inherent in such back-scratching bargains is especially obvious and
noxious in the case of national defense.
Consider: In 2013, the military budget is an inflation-adjusted $642
billion. In 1988, in the same dollars, it was $515 billion. Yet whereas
in 1988 we had an army of twenty divisions, today we have one of ten
“division equivalents” – barely able to handle insurgents armed with
improvised weapons. Back then we had a six hundred ship navy. Now, the
US Navy has 280. Today, we have half the fighter planes of a quarter
century ago, and their average age is over a quarter century. In
short, the Defense industry is taking more taxpayer money to the bank
than ever while delivering far less than half the product.
Industry is not nearly so much to blame for this as are the
politicians that write its orders and sign its checks. Rich corporations
take money on the easiest terms, as naturally as do poor welfare
recipients. Corporate welfare, crony capitalism, is as corrupting as any
other kind of welfare. But it is more deadly to America, especially
when the cronies on both sides of the table are dealing with military
matters.
The mutual defense pact between big government and big business —
crony capitalism — is by no means the Republican Establishment’s sole
responsibility. In fact the Democratic Party in its entirety, openly and
on principle, is
all about what it calls “private-public partnership.” The party itself consists of interest groups that are funded by the
government and which in turn fund the politicians who run the
government. This is the “interest-group Liberalism” that has become the
corrupt norm in American public life. Few challenge it.
The Republican Establishment is significant because it — people like
McConnell, John Boehner, Karl Rove, etc. — is the front line of defense
against those few who do challenge it, namely the conservative issue
groups and the Tea Parties.
Their challenge is forcing such as McConnell, Boehner, and Rove to
court their crony capitalists more brazenly than ever. The protestations
of their own conservatism (“ain’t nobody here but us conservatives”)
with which they try covering their courting are becoming funny. My
favorite is a Wall Street Journal editorial (Oct. 10 2013) that
chastises conservatives for distinguishing themselves from “the GOP establishment as if there still is such a thing.”
It calls to mind images of Mafia dons caught in the notorious
Appalachin, NY conclave of 1957 swearing to Congressional investigators:
“there is no such thing as the Mafia.” Sure."
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