Sunday, July 27, 2008
K-Street: I Want To Believe
A group of politicians meets with business presidents, CEOs and industry leaders. The politicians tell the business titans that if they are willing to provide political favors such as donations and lobbying that coincides with their political vision and policies, in turn the pols will provide favorable legislation to the private sector.
Your immediate, perhaps knee jerk, reaction is there go the Republicans again, currying favors in exchange for campaign contributions and other perks. Why, it's K-Street and Tom DeLay all over again, those darn, sneaky, underhanded Republicans! The MSM breathlessly reports on the meeting and how Republicans are tied at the hip to big, bad, evil profitable private businesses.
So imagine this happening all over again, those rascally Republicans choking private businesses for all they are worth, draining the lifeblood of free enterprise.
Only this time it's the Democrats' K-Street and it's taking place under the auspices of Senate Majority Leader Democrat Harry Reid without any MSM coverage and lacking all public outrage.
Reid's strong-arming business is documented in the WSJ's Potomac Watch by Kimberly Strassel's The K Street Project, Part Blue:
[Harry Reid] summoned the titans of more than a dozen industry trade groups to a Capitol Hill meeting where he delivered a crisp message: Get with our program, or get demolished.
Anyone remember the "K Street Project"? [And how it pressured] the business community into hiring GOP lobbyists, supporting GOP causes, and giving money to GOP candidates? The press was shocked, shocked, to discover such behavior and ran endless coverage of this nefarious GOP operation. Democrats were shocked, shocked, too, and charged that the project was the root of Washington's corruption.
[...]
But it was not even remotely shocking to discover that the party in power [The Democrats.-Drake] strong-arms the business community.
[...]
The corporate world got an early taste of this last year when New York Sen. Chuck Schumer used his majority status to take advantage of his home-state financial industry. [Schumer] steps up to protect hedge funds and private equity from his own party's threats of taxation. In return, a grateful industry writes enormous campaign checks[.]
Reid stepped up the pressure in [his meeting with private industry].
[...]
[His message according] to one participant: "We have a narrow margin right now, and it is tough for us to get anything done. But there will be more of us next year, you'd better get used to it and you better find a way to work with us."
You gotta love the Democrats and their methodology of bullying both individuals and enterprise into doing things their way. Since Democrats can't accomplish their agenda with civility, logic, reason or facts they can only resort to bullying.
Few majorities have been as hostile to free enterprise as this one, and the business community knows it. For all the Democrats' power, industry knows that climbing on board an agenda of higher taxes, bigger government, less free trade and no new energy would be suicide.
This is the current structure of the Democrat party, filled with members who are Left of Far Left. They are The New Bolsheviks. They are hell-bent on destroying the free market, capitalism, reasonable free trade and instead establishing complete government control in every facet of industry, the free market and in our personal lives.
The New Bolsheviks know no subtly, unwilling to negotiate or compromise. Their philosophy is one of intimidation, oppression, taxation, regulation and demonization. They are bullies and they are loud and this is all they are. Karl, Joe Lenin, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler applaud them from their graves.
©2008
Labels: Energy, The New Bolsheviks
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