pcr says democracy in the empire is a fraud. never been a democracy. we be a democratic republic and not very good at that; 

 

American Democracy Has Proven Itself to Be a Fraud

Paul Craig Roberts

In my younger days conservatives and libertarians contrasted government unfavorably with private business.  Government consisted of black hat guys and business of white hat guys.  If government won, tyranny would be the result.  If business won, liberty would stay alive.

Conservatives and libertarians saw power as something that government wanted, but not business.  There was no room for power in private life where business governed by competition competed for the consumer’s dollar.  In the business sector, the people were king.  In the government sector bureaucracies wrested power away from the people.

This was the narrative, and the US Chamber of Commerce kept it alive.  For awhile I thought this way myself. Liberals reinforced the narrative, because they always wanted more power for government to rein in private sector wrongs. Liberals were perceived by conservatives and libertarians as wanting to transfer power from citizens to government regulators.

It didn’t take me long to see that this narrative had problems.  If it were true, what explained the success of business lobbies that lined K Street in Washington, D.C.?  You didn’t have to open your eyes very wide to see, for example, agri-business use an alleged oil crisis to collect a federal corn subsidy to dilute gasoline with 10% of ethanol made from corn.

The federal regulatory agencies that were created in the 1930s all ended up in the hands of the business interests that they were supposed to regulate.  Think, for example, of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which the pharmaceutical industry turned into a shill for its interests.......more........