The world is rife with examples of collusion between government interests and big business. Our own President, Nicolas Sarkozy, has been elected thanks to and with the support of conglomerates like Bouygues, his friends possess most of the French press, which is definitely why it is so lenient as far as illegal aliens are concerned. Big business can have advantages in some circumstances, let us say it is an incentive for smaller business to aggrandise so that ancillary profits constitute an appreciable accretion of wealth to the existing margin, as it all too often results in monopolies like Microsoft. It blatantly contradicts the interests of consumers not to mention its negative impact on competition. However, occasionally the country may benefit from their existence, as Capodistrias mentioned, an alliance between big business and government largely paved the way to victory in WWII. As far as I am concerned I am instinctively suspicious of such business owing to my favouring competition as an effective economic tool and to the fact the it could be tempted to coalesce with governments at the expense of the common good, as KO justly pointed out.

Well despite Atlanticist's best efforts Kappertism has infected the right side of the TBJ.

Whining? Just observation Atheling. You're the one who started slinging the "crap" around in this thread. R E V I E W  Y O U R  P O S T S. Is that slow enough for ya?

If you think Soros is an isolated figure in the global business community, a rogue Capitalist, then you really don't have the knowledge base to embark on the ranting that you have launched into on this thread and the subjects you DEMAND be addressed.

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jul/07070509.html

Atheling, Enjoy the Opera.

How many fat ladies singing balances out all the abortion mills Gates and Buffet fund thru their support of Planned Paranthood? Yeah just greed, money that's all they are in for, they don't have any other pretensions...like playing God.

Big Business vs Big Government is a false dichotomy.

They exist semantically as seperate entities and there are certains perks and affectations that go with each one, but the personnel move almost seamlessly, fluidity from corporate post to goverment post, sometimes, often they hold them concurrently.

This state of affairs accelerated tremendously during  the Clinton-Gore years, the consequences of which have been a disaster not only for this country but for the world.

In the 90s I remember sitting with a delegation of deputy ministers from one of the former SSRs as we were about to launch a US gov't funded antitrust training program for them in the US. The VP from one of the big consulting firms in the US, who was primary on the contract, came in to give a introductory pep talk. The essence of his talk was that they should learn how to exploit their high ranking gov't positions to obtain high paying jobs in the private sector , national or foreign it didn't matter, then the VP stated bragging of his own success in the US, they could go back into gov't at even higher levels and subsequently cash out again repeating the process until their foreign bank accounts runnth over. Of course, the deputy minsters loved this talk because it reinforced something they knew all too well from their Soviet days, consequently, antitrust theory and how to maintain a competitive market did not fare too well.

Of course, the anecdote above captured pretty much what happen in the former USSR as a whole and I had a nice  perch from which to see it happen. Essentially, the Russians, particularly, listened to what we told them they had to do to set up a capitalist, market based economy and tried to adapt, but then the more they saw how the Westerners (gov't, business, and NGOs) really did "business," they said okayy we can do that and even better and that is how the oligarchs were born. Russians are great mimics and great actors, though a little over the top at times.  

I freely admit there are limits to comparing Big Business with Big Government. How do you compare winning WWII with an opera and ballet center in Seattle? But the money and power thing are not as inseperable as you think, just ask a Buffet, a Gates, a Soros, or a Gore.

Ad hominem? How disingenuous/obtuse of you.

Atheling do you even read your own post before posting?

Why should I respond to "content" when so little thought and so much vitriol goes into them? 

KO said:

"I would never say big business does exactly what our socialist revolutionaries do."

KO, why not?

What's the difference between someone like George Soros and one of the old Red Directors of the USSR days? 

"Never" is the problem I have with your statement.

Don't be intimidated by Atheling's rants, she appears to have selected moral outrage at leftists and people who don't agree with every point she sputters in amazment.

@atheling

"You do realize, don't you, that the US government allowed these illegals in the country?"

Yes I do realize that roughly half of the illegals enetered the country legally thru NIS/USCIS. You obviously don't have a clue why and how.

'Big business' in the West has corrupted almost every sector of our economy and hence our society. And it really doesn't matter if a pig at the trough has an American flag tatooed on its posterior or a hammer and sicle, there's only one good thing to do with a stuffed pig.

What was that about apples and oranges?

"The Rant" is this a new twist on the Socratic method?

Very effective.

atheling asked:

"Do please show where "big business" is hiring purple shirted union members (or variations thereof) to intimidate protesters of Obamacare." 

No they hired millions of non-shirted, non-union illegal aliens who swamped our communities, highways, hospitals, schools , etc and intimidated Americans from  using the very infrastructure they were taxed to build.

Atheling I can go into detail how they Bush administration, along with DEMS and Repubs in Congress, gutted the regulatory agencies for several industries. Big Ag and Big Finance offer  stunning examples of how big business reached into the halls of agencies  and used them to crush competition in the marketplace.Why do you think so many BIG Finance, IT etc. signed on to the Obama change train? 

I'm sorry I don't have time now, but I leave you with one question : how many certified fraud examiners did the SEC hire after the ENRON scandal?

If you are all so certain that "big business" does exactly what this Administration and the Democrat Party is doing, please provide examples.  Specifics, instead of general, vague statements.

Do please show where "big business" is hiring purple shirted union members (or variations thereof) to intimidate protesters of Obamacare.  And do give examples where big business is using organizations like ACORN to commit voter registration fraud... and please show where the media, who is far left, aids them in their goals. 

Also, please give examples where big business grabbed authority to control the Census, when it was originally run by the Commerce Department.
Please indicate where big business set up a site where their toadies can report "fishy" information they overheard in conversation, or received in emails.

You don't have to provide exact similarities, but please give some specific examples that parallel the goals and activities of Dear Leader's administration.

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Dear Atheling,

I appreciate and agree with so many of your posts, however, on this issue I find myself in agreement with KO and Paganini.

My agreement is based on first hand observation. I wish it was not true, but, unfortunately, most of the big captains of industry and commerce of recent decades are a lost generation of self-absorbed, self-important little twits, who have the intellectual and moral depth and breadth of an 18 year old with his first convertible.

"The goal is not to restart the economy, deliver better health care, or save the environment--none of which their programs have a prayer of doing--but to reward and strengthen political allies and permanently shift the balance of power in the U.S.A."

Well, that's well said, I am strongly convinced of what you wrote, but ... the problem is that the other side, call them 'capitalists' or 'freetraders', have tesame agenda. Most discourses on 'free trade' 'tax cuts' 'privatisation' are only in favour of the already exuberant rich and the biggest companies & cartels. It's just their excuse for (absolute) power, nothing more. Different faces, same enemy.

First of all, we shouldn’t judge Obama on a comparison of economical figures today, with economical figures in the past. Given the unprecedented economical crisis going on, that’s intellectually unfair. Nevertheless, I was a big Obama fan before the elections, But I must admit I’m a bit worried today. Obama struck me as being somebody who would stick to his principles and truth no matter what. But that also implies being able to admit one was wrong, or at the least admit that some electoral promises can’t be held given the state of the economy. His health care program has a lot of merits, but right now there simply doesn’t seem to be an economy that is able to support it. Why not just admit it, and work on the economy?

Big spending of the government, implying some reduction of the outrageous tax cuts his predecessor gave to the extremely wealthy seems understandable and even recommendable at the moment. But use the spending were the economy benefits from it the most. And that seems hardly health care.  

I share Richard Rahn's outlook concerning the overall situation in Sweden and the folly of the Obama administration but I would like to point out other details. First, I do not reckon 1993 figures are relevant to the comparison as this year was one of deep crisis for Sweden, and thus does not embody the average deficits and general shape of the Swedish economy between 1960 and 1993, although I do not question the present analysis on the general trend whose character is incontrovertible. However, flawed though the system was, it still delivered more prosperity in terms of growth rates than some freer economies. I am personally in favour of a limited welfare state comprising a safety net, a part-private part-public health system, and two-tier education (private schools and state schools), the latter of which Adam Smith would not have begrudged me. I think we should not tackle those problems with dogmas or pre-established tenets but rather with pragmatism and providence, which used to be the conservative streak in the UK. Never forget that liberty cannot be absolute, and is always to be envisaged in relative terms.

None the less, I still agree with the assertion that Mr Messiah is doing huge harm to his country by applying outdated solutions, and misjudging the premises of the present crisis, as well as wilfully planning to retain power and increase its ambit. His criminal project to implement social security on such a scale while deficits beyond understanding still endure will lead the U.S. to bankruptcy as surely as day follows night. Even if Mr Obama were bent on actually financing the system (instead of implementing it without sufficient resources), which is apparently not, that would not work, for that would demand further taxation whose consequences would be appalling in times of crisis, contributing to the downward spiral of consumption, postponing any economic recovery. Less revenue, less spending, less consumption, less growth is a circle Mr Obama is seemingly unable to grasp. In the absence of taxation, debt would rise up to even more intolerable levels, perhaps duplicating California's grim example. Beyond the matter whether socialized health-care is desirable or not, it cannot be implemented successfully in the present conditions (and as long as hundreds of thousands of eager migrants flow to the country on a yearly basis, putting unbearable pressure on public services). I rather favour local government and, why not, health systems based partly on taxation but not depending on central government. Taxation should not go beyond a certain point, in order not to promote disincentives to work, that precept is known by economists as the Laffer curve.

Mea culpa

Looks like the Swedes are on the right track.

The advice to the Obama Administration will fall on deaf ears.  They are not concerned with the American economy.  They are solely concerned with garnering and maintaining power.  And the only way to do that is to burden the people with high taxes, government regulation, and more dependency on government "largesse".