Some time ago a western movie portrayed a bunch of outlaws who botched up every attempt to pilfer money. They were known as the “Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight”. Today we have their soul mate in the Obama administration. That western gang couldn’t hit a barn door in front of them, but at least they didn’t look down the barrel of their own pistol to determine why it misfired.
In his desperate attempt to find a villain that everybody would hate, Obama decided he has a real winner if he could combine big corporations and big Republican bankers. As President Obama said in January, “I didn’t take this job to look after fat-cat bankers”. As so often the case his team of inept researchers and advisors failed to determine who put him in power and who has been backing his socialistic programs. Who but fat-cat Democrat bankers.
Consider this chart that shows who backed Obama and the Democrat congress and whose actions they now disapprove:
2008 Contributions to Federal Candidates
From Employees and PACS
Democrats Republicans
Goldman Sachs 77% 23%
Citigroup 65% 35%
J.P. Morgan Chase 63% 37%
Morgan Stanley 57% 43%
Bank of America 59% 41%
Come on now – how many of you thought by reading all the liberal rags that these big wealthy bankers receiving those obscene bonuses were mostly cigar smoking Republicans?
Following this populist line of reasoning Obama thought he had a sure winner when he used the bully pulpit to upbraid the Supreme Court for protecting First Amendment rights to corporations. Many people were caught off guard when the Supreme Court ruled in January that the freedom of speech clause means just what it says: Congress cannot pass laws restricting such freedom, no matter how much they dress up such laws as promoting “fairness” and “justice”.
As explained by Joel Belz in World Magazine, will there be an abuse of various unions and corporations power to express their preferences during the frenzy of election campaigns? Of course, there will be. This is both the wonderful weakness and the amazing strength of the freedoms our constitution protects. Censorship and limits provided by such legislation as the McCain-Feingold Bill are not only unconstitutional, they are ruinous to the freedom of our country.
Certainly corporations in various industries will spend large amounts of money in an attempt to influence public opinion. What about the trillions flung around by congress? Does anyone really think congress doesn’t intend to shape public opinion? Are the American citizen and the American voter so gullible and so uninformed that an ad by Johnson & Johnson will change voters’ minds? The answer to these two questions might be the uninformed voter may be coerced in the short run. But when Obama and congress or any corporation attempt to do further damage to this country, even us backward hillbillies in Arkansas will put down our Bibles and our guns to say emphatically “enough”.
Note this Supreme Court ruling gave the same power of free spending to both unions and corporations. Isn’t it strange the howls of protest from the lefties don’t seem to apply to unions? This is especially significant since an analysis of the 2008 election shows the contributions by corporation PACS and their employees being split about 50-50 to Republicans and Democrats while an overwhelming 92% of union money was given to Democrats.
Bashing corporations is a part of Obama, Reid and Pelosi’s game plan. This is a way to bash capitalism and try to identify an entity to hate. A corporation is simply a way to organize to provide a service and build or distribute goods that people want. All of this ties into one of the principal purposes of capitalism and that is to produce a profit. When Exxon produced a profit of about 8 percent of sales in 2007, they were evil. Never mind they were providing good paying jobs for tens of thousands with great fringe benefits and pensions. Their total taxes paid were a multiple of their profits but that didn’t register, only that their profits were large.
Those critics and the uninformed should be happy now that Exxon is experiencing a 65 –70 percent decrease in profits. So when will they really be happy? Why, when Exxon starts to lose money, lay off tens of thousands and have the government take over their obligations on pensions and medical benefits to hundreds of thousands of retirees. Everyone knows what we really want as part of Obama’s team is to have big oil, big pharmaceuticals, big insurance go the way of the union dominated auto companies. If we can just keep these companies from making profits, then the government can take over and all will be well.
Most thinking Americans know that corporate America is made up of tens of thousands of businesses, some big, some small and many medium sized. They are what America is all about and are the entities that provide jobs for the majority of Americans.
The next time you hear Obama, Pelosi, Reid and the progressive press try to berate corporate America ask them if they have heard of a foreign corporation (yes, a foreign company) named Saint Jean in Heber Springs who is planning to add 300 new jobs for Cleburne County!
(Jerry Jackson of Heber Springs writes his “conservative viewpoint” column each Wednesday)
