Today's Stories

February 13 - 15, 2009

Joshua Frank
The Myth of Clean Coal

George Cicarriello-Maher
Venezuela's Term Limits

February 12, 2009

P. Sainath
Neo-Liberal Terrorism in India: The Largest Wave of Suicides in History

Jean Bricmont
French Echoes of the Israeli-Palestine Conflict

Michael Hudson
Trying to Revive the Bubble Economy: Obama's Awful Financial Recovery Plan

Peter Lee
Pakistan, Not Afghanistan, is the Main Event

Dave Lindorff
Judges Nabbed, Jailing Kids for Kickbacks

February 11, 2009

Neve Gordon
Few Peacemakers in the New Israeli Knesset

Peter Morici
Anatomy of a Hemorrhage

Andy Worthington
Who's Running Guantánamo?

Marjorie Cohn
A Call to End All Renditions

Fred Gardner
Change We Can Smoke?

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The G & O (Geithner and Obama) Bank

Zoe Blunt
Vancouver Island Hippies: Top Security Threat for 2010?

Belén Fernández
Politics on the Panamericana

Martha Rosenberg
Don't Breathe the Meat

Website of the Day
George Dyson on Project Orion

Blues of the Day
David Vest on the CBC

February 10, 2009

Kathy Kelly
How Do People Keep Going?

Nikolas Kozloff
The Stimulus Imbroglio

Uri Avnery
Dirty Socks

Michael J. Berg
Will South Carolina be the Center of the Nuclear Revival?

Russell Mokhiber
Et Tu, Atul?

Joe Bageant
A Commodity Called Misery

Gareth Porter
Petraeus' Subterfuge

Dave Lindorff
Seek Truth, But Prosecute Liars

Rannie Amiri
The Implications of Recognizing Israel's "Right to Exist"

Harvey Wasserman
Nukes and the Stimulus

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What We Didn't Learn at Obama's Press Conference

Website of the Day
RIAA Takes Over DoJ Under Obama

February 9, 2009

Vicente Navarro
Why Sanjay Gupta is the Wrong Man for Top US Health Job

Paul Craig Roberts
Driving Over the Cliff

Julio Sanchez /
Feliz de Bedout
The Threat of Peace in Colombia: an Interview with Hollman Morris

National Lawyers Guild
Strong Indications of Israeli War Crimes

Jonathan Cook
Israeli University Welcomes "War Crimes" Colonel

Alana Smith
The Nightmarish Case of Fahad Hashmi

Binoy Kampmark
Taking the Bong

Sam Bahour
End the Occupation First

Nicole Colson
Can You Afford College?

Ron Jacobs
Remembering the Second Intifada

Website of the Day
The Legacy of Ed Grothus and the Black Hole

February 6-8, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's First Bad Week

Ishmael Reed
Saint Thelma's Book

James Abourezk
Obama, Mitchell and the Palestinians

William Blum
Obama and the Empire

Patrick Cockburn
Maliki's Triumph

Henry A. Giroux
Educating Obama

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Darwin's Living Legacy

Mouin Rabbani
A New Low on Gaza?

David Yearsley
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Springsteen!

Saul Landau
The Wrestler: an American Tragedy

Jules Rabin
Israel's Disproportionate Responses

Raymond J. Lawrence
A Country Awash in Money But Going Broke

Janette Habel
Castro's Socialism in Crisis

Dave Lindorff
Economy on a Thread

Missy Beattie
Blackout at the Gaza Zoo Massacre

Dale Gieringer
The Opium Exclusion Act of 1909: Marking 100 Years of Failed Drug Prohibition

John Ross
Davos vs. Belem; Swine vs. Pearls

Richard Rhames
Jobs is a Four Letter Word

Bob Wing
Obama, Race and the Future of U.S. Politics

Robert Bryce
Corn Dog Update: Another Study Exposes Bio-Fuel Scam

David Macaray
AFL-CIO and Change to Win in "Re-Wed" Talks

James L. Secor
Inaugural Questions Nobody Asks: Notes from Kuala Lumpur

Jason Flom /
Anthony Papa
The Scourging of Michael Phelps

Norm Kent
Ten Reasons to Get High About Pot in 2009

Kim Nicolini
When Utopia Crumbles: Why Revolutionary Road was Shut Out of the Oscars

Lorenzo Wolff
Ridiculous Flow: How Cee Lo Green Sells Soul

Poets' Basement
Emily Dickinson (with Commentary by Daniel Wolff)

Website of the Weekend
S.J. Gould: Darwin's Untimely Burial

February 5, 2009

Michael Mandel
Self-Defense Against Peace

Saul Landau /
Philip Brenner
Killing the Monroe Doctrine

Ralph Nader
Tax the Speculators!

Robert Bryce
The Unraveling of the Ethanol Scam

Russell Mokhiber
Occupied Territory

Sameh Habeeb /
Janet Zimmerman
Innocents Lost

Dave Lindorff
Small Change

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
Beyond Green Capitalism

George Ochenski
A Blow to Big Coal in Montana

Website of the Day
Putting CEO Pay in Context

February 4, 2009

Arno J. Mayer
On Corruption

Paul Craig Roberts
The War on Terror is a Hoax

Patrick Cockburn
The Iraqi Elections

Jonathan Cook
An IDF Jihad?

Fred Gardner
Obama's Mixed Messages on Marijuana

Stan Cox
Slumwrecking Millionaires: India's Fragile New Temples

Margaret Kimberley
The Deepening Economic Crisis

Lawrence Velvel
Agony & Desperation: Madoff's Victims

Dave Lindorff
A Generals' Revolt?

Doug Giebel
A Helping of Bitter Beltway Baloney

Serge Quadruppani
Student Protests Sweep Italy

Website of the Day
The San Francisco 8

February 3, 2009

David Price
Counterinsurgency & Anthropology: Roberto Gonzalez on Human Terrain Systems

Bill Moyers
Obama's Wars: an Interview with Pierre Sprey and Marilyn Young

Kirkpatrick Sale
Obama's Lincoln Thing

Conn Hallinan
When Mind Wounds Don't Count

Peter Morici
The Slippery Slope of Stimulus

George Ciccariello-Maher
From Oakland to Santa Rita: "Fired Up, Can't Take It No More"

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
The BBC's Nadir

Allan Nairn
What Does It Take to Get a Meal Here, an Earthquake?

Norman Solomon
Why are We Still at War?

David Macaray
The Late, Great UAW

Website of the Day
The Bloody Cove

February 2, 2009

Uri Avnery
Under the Black Flag: Israeli War Crimes

Ralph Nader
What to Do About Wall Street

Gareth Porter
Generals Move to Obstruct Obama's Iraq Withdrawal Orders

Paul Craig Roberts
The Death of American Leadership

Harvey Wasserman
The Nuclear Industry's Latest Money Grab

Rannie Amiri
Gaza and the Crimes of Mubarak

Cal Winslow
Stern's Gang Seizes UHW Union Hall

Steve Early
Checking Out of Stern's Hotel California

Alan Farago
Superbowl as Panopticon

Diane Farsetta
Banning Domestic Propaganda

January 30 / February 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama and the Oddsmakers

Michael Hudson
Obama's New Bank Giveaway

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
"Too Big to Fail:" a Bailout Hoax

Dave Lindorff
The Ugly Truth: the American Economy is Not Coming Back

Saul Landau
Freedom Fighters, Terrorists or Schlemiels?

Andy Worthington
Blame the Chef: How Cooking for the Taliban Can Get You Life in Gitmo

Subcomandante Marcos
Gaza Will Survive

Robert Jensen
Future Farming: an Interview with Wes Jackson

Ron Jacobs
Return of the Democrats

Gareth Porter
Is Gates Undermining Another Opening to Iran?

Allan Nairn
Hope for the Dump Cities?

Laura Carlsen
NAFTA's Dangerous Security Agenda

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Feelings of a Stranger

Christopher Brauchli
From Gitmo to Supermax?

Jules Rabin
Israel and the Bomb

Col. Dan Smith
Thoughts From an Inauguration Refugee

Missy Beattie
The US Garden of Evil

Tom Barry
Obama's Immigration Challenge

J. Michael Cole
The Downfall of an Academic

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Burning the First Amendment

Dan Bacher
How Dam Removal Can Save the Klamath River

David Rosen
Last Gasp of the Culture Wars?

Don Monkerud
Religion in the American Bedroom

Binoy Kampmark
Updike: Apostle of the Middlebrows

Lorenzo Wolff
Playing Down a Bad Reputation: the Lovin' Spooful's Near Perfect Record

David Yearsley
When Orfeo and Euridice Lived Happily Ever After in Upstate New York

Poets' Basement
Valentine and Rihn

January 29, 2009

Peter Linebaugh
Tom Paine's Birthday

Paul Craig Roberts
Is It Time to Bail Out of America?

Riz Khan
The Future of Gaza: an Interview with Jimmy Carter

M. Reza Pirbhai
Pakistan: a New Cambodia?

Wajahat Ali
Obama's Al-Arabiya Interview

Gregory Vickrey
What About the Environment? Cap and Trade and Selling Out

Dina Jadallah-Taschler
Whither the Two State Solution?

Alison Weir
Killing Palestinians Doesn't Count: Fact-Checking Ceasefire Breaches

Alan Farago
Economy Without Escape Routes

Walter Brasch
Taxing a House of Cards

Website of the Day
Madoff Inc.

January 28, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
Behind the Bloodbath in Gaza

Noam Chomsky
Obama's Emerging Policies on Israel, Iraq and the Economic Crisis

Patrick Cockburn
Is Mitchell's Mission Already Doomed?

Rob Larson
The Clinton Foundation Donors

George Wuerthner
Who Will Speak for the Forests?

Allan Nairn
South-East Asian Groups Threaten Retaliation Over Gaza Invasion

M. Junaid
Levesque-Alam
A Muslim's Memo to Obama

Stefan Simanowitz
The Silent Trade

Charles R. Larson
The Autumn of the Patriot

Website of the Day
Veggie Love: PETA's Banned Superbowl Ad

January 27, 2009

Winslow T. Wheeler
Save the Economy by Cutting the Defense Budget

Yigal Bronner /
Neve Gordon
Fueling the Cycle of Hate

Joshua Frank
Obama's Neocon: the Curious Case of Richard Holbrooke

Jordan Flaherty
Torture at a Louisiana Prison

Ralph Nader
Access to Economic Justice

Rev. José M. Tirado
How Iceland Fell: a Hundred Days of (Muted) Rage

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Looking Forward

Russell Mokhiber
What If Israel Were in Your Neighborhood?

Martha Rosenberg
Who Says Technology Transfer Doesn't Pay?

C. G. Estabrook
The Inaugural Address: the Digested Read

Website of the Day
Who Profits From the Occupation?

January 26, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Speaking the Truth is a Career-Ending Event

Deepak Tripathi
The BBC's Day of Shame

Vijay Prashad
The India Lobby: Drunk with the Sight of Power

Peter Lee
Geithner's Pop Gun Volley at China

Allan Nairn
The Torture Ban That Doesn't Ban Torture

Uri Avnery
On the Wrong Side of History

John Sayen
The Next Shoe to Drop

Dave Lindorff
Afghanistan is No Threat to America

Lawrence R. Velvel
Investing with Madoff

David Macaray
Obama vs. Labor

Roger Burbach
Winds of Change in Cuba

Norman Solomon
The Ghost of LBJ

Website of the Day
Landscapes of Occupation

January 23 / 25, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Ghosts at Obama's Side

P. Sainath
The Freefalling Economy

Patrick Cockburn
In Israel, Detachment From Reality is the Norm

Saul Landau
Reasons for War?

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Our Current Economic Crisis: the Monks' Cure

Alan Farago
The Problem with the Stimulus

Christopher Brauchli
When Due Diligence is a One-Way Street

Andy Worthington
Return to Law?

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pentagon: Bowing to the Masters of War?

Lawrence Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience (Part Four)

Henry A. Giroux
The Audacity of Educated Hope

David Yearsley
The Music That Wasn't There: Chamber Music for Obama's Masses

Raymond F. Gustavson
Here We Go Again: General Shinseki and Veterans

Dave Lindorff
The Way Forward

Roberto Rodriguez
Fighting for Migrant Justice in the Desert

Dina Jadallah-Taschler
The Struggle of an Un-People

Fidel Castro
Meeting Cristina

J. Michael Cole
Can Obama's Shift on Terror Succeed?

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman
It's Time to Free Leonard Peltier

Ramzy Baroud
Breaking Gaza's Will

Mohammad Ali Shabani
The Aftermath of the War on Gaza

Richard Rhames
Panning for Pyrite on a Cold Day at the Mall

Stephen Martin
Voices in the Mirror

Lorenzo Wolff
Jurassic Radio

Kim Nicolini
Katrina's Endless Loop

Poets' Basement
Fleming, Henson, First, Jaramillo and Glendinning

Website of the Weekend
Cartoon Love

January 22, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Another Real Estate Crisis is About to Hit

Kathy Kelly
Worse Than an Earthquake

Allan Nairn
US Intel Nominee Lied About Church Murders

Lawrence Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience (Part Three)

Andy Worthington
Halting the Gitmo Trials

Peter Morici
How to Fix the Banks

Joseph G. Davis
The First MBA Presidency and the Business Academy: a Damage Assessment

Adriana Kojeve
The Democrats on Israel: a Brief Oral History

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Poised for Historic Vote

Website of the Day
Support the Gaza Community Mental Health Program

January 21, 2009

Gabriel Kolko
Understanding Gaza

Harry Browne
Obama's Work Ethic

Michael Colby
Ready. Aim. Organize.

Lawrence R. Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience

Audrey Stewart
Starting Over in Gaza

Wajahat Ali
Obama and the Muslims

Binoy Kampmark
The Marketing of Hope

David Kεr Thomson
Abolition

John Ross
In My Own Bones

Allan Nairn
Killer in Chief: Will This President Murder Civilians?

Sheldon Richman
The Peaceful Transfer of Violent Power

Website of the Day
Globistan

January 20, 2009

Chuck Spinney
Hosing Obama Israeli Style

Kathy Kelly
The Strongest Weapon of All

Raymond Deane
The EU, Gaza and the Lisbon Treaty

Ralph Nader
State Terrorism Against Gaza

Audrey Stewart
Why I am in Gaza

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Doctrine of Destruction

Harvey Wasserman
A Ten-Point Solar Agenda for Obama

Christopher Ketcham
Inauguration Ad Nauseam

Robert Jensen
A Citizen's Oath of Office

Dave Lindorff
Commie Chorus on the Mall: This Land Really is Made for You and Me

David Macaray
SAG Watches It All Slip Away

Weekend Edition
February 13 - 15, 2009

The American Way

A Short History of Business Handouts

By STEPHEN LENDMAN

Global economies are withering while Washington conceives "Financial Recovery Plan(s) from Hell," according to economist Michael Hudson in his latest February 11 article. Bankers demand more trillions, "or (they'll) plunge the economy into financial crisis." What they want they'll get, and here's where things now stand.

On February 10, Bloomberg.com reported that Treasury Secretary Geithner "pledged government financing for as much as $2 trillion....to spur new lending and address banks' toxic assets, seeking to end the credit crunch hobbling the economy." Hudson calls it "Stage One of a two-stage plan," so far unannounced, to transfer trillions more to corrupt bankers who caused the problem in the first place, yet taxpayers will get little more back than the bill.

On February 11, The New York Times reported that "House and Senate leaders....struck a deal on a $789 billion economic stimulus bill after little more than 24 hours of rapid-fire negotiations....clearing the way for final Congressional action later this week (so) Obama (can) sign the bill on" February 16 in a prime time TV spectacular.

In America today, they're called bailouts, but throughout history they were handouts. Some quite generous (though nothing like today's) and always for the privileged. Never for the public interest or greater good.

Last October, Howard Zinn wrote about them in his Nation magazine article titled "Bailout - A Great Opportunity:"

"Let's face a historical truth: we have never had a 'free market,' we have always had government intervention in the economy, and indeed that intervention has been welcomed by the captains of finance and industry. These titans of wealth hypocritically warned against 'big government' but only when (it) threatened to regulate their activities, or when it contemplated passing some of the nation's wealth on to the neediest people."

"They had no quarrel with 'big government' when it served their needs, (and it) started way back" in 1787 when the Constitution was drafted. The year before farmers from Western Massachusetts and elsewhere rebelled to protect their properties from being seized for nonpayment of taxes. The Founders took note and "created 'big government' powerful enough" to deter them in future incidents. To return runaway slaves to their owners, and to massacre Indians to make way for new settlers.

They established the idea of handouts as well. The first one to pay full value for near-worthless bonds held by speculators - an earlier version of buying today's toxic assets.

It was bad enough, then compounded by taxing the public to pay for them each time, and having a standing army ready in case of resistance. What precisely happened in 1794 when Pennsylvania farmers stood up against unfair tax laws.

"In the first sessions of the first Congress," markets were manipulated with tariffs "to subsidize manufacturers." Government also partnered with private banks to establish a national one. These practices were commonplace from that time to now. Only the amounts get bigger. The more concentrated business gets, the greater its appetite and more power it has to satisfy it. It's now insatiable enough to demand trillions more in handouts before the current crisis ends, looted from the Treasury with taxpayers getting the bill.

Zinn notes how in the 19th century government subsidized canals, the merchant marine, and before and during the Civil War gave about 100 million free acres of land to the railroad barons "along with considerable loans to keep" them in business. It was the largest ever giveaway until Paulson's-engineered Wall Street one, and as stated above, lots more is coming, and much of it still ahead.

Democrats back it more than Republicans. Another long-standing tradition from the republic's beginning, as Zinn again noted. He cited Democrat Grover Cleveland vetoing "a bill to give (a mere) $100,000 to Texas farmers to help them buy seed grain during a drought, saying (dismissively): 'Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character.' " However, in the same year he gave wealthy bondholders $5 million by pricing them $28 above market value. "Rugged individualism" he called it to make it on our own with a little government intervention for assistance. Only for business. Never the public.

After WW II, military Keynesianism became dogma. Aircraft and other defense industries had to be saved and another Depression avoided. The oil industry got its depletion allowance. Chrysler was resurrected from the dead. Continental Illinois Bank was taken over until sold to Bank of America. Business was shored up overall by the 1971 Emergency Loan Guarantee Act. Post-9/11, the Air Transportation Safety and Stabilization Act was for the airlines. Today it's rescuing Wall Street and major banks, Fannie, Freddie, AIG, the auto giants, and any other "too big to fail" company. Generous government handouts to revive America's business, or at least that's the hope behind them.

Historian Charles Beard's Documented History of Handouts

In December 1931, noted historian Charles Beard wrote about them for Harper's Monthly in an article titled: "The Myth of Rugged American Individualism." He documented 15 examples of government handouts/subsidies to business when the country was sinking into Depression.

(1) Government Regulation of Railways from 1887

Beard asked: "How did the Government get into this business?" At the "insistence of business men, shippers, who were harassed and sometimes ruined by railway tactics." Through rebates, pools, stock watering, bankruptcy-juggling, savage rate slashing, merciless competition, and much more by some of the most cutthroad of all robber barons. They caused disastrous railway bankruptcies involving bloodshed and arson during the Panic of 1873, the result of financier Jim Fisk and railroad baron Jay Gould trying to corner the gold market. Ulysses S. Grant deterred them. A panic ensued and depression followed - two years after the great Chicago fire destroyed four square miles of the city, including close to where this writer lives.

(2) Waterways

Since the nation's founding, the government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding the development of rivers, harbors, canals, and other infrastructure, and continues to do it for business. "Who (was) back of all this," Beard asked? "Business men and farmers who want lower freight rates. There is not a chamber of commerce on any Buck Creek in America that will not cheer until tonsils are cracked for any proposal to make the said creek navigable." Dredging companies also backed it and companies making their machinery.

Beyond Beard's timeline, the Eisenhower administration began building the Interstate Highway System at the behest of the auto industry, but its origin way pre-dated him with the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1938. Then another Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944. Still another in 1952 and under Eisenhower one more plus the Highway Revenue Act of 1956 that created the Highway Trust Fund to pay for the proposed 41,000 miles of roads (up to almost 47,000 by 2004).

(3) The United States Barge Corporation

Again Beard asked: "Who got the Government into the job of running barges on some of its improved waterways?" Not socialists. Good Republicans and Democrats representing the country's business interests.

(4) The Shipping Business

WW I was the proximate cause. For over half a century government stayed out of subsidizing ship builders and allied industries. "Under the cover of war necessities," it went into the business with much joy from the industry. It backed huge merchant marine expenditures in the form of cheap or subsidized funding, and did it by spending money "like water educating politicians." What today we call lobbying.

Beard asked: "Who wants navy officers on half pay to serve on privately owned ships? Business men. Who wants the Government to keep on operating ships on 'pioneer' lines that do not pay? Business men. And when the United States Senate gets around to investigating this branch of business, it will find more entertainment than the Trade Commission has found in the utility inquest." In other words, if Congress ever has second thoughts, it'll be too late. Business will have pocketed their money and used it.

(5) Aviation

Government was already in this business by providing costly airway services free of charge and by subsidizing air mail. Once again, private enterprise was behind the whole scheme, or as Beard put it: "Gentlemen engaged in aviation and the manufacture of planes and dirigibles." Government merely helped out by buying planes "for national defense" or whatever other reason it chose.

(6) Canals

Consider the Panama Canal, for example. East and West coast shippers backed it because of costly railroad rates. Others with a financial interest in the Cape Cod Canal found that one unprofitable. "They rejoiced to see (that) burden placed on the broad back of our dear Uncle Sam" to bail them out.

(7) Highway Building

Even in Beard's day, "business men engaged in the manufacture and sale of automobiles and trucks" wanted the government to spend hundreds of millions on roads and tax railroads to help pay for them. With a touch of humor, Beard asked: "Who proposes to cut off every cent of that outlay? Echoes do not answer."

(8) The Department of Commerce

Its very name defines its purpose. To promote what Calvin Coolidge called "the business of America." A process Beard described going on in its "magnificent mansion near the Treasury Department, and its army of hustlers scouting for business at the uttermost ends of the earth. Who is responsible for loading on the Government the job of big drummer at large for business? Why shouldn't these rugged individualists do their own drumming instead of asking taxpayers to do it for them?" Herbert Hoover headed the department at the time and outdid all his predecessors in dispensing public money. The same president Herbert Hoover we blame for his public stinginess after the country headed into Depression on his watch.

(9) The Big Pork Barrel

It's been around for ages and entered into the vocabulary after the Civil War. It was named after a container to store pig meat in brine, and in 1801 a farmer's almanac urged readers to "mind our pork and cider barrels." Its need went out with refrigeration but got new life in reference to political bills bringing home the bacon for constituents. For all sorts of things like post offices, rivers, harbors, buildings, and a whole array of boondoggle projects and giveaways. Beard cited public buildings, navy yards and army posts with business interests every time the beneficiaries.

(10) The Bureau of Standards (NBS)

It's now called the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), and was originally established in 1901 as a measurement standards lab under the Department of Commerce to promote US innovation and industrial competitiveness. Given its purpose was to help business, Beard asked: "Why shouldn't they do their own (promoting) at their own expense, instead of turning to the Government?"

(11) The Federal Trade Commission

In 1914, it was established as an independent US government agency. While claiming its principle mission is to promote "consumer protection," it exists solely for business and in Beard's day for "business men who do not like to be outwitted or cheated by their competitors." Why so for "rugged individualists," he asked? Why not let them all do as they please "without invoking government intervention at public expense" and no public benefit.

(12) The Anti-trust Acts

Beard refers to the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act and 1914 Clayton Antitrust Act - trustbusting legislation of their day to defuse anti-competititive practices. Today they're mere artifacts at a time business oligopolies and de facto monopolies dominate all major industry groups and are practically omnipotent. It's why Chomsky calls them "private tryannies."

Earlier, businesses complained that these laws constrained them and their ability to do large-scale planning without risking prosecution. Yet farmers and small business wanted them. The former for lower prices. The latter so as not to be undersold, "beaten by clever tricks, or crushed to the wall by competitors with immense capital."

Individualism inspired both acts, what Woodrow Wilson called "The New Freedom. Break up the trusts," he said, "and let each tub stand on its own bottom." That's how small businessmen felt. Lawyers representing them put it differently: "The natural person's personal liberty should not be destroyed by artificial persons known as corporations created under the auspices of the State."

(13) The Tariff

They go back to the 18th century and were the government's largest source of revenue from the 1790s until WW I. Once income taxes became law in 1913, that changed although taxing income was used during the Civil War and again in the 1890s.

Beard referred to tariffs as the kind of "interference" business men demanded to protect their interests while at the same time wanting "the right of capital to find its most lucrative course, industry and intelligence their natural reward, and commodities their fair price." The idea of "free trade" then was about the way it is now. One way with government protecting business against foreign competition, heavily by tariffs back then. More today by the WTO, NAFTA and the like. Beard's response: "If competition is good, why not stand up and take it?"

(14) The Federal Farm Board

It was created in 1929 so was quite new when Beard wrote about it. He called it a "collectivist institution" and a product of "agrarian agitation on the part of our most stalwart individualists, the free and independent farmers." Hoover sponsored it and signed it into law, but under him its measures were modest at best. It primarily and fundamentally stabilized prices and production through cooperative methods. It financed associations to limit production. The alternative was to let farmers produce what they wish, as much as they could, and sell it at whatever the market would bear. It's slogan was "Grow Less - Get More," cooperate under government leadership or hang separately.

(15) The Moratorium and Frozen Assets

It was a Herbert Hoover plan for a one-year moratorium on payments due the US from foreign powers at a time of growing economic duress as well as a "proposal to give public support to 'frozen assets.' " Its "inspiration" was the jam American investment bankers were in. They made easy money in the 1920s, were now in trouble, and wanted government bailout help.

In 1927, a distinguished German economist told Beard that "the great game in his country, as in other parts of Europe, was to borrow billions from private bankers in the US, so that it would ultimately be impossible to pay reparations, the debts due the Federal Government, and then the debts owed to private parties." As a result, they believed bankers would force their government to forego its claims for the benefit of private operators. It worked, and according to Beard: "American taxpayers (were) to be soaked and American bankers (were) to collect - perhaps."

What then is a "frozen asset?" A piece of paper representing a transaction expecting to yield a larger return than possible on a prudent investment. For example, a 7% Western farm mortgage at the time was frozen tight and its holder with it. But why should government have to intervene to save them from "their folly and greed? No reason, except that (investors) want the Government to bring home their cake so they can eat it."

Beard stressed that "the Federal government does not operate in a vacuum, but under impulsion from without." From "rugged individualists - business men or farmers or both....The Government operates continually in the midst of the most powerful assembly of lobbyists the world has ever seen." Representing every business interest "above the level of a corner grocery. For forty years or more there has not been a President, Republican or Democrat, who has not talked against government interference and then supported measures adding more interference to the huge collection already accumulated."

Woodrow Wilson, for example. He based his 1912 campaign on individualism. A new freedom against corporate wealth controlling government. As a Jeffersonianism heir, "he decried paternalism of every kind." But look at the laws enacted under him:

-- the Federal Reserve Act subverting the Constitution by giving a private banking cartel the right to print money, control its supply and price, and charge government interest on what it would not have to pay if it printed its own;

-- the Federal income tax to service the federal debt owed to bankers;

-- the trainmen's law virtually fixing wages on interstate railways for certain classes of employees;

-- the shipping board law that put the government in the shipping business and let it regulate rates;

-- the Farm Loan Act that established 12 regional Farm Loan Banks to serve members of Farm Loan Associations;

-- federal aid for highway construction;

-- the Alaskan railway;

-- the Water Power Act that created a Federal Power Commission with extensive authority over waterways and the construction and use of water power projects; and

-- various other acts belying the notion of "the less government the better" so increasingly more of it for business became the law of the land.

Republicans regained power in the early 1920s on a slogan of returning to normalcy and getting government out of business. In fact, they repealed none of Wilson's laws. They and their ideological forebears "came honestly by subsidies, bounties, internal improvements, tariffs, and other aids to business." It was their kind of normalcy. Individualism, with no interference, lots of handouts, and nothing changed under Republican and Democrat administrations through today.

Handouts to Business: the American Way of Life

American business is defined by Socialized costs and privatized profits - more than ever today with trillions in handouts plus all sorts of other generous benefits:

-- subsidies and other direct grants;

-- tax breaks, reductions, deductions, exclusions, write-offs, exemptions, credits, loopholes, shelters, and rebates even for profitable companies; the bigger they are, the more they get;

-- letting corporations be headquartered off-shore and pay no federal income taxes; allowed to repatriate foreign earnings on the same basis; export jobs and erode the nation's industrial base; financialize the economy; make it a casino, and loot the Treasury to cover their bad bets;

-- large government contracts of every imaginable kind; some on a cost-plus basis with every incentive to cheat and get more;

-- discounted user fees or subsidized use of public resources;

-- free government-funded R & D;

-- various other government direct payments; every cabinet department as a conduit for government funding to private business; every program from the Department of Commerce, Agriculture and others underwrites it; the FDA for Big Pharma; the FCC for media and telecommunications firms; the FAA for the airlines, the Treasury and Fed for Wall Street, and so forth; the most active "peoples" agency is the IRS;

-- other subsidies like accelerated depreciation; the cost of advertising; direct aid for companies that advertise abroad; and much more with Democrats as pro-business as Republicans while at the same time curtailing essential social benefits;

-- individual tax breaks for the rich; winking and nodding about billions offshored to tax havens; letting corporate fraud and abuse become the national pastime;

-- privatizing more of what government should do and/or does best - schools, highways, bridges, airports, prisons, public lands, utilities, the running of elections, foreign policy, parts of the military, war through the use of mercenaries, outer space, and thus far a failed attempt to take away the most important poverty reduction program for seniors and the disabled - Social Security;

-- privatizing wealth and socializing debt;

-- abolishing welfare and other social benefits; rendering organized labor impotent in a "Walmartized" society; ruling by the doctrine of rewarding the privileged at the expense of beneficial social change; the greater good; government for the people; human need; and the democratic ideal that government should serve all its people, not just its preferential few.

Beard's "rugged individualism" is pure myth for them. But, rugged or otherwise, it's the consigned fate for the rest of us - sink or swim at a time a lot of us are submerging.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

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