Bare for å understreke noe vi alle visste på forhånd - George Bush er
storkapitalens mann. Nå vil storkapitalen ha politisk utbytte for pengene
de ga ham under valgkampen.
Mvh,
Per
---------- Forwarded message ----------
March 18, 2001
Corporate Power in Overdrive
By ROBERT B. REICH
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — With last week's reversal of his campaign pledge to
limit power plants' emissions of carbon dioxide, a key contributor to
global warming, President Bush surrendered to coal companies and utilities
dependent on coal. He had little choice. It's payback time, and every
industry and trade association is busily cashing in.
There's no longer any countervailing power in Washington. Business is in
complete control of the machinery of government. The House, the Senate and
the White House are all run by business-friendly Republicans who are
deeply indebted to American business for their electoral victories. If
corporate America understood its long-term interest, it would use this
unique moment to establish in the public's mind the principle that
business can be trusted. But it's doing the opposite, and the danger for
American business as a whole is profound.
Credit-card companies are getting a bankruptcy bill that will make it
harder for overstretched people who succumbed to these companies'
blandishments ever to get out from under the resulting debts. Oil
companies are on the way to obtaining rights to drill on Alaska's coastal
plain.
Cigarette manufacturers are confident the administration will drop the
federal lawsuit against them. Pharmaceutical companies are hoping to get
longer patent protections. Big, labor-intensive businesses want to get
rules that weaken unions, and they've already killed the Labor
Department's ergonomics rules, which would have protected workers against
repetitive-stress injuries. Airlines with labor problems can count on
White House actions to ward off strikes. And so on.
In normal times — when business has to cope with some political resistance
— its leaders are forced to set strict priorities. There is only a fixed
amount of political capital to spend. The Business Roundtable, comprising
the chief executives of large American companies, typically establishes at
the start of a new Congress a legislative agenda reflecting what its
members consider the most important issues. The United States Chamber of
Commerce, after canvassing its mostly small and medium-sized member
businesses to determine their priorities, also develops a strategy. The
National Association of Manufacturers weighs in with its wish list. And
the National Federation of Independent Business, composed of small firms,
sets its goals.
These groups do not always see eye to eye, but under normal circumstances
they understand that legislative success requires coordination.
Separately, they lack the political clout to overcome determined
resistance in one or both houses of Congress or from a president at least
partly dependent for his political future on organized labor,
environmentalists and other interests besides business.
The trade associations representing specific industries — coal-powered
utilities, pharmaceuticals, hospitals, electronics, securities, oil and
gas, for example — typically play supporting roles. Their own parochial
legislative goals can't interfere directly with the priorities of business
as a whole because the industries often have to depend on the larger
business groups to be heard. Specific firms may retain their own
Washington lobbyists, but they, too, have to work with others in order to
have significant effect.
Political resistance, in other words, forces the business community to
decide what's most important to it. It thereby enables corporate America
to exert some discipline over itself. Business leaders can prevent or at
least distance themselves from excesses by any single company or industry
that might otherwise taint business as a whole in the minds of the public.
American business notably did not come to the aid of cigarette
manufacturers when lawsuits against them began several years ago. Nor has
corporate America as a whole fought on behalf of the gun lobby. Labor and
environmental rules with broad consequences typically become high
priorities for legislative attack, but not all such rules. In the first
Clinton administration, the business community was quite happy to let the
Labor Department target apparel manufacturers and major retailers in its
crackdown on sweatshops. I recall a number of White House meetings in
which the leaders of major business organizations quietly assented to the
administration's plans to block subsidies flowing to a particular
industry, or to impose new clean-air rules on another industry, or to move
aggressively with an antitrust complaint.
With political resistance gone, the business community can, paradoxically,
no longer discipline itself. Every business lobbyist on K Street is under
enormous pressure from clients to reap something from the new bonanza.
Every trade association must demonstrate to its members large returns from
their investments in getting an all-Republican business-friendly
government. And the pressure only ratchets upward: Every time one company
or one industry receives its reward, other Washington lobbyists,
representing other firms or industries, come under even more pressure to
score victories.
Nor can the Republicans themselves provide any discipline. Washington is
awash in corporate i.o.u.'s, all waiting to be cashed in, and George W.
Bush can't argue that the Democrats will block the payoffs. Under these
circumstances, the Bush forces are finding it next to impossible to
maintain order. Demands for regulatory relief are growing louder, and most
will have to be met. Corporate welfare will flow ever more freely. Once
the tax bill is open to amendment, corporate tax breaks will blossom like
the cherry trees.
At some point — perhaps as soon as the 2002 midterm elections, surely no
later than the next presidential election — the public will be aghast at
what is happening. The backlash against business may be thunderous. Hence
the great danger that corporate American confronts.
Robert B. Reich, former labor secretary, is professor of economic and so-
cial policy at Brandeis University and author of "The Future of Success."
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
(Siste nytt fra denne fronten:)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
WASHINGTON, DC, March 20, 2001 (ENS) - The Bush administration has opted
to defer - perhaps permanently - new arsenic standards that would slash
the acceptable limits for this toxic chemical in drinking water by 80
percent. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine
Todd Whitman announced today that EPA will propose to withdraw the pending
arsenic standard for drinking water that was issued on January 22.
The rule would have reduced the acceptable level of arsenic in water to 10
parts per billion (ppb). The current standard of 50 ppb, set in 1942, is
five times higher than the international standard adopted several years
ago by the World Health Organization and the European Union.
...
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