----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Pollak" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[What's interesting here is the listing of precise numbers each special interest contributed to produce this result. I wonder if we'll see more of this in articles like this now that everyone can just look it up in Charles Lewis's book _The Selling of the President_. It makes very clear the economic rationality of campaign contributions, and the complete absurdity of talking about the rationality of the market in reference to a system in they determine policy.] [And of course the US is not unique in this. Every national economy is only half of a political economy, and every political system is manipulated like this or worse. The idea of a self-regulating market is as unreal as the idea of a bodiless mind. If only we had articles like this every day that made it this obvious.] ============================ "[W]hat business men and economists really meant by *laissez-faire* was; prevent everybody else at home and abroad from doing as *they* please, in order that we may do as we please with what we claim as our own." [John Commons The Economics of Collective Action] "*Political Value*, the value added by advantageous treatment from politicians, whether legislators, judges, executives, or administrative boards, in the exercise of the several powers of sovereignty, in so far as this value exceeds that of the ordinary lawfulness and exposure to competition out of which the value of going plant or goodwill emerges. As a use-value this political value does not usually represent an additional service to customers, creditors, or laborers, inspiring their confidence, loyalty or patronage, but it is rather the superior privilege emanating from the blunders, corruption or wisdom of public officials, as shown in the tax exemption bonuses, special franchises, inside information, judicial opinion, and similar exercise of royal prerogative or the modern sovereignty superior to that received by competitors who enjoy only ordinary lawfulness." [John Commons The Legal Foundations of Capitalism] "Like it or not, Governments are in the business of selling protection." [can't find the author of this one in my piles/files] Or as we say in Seattle, "free trade for thee but not for me!" Ian
