When I was on Up With Chris Hayes in January, I talked about how the business lobby, led by the Chamber of Commerce, was mounting a ferocious campaign against a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board requiring employers to post a notice informing workers of their statutory rights. Today, a federal judge, appointed by Bush the Elder, overturned that ruling. Remember: this is just a requirement that employees be informed of their rights. It doesn’t impose costs on employers, restrict their profits, regulate their operations: it just requires that working men and women be informed of their rights. Struck down by a Republican judge. Ah, the freedom, the freedom.
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“Ah, the freedom. Look, we have the gas-line freedom, the looting freedom, the killing freedom, the rape freedom, the hash-smoking freedom. I don’t know what to do with all this freedom. ” — Akeel, a twenty-six year old Baghdad resident on life in post-Saddam Iraq, 2004.
Obama’s recent JOBS Act is in a similar vain. It removes the ability of investors to scrutinize companies they do business with. The gutting of accounting requirements for billion dollar public companies ensures an explosion of financial fraud. The question is, freedom for whom? Freedom for investors not to be fleeced by unscrupulous fraudsters or freedom for these sociopaths to have their way with the public–to plunder and loot at will.
So when someone talks about freedom and “capitalist democracy” remember that freedom is limited to those who collect economic rents.
If I remember correctly, Francis Ford Coppola in an an interview said that he modeled meeting of the 5 Heads of the Families in the style of a Chamber of Commerce CEO summit to thrash out contentious policy. And if you ever show up in the crosshairs of these Men of Honor, you’ll learn quickly why the analogy is not far off the mark (even if you don’t end up “sleeping with the fishes”).