How did lobbying as we know it today get its start in the United States?
Lobbying had always existed in the United States, even before its independence, thriving in local governments. When crafting the constitution and the Federalist Papers, James Madison saw commerically motivated “factions” as threatening to the general will. He tried to neutralize that threat by making them compete against each other. Even though the First Amendment protects the right to petition, Madison hypothesized that special interest groups would often negate each others powers, thus preventing any possibility of tyranny. Since the federal government did not deal with many economic matters throughout most of the nineteenth century, lobbying occured only at a state level. However, the onset of the Gilded Age and increased federal intervention in fiscal matters also brought a heightened scale of lobbying as we know today.
Life in America isn’t too bad if you don’t mind drinking fracking fluid:
(RANT)
The fundamental issue many Americans fail to realise is the POLITICAL distinction between the United States as a sovereign nation on the world stage – and the United States as a domestic entity filled with Americans.
The US, to Americans, is all about the flag, freedom, cherry pie, democracy, patriotism, supporting the troops, democrats vs republicans, blah blah you get the message.
The United States to the rest of the world is a 100% corporate entity driven almost exclusively by the profit motive and power backed by a brutal military which acts almost solely in the interests of its commercial corporate interests and almost always against humanitarian interests, freedom etc and on the vast majority of cases if it is not the instigator of the crisis is backing the despotic regime behind the crisis.
The Republican Party is almost entirely driven by a corporate agenda – few would dispute this and none would HONESTLY dispute it.
The number one priority of corporations over the past 50 years has been to assume control of the public purse – it is by far, by FAR the greatest prize in financial history as well as the ultimate power grab – it is the absolute destination of all capitalism.
The surest, most definite, reliable pathway to usurping the public domain to private corporate control is by destroying the publics capacity to resist (making them stupid and poor) leaves them entirely reliant on the private sector, please see Victorian England – the dream time, and MOST IMPORTANTLY destroying the public finances of the state, preferably by transferring the wealth to the private sector, which allows them to point the finger at the state and claim it has failed – the only possible solution to this ongoing failure of the public system is to privatise it.
It absolutely BLOWS MY FUCKING BRAIN OUT that people do not realise that this is what is going on.
When people vote for Republicans, or advocate the private sector over the public social sector they are succumbing to a long term strategy to transfer the wealth, power and control of the public state to private hands.
Now lets be VERY, VERY clear about what this means – it is the ABSOLUTE NORM in history for the state to be owned and controlled by private interests instead of the public – remember that, its important. THE VAST majority well over 90% of historical state control has been in the hands of private individuals and companies and NOT public democracies. Public democracies and republics are very, very new and very very rare (despite their origins in Ancient Rome and Greece).
Almost every European state was a feudal principality controlled by a prince, a kingdom, feudal land holdings controlled by aristocracy with white slaves working the land, PRIVATE COMPANIES such as the West /East Virginia companies, the Dutch West Indies Company , the British East India Company, Emperors, Kings and Queens or even entire countries forged for private Individuals such as Rhodesia and Saudi Arabia.
So the destruction of the United States as a public democracy and the transfer of it into private hands would not be some OUTRAGEOUS extreme blip in history contrary to all norms, quite the opposite, it would be a RETURN to the normal, predominant methodology and ruling system of all of history – it would be an end to this extremely rare outlying occurrence of rule by democracy for the benefit of the greater society and populace and a return to the norm of history – private rule of all of society by private individuals with the public having no powers, no rights and no life.
That is what you are voting for when you vote for Republicans.
History does not lie – go read it.
I hope to be remembered for my atrocities! 