Denys Beauchemin ([log in to unmask]) wrote:
: Of course I'm right.  :)   However following my nomenclature rules, the
: word Republican would be shortened to 'can.  Democrat = 'rat, Republican
: = 'can.  Simple, clean and non-offensive.  Except for those who want to
: be offended and you know who you are.  :)
:

There's really only one party, the Big Money Party, or the Property
Party as Thomas Ferguson calls it in "Golden Rule":

     http://makeashorterlink.com/?P19942C54
     Golden Rule : The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the
     Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems (American Politics and
     Political Economy)

The original link wrapped to 2 lines:

     http://www.discovereconomics.com/bookstore/economicpolicy/
     0226243168AMUS177486.shtml
     Golden Rule : The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the
     Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems (American Politics and
     Political Economy)

   ``"To discover who rules, follow the gold." This is the argument of
     Golden Rule, a provocative, pungent history of modern American
     politics. Although the role big money plays in defining political
     outcomes has long been obvious to ordinary Americans, most pundits
     and scholars have virtually dismissed this assumption. Even in
     light of skyrocketing campaign costs, the belief that major
     financial interests primarily determine who parties nominate and
     where they stand on the issues--that, in effect, Democrats and
     Republicans are merely the left and right wings of the "Property
     Party"--has been ignored by most political scientists. Offering
     evidence ranging from the nineteenth century to the 1994 mid-term
     elections, Golden Rule shows that voters are "right on the money."

     Thomas Ferguson breaks completely with traditional voter centered
     accounts of party politics. In its place he outlines an "investment
     approach," in which powerful investors, not unorganized voters,
     dominate campaigns and elections. Because businesses "invest" in
     political parties and their candidates, changes in industrial
     structures--between large firms and sectors--can alter the agenda
     of party politics and the shape of public policy.

     Golden Rule presents revised versions of widely read essays in
     which Ferguson advanced and tested his theory, including his
     seminal study of the role played by capital intensive
     multinationals and international financiers in the New Deal. The
     chapter "Studies in Money Driven Politics" brings this aspect of
     American politics into better focus, along with other studies of
     Federal Reserve policy making and campaign finance in the 1936
     election. Ferguson analyzes how a changing world economy and other
     social developments broke up the New Deal system in our own time,
     through careful studies of the 1988 and 1992 elections. The essay
     on 1992 contains an extended analysis of the emergence of the
     Clinton coalition and Ross Perot's dramatic independent insurgency.
     A postscript on the 1994 elections demonstrates the controlling
     impact of money on several key campaigns.

     This controversial work by a theorist of money and politics in the
     U.S. relates to issues in campaign finance reform, PACs,
     policymaking, public financing, and how today's elections work.''


Use of labels such as "democrat", "republican", "conservative", and
"liberal" only serve to obscure the real issues, such as David Ricardo's
iron law of wages finally coming to pass:

   http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0110-05.htm
   The Price of Globalization

 ``...Actually, this is free trade. It is free trade as theoretically
   envisaged by the 18th century economist David Ricardo, stripped of the
   economic, social and political constraints that for two centuries kept
   trade from functioning the way Ricardo expected.

   He said that states should exploit their comparative advantages in
   resources or manufacturing. Trading in those complementary advantages
   would produce reciprocal gain. It's win-win - as Ricardo would not
   have said.

   This is a relatively simple-minded theory, but in practice it has
   generally worked out, if not to the advantage of all concerned.

   Ricardo, however, had a second theory, which he called the "iron law
   of wages." You do not hear much about the iron law, in part because
   you wouldn't want to hear about it, and also because experience has
   seemed to prove it untrue. But times are changing.

   The iron law of wages is also simple and logical. It says that wages
   will tend to stabilize at or about subsistence level. That seemed
   inevitable to Ricardo, since while workers are necessary, and so have
   to be kept alive, they have no hope of any better treatment since they
   are infinitely available, replaceable, and generally interchangeable.

   Ricardo's wage theory has seemed untrue. The supply of competent
   workers in a given place is not unlimited; neither workers nor
   industry are perfectly mobile, and labor demonstrated in the 19th and
   20th centuries that it could mobilize and defend itself. The iron law
   of wages would seem to function only if the supply of labor is
   infinite and totally mobile.

   Unfortunately that day, for practical purposes, has now arrived,
   thanks to globalization...''



--Jerry Leslie
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