What you're all saying is absolutely correct.  This is why it's important
to vote, be active in your community, and watch out for your own
neighborhood.  Wolves are everywhere.

And, although I'm repeating myself, our state is on it's third consecutive
Independent Party governor in a row, and we just picked a good candidate to
run this year, trying to make it 4 in a row.  The 2 party system is broken
and we need more choices.  Professional politicians are part of the
problem, not part of the solution.

John Lee

At 04:07 AM 7/16/02 -0400, Ken Hirsch wrote:
>> Some have tried to blame the current wave of corporate criminal deeds
>> on Bush or Clinton, but such greed goes back to at least WW II.
>>
>> In the years just prior to WW II, some U.S. corporations deliberately
>> violated embargoes on the sale of certain strategic items and technologies
>> to Japan...
>
>Why stop at World War II.  After World War I, Marine General Smedley Butler
>complained of war profiteering: "Perhaps, like the munitions manufacturers
>and armament makers, they also sold to the enemy. For a dollar is a dollar
>whether it comes from Germany or from France."
>(http://www.scuttlebuttsmallchow.com/racket2.html)
>
>
>But why stop at the Twentieth Century, how about 1636:
>"The first act of the Court was to try Stiles for the offence. He was found
>guilty, and ordered by the Court to regain the gun from the Indians in a
>fair and legal way, or the Court should take the case into further
>consideration. The Court then enacted a law, that from henceforth no one
>within the jurisdiction of the Court should trade with the Indians any piece
>or pistol, gun or shot, or powder, under such penalty as the Court should
>see meet to inflict. - This was the first Court, the first Trial, and the
>first Law ever enacted or had in Connecticut."
>(http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Fields/4791/firstpuritansettlers.html)
>
>
>Or, to go back a few centuries before that, the many European mercenaries
>who sold their expertise in cannons to the Ottomans.
>
>But those weren't corporations, so I guess they don't count for whatever
>your point is.  What was your point, exactly?
>
>[...]
>
>> Fortunately for the U.S., the "cooperation" between U.S. corporations and
>> the government that exists today did not exist in the years prior to WW
>II,
>> or we'd speaking Japanese now.
>
>Yeah, right, our government was free of the influence of big money back
>then.  Say, I don't suppose you've seen "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
>(1939)" have you?
>
>What exactly do you think is new?  People thought corporations were too big
>back in the 19th century.  The Sherman Anti-Trust Act was in 1890!  People
>thought corporations had too much influence on elections back then too.  The
>Tillman Act banned corporate donations to federal campaigns--in 1907!
>
>Or maybe you think the idea of rich people without loyalty to their own
>country, manipulating the laws to their own benefit, at the expense of the
>little people, maybe that is new.  Not!
>
>Richard Hofstadter:
>  It was not enough to say that a conspiracy of the money power
>  against the common people was going on. It had been going on ever
>  since the Civil War. It was not enough to say that it stemmed
>  from Wall Street. It was international: it stemmed from Lombard
>  Street. In his preamble to the People's Party platform of 1892, a
>  succinct, official expression of Populist views, Ignatius
>  Donnelly asserted: "A vast conspiracy against mankind has been
>  organized on two continents, and it is rapidly taking possession
>  of the world. If not met and overthrown at once it forebodes
>  terrible social convulsions, the destruction of civilization, or
>  the establishment of an absolute despotism." A manifesto of 1895,
>  signed by fifteen outstanding leaders of the People's Party,
>  declared: "As early as 1865-66 a conspiracy was entered into
>  between the gold gamblers of Europe and America... For nearly
>  thirty years these conspirators have kept the people quarreling
>  over less important matters while they have pursued with
>  unrelenting zeal their one central purpose.... Every device of
>  treachery, every resource of statecraft, and every artifice known
>  to the secret cabals of the international gold ring are being
>  made use of to deal a blow to the prosperity of the people and
>  the financial and commercial independence of the country."
> (http://www.mc.cc.md.us/Departments/hpolscrv/Populism.html)
>
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