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 Note: [log in to unmask] is invalid for email * To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, * * etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *