Economic Balance of Power

Sacramento United Nations Assoc-USA Presents

DUANE E. CAMPBELL

CSUS Professor Emeritus

"Trade Agreements: Changing

The Economic Balance of Power"

Monday, May 23, 7 p.m.

SMUD Headquarters Bldg.,

6201 S Street, Main Floor

Sacramento

Professor Campbell, currently Director of the Institute for Democ-racy and Education, will bring considerable knowledge of the impact of trade agreements on workers here and abroad. He is Chair of the Sacramento Chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and serves on the Editorial Board of Democratic Left. He received his doctorate from Carnegie-Mellon University and at CSUS was Founding Chair of the Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies Pro-gram from 1972-1994.

Anna 

Tea Party and their Corporate Paymasters and Wealth Elites.

Sorry Tea Partiers -- The GOP Only Cares About Their Corporate Paymasters and Wealthy Elites Like the Kochs By Jim Hightower, AlterNet Posted on January 20, 2011, Printed on January 30, 2011 http://www.alternet.org/story/149585/ Early this month, when John Boehner was sworn in as the new speaker of the House of Representatives, he tipped his hat to the teabag activists across the country who had fueled the Republican takeover of the chamber last fall. He almost choked up as he promised to "give the government back to the American people." Boehner was not choking back tears, however, he literally was choking on the flagrant hypocrisy of his words. You see, the people he's giving the government back to are not tea partiers, but the rapacious corporate lobbyists who ran the Congress during the years when former Majority Leader Tom DeLay ran the show. Apparently, the name "Boehner" is derived from an ancient Teutonic word meaning: business as usual. Throughout his two decades in Congress, the new speaker has been a reliable ally of corporate interests. In recent years, he has formed unusually tight legislative, political and even social ties with a group of lobbyists for such giants as Citigroup, Coors, Goldman Sachs, Google and R.J. Reynolds. Of course, most congressional leaders work with lobbyists, so that's not odd, but to have them also be his closest friends and social chums -- well, you just want to say, "For heaven's sake, Johnnie, get a life!" These influence peddlers are now the speaker's inner circle, guiding his legislative decisions. Even before last November's election, Boehner had a private meeting with a flock of top corporate lobbyists to help shape "a new GOP agenda." Forget the tea party. No tea party operative is a Boehner insider. It's the corporate agenda that Republican leaders will be pushing, and to make sure that it stays on track, Boehner has hired a top corporate lobbyist to be his policy director.

Global Power Elite

The Sacramento Bee has a column today , April 12, 10 Tough Political Calls Obama has to make, by David Rothkopf , author of Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They are Making.

He frames one of his questions as follows,
“will he (Obama) be willing to increase taxes on the middle-class taxpayers – or exacerbate class tensions by continuing to place all the burden on the most affluent Americans?”

What a preposterous statement.

We are in an economic crisis directed by Rothkopf’s Global Power Elite. In the U.S. after over three decades of stagnant wages for working people, the banking and corporate elite have received over $700 billion in taxpayers’ money.

These are class tensions. The rich, with the assistance of the Federal Reserve, have looted the banks and causing severe unemployment and economic recession. This is class conflict- and the rich are winning.


Although Rothkopf’s essay uses a frame to support the views of the Power Elite, the questions which he proposes are correct.

The fundamental questions are will the policies of the new Obama Administration side with the interests of the vast majority of the people- over 80% of the electorate, or will the Administration side with the Global Power Elite?

Dr. Duane E. Campbell
Democracy and Education Institute
www.democracyeducationinstitute.org/