Republicans Drive Through Corporate Agenda With Little Resistance

[Itsthetruth]

CounterPunch
Weekend Edition
March 19 / 20, 2005

CounterPunch Diary
Three Card Monte and the One-Party State
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Near the end of February many Democrats in the House okayed a Republican bill to transfer large class action suits from state to federal courts. It's the state courts that have awarded the big settlements against the tobacco and asbestos companies. Federal judges have consistently cut back the big awards. Transfer of the suits is a huge victory for the business lobby. Earlier in February the Senate passed the same bill 72 to 26. Among Democrats voting for a bill written by the Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers were such supposed bright hopes as Obama of Illinois, Salazar of Colorado, Bayh of Indiana, along with possible aspirants for the 2008 nomination as Dodd of Connecticut.

Then in early March no less than 18 Democratic senators joined the Republicans in voting through a bill the banks and credit card companies have touting for years, a rewrite of the bankruptcy laws to mandate lifetime debt peonage for ordinary Americans. The House will soon follow suit.

What a dismal pass we have reached in one-party America. These days there are more auto manufacturing jobs in Ontario, Canada, than in Michigan, USA. Why? Canada has a national health plan. Tacitly and sometimes openly, both GM and Ford favor one here in the US, since health is the biggest item on their budgets. Both US senators from Michigan oppose a national health plan. Both are Democrats. That's the reality of one-party America.

The Republican Senate whip, Mitch McConnell and senior Republicans on the Hill have remarked gleefully that Bush's social security reform is like three-card monte. While the Democrats circle round in dramatic defensive postured round the old New Deal program, the Republicans drive through the corporate agenda on tort reform and bankruptcy and on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. Enough Democrats were with them on that too, with both Hawaiian senators, Inouye and Akaka, throwing their votes in the oil can as usual with the Alaska delegation.

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn03192005.html

[FloridaPat]

1. As Michael Moore said last year: we have 2 parties for the corporations

and none for the people.

[Tux]

2. Time to replae both of them

[FloridaPat]

3. Long past time.

[dzika]

4. Thanks

A pretty good read.

[Wilms]

5. Kick n/t