Big Business on the Dole
R., B.
The liberals, as they warm up for 1956, begin again their perennial pursuit of issues. Not much remains to them. They have muted their criticism in most areas, renounced it completely in...
...Nor is the year 1955...
...It was not and it is not possible to ship across state lines bread of better quality than the pack-maintained inefficiently at astronomiaged glue and air on which we now cal expense for the benefit of a few...
...How, through a score of bureaus, "the policy of the 1930's of redistributing the wealth degenerated into a policy of redistributing the debts of corporations to the taxpayers...
...How, through the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the Federal government "became as casual about taking money" as it was "about giving it away...
...How the FCC tolerated use by professional criminals (like the bookmaker, C. J, Rish, who was grossing $5,000,000 a year) of Western Union wire service to conduct their business...
...Is this free enterprise...
...Not much remains to them...
...Certain sinister developments are alleged to have taken place in the past two years...
...Marquis Childs...
...I am quoting from the best how-to book so far written, Blair Bolles' "How To Get Rich in Washington," 1952...
...This is probably what political scientists mean by continuity in our two-party system...
...subsist...
...Now, however, a convenient amnesia has set in which invites bold onslaughts on a condition the Democratic Party itself created...
...Bread and guns...
...The best brains are not inclined to inhibit others with a similar complement of gray matter...
...The agencies created to end privilege have become bulwarks of privilege...
...Bolles says the money is free and not much else...
...The bureaus which were established originally as balance wheels for segments of the national economy — transportation, communications, land use, etc.—unbalance the economy by distributing the riches unevenly...
...Let 'em eat air building, the coal mines, the railroads...
...But we be distracted by absurd party where is the bread...
...How "obsequious gentlemen who treated their public office as a trust for private interests" ran the U.S...
...Stuart Chase...
...squabbles at a time when some centers If democratic socialists were still in-of real consumer and worker representerested in advancing any part of their tation could be developed...
...The Fair Deal* publicists have decided to make an issue of regulatory commissions...
...Bolles wishes to characterize the Truman Administration, and does so with devastating thoroughness...
...The liberals, as they warm up for 1956, begin again their perennial pursuit of issues...
...Is it necessary that upon them...
...only the best brains, sought them in their natural environment, Big Business...
...It is said that our watchdogs of fair play have been captured and leashed by the very groups they were designed to curb...
...They have muted their criticism in most areas, renounced it completely in others...
...Guy Gabrielson became chairman of the Republican National Committee in the Truman era only after persuading the RFC to lend his firm $l8,000,000—so that he could thereafter go out and plump for laissez faire...
...How the most notable protective agency in Washington (CAB) while lavishly subsidizing the sixteen airlines it inherited, let them run it, in accordance with the law of bureaucratic psychology which states that regulatory agencies must share the attitudes of those utilities which they are supposed to regulate in the public interest...
...Unorganized taxpayers and consumers continue to suffer, but not markedly more so than in the Fair Deal days...
...Maritime Commission after World War II, assuring that "every ship of consequence" built in an American yard received a "modern spray of gold" in the form of outrageous subsidies...
...Is this Michael Straight...
...President Eisenhower, determined to fulfill his campaign pledge of using * A term designating all the unenacted legislation half-heartedly recom mended to Congress by President Truman...
...How Preston T. Tucker fleeced the War Assets Administration which permitted him to occupy a $200,000,000 building free, let him use $24,000,000 worth of machine tools without charge, and spent $300,000 a year to keep up "his" plant...
...Bolles documents the process whereby nearly every important Federal agency was undermined by Executive appointment even before business came officially into its own...
...B. R...
...and they will bellyache—in both senses Must we continue to hand out money —while the bakers have their way to enrich men who would otherwise through the ; Commission that is be bankrupt...
...A Fair Dealer could take the story, change its cast of characters (one Charlie Wilson for another), dedicate the whole thing to Ike, and call it a me-too book...
...The Food Administration— Since businessmen, as their own reguwhich also allows only so many raisins lators, gouge all they can out of a in raisin bread, for otherwise it might compliant government, why not socialbe too nutritious—turns thumbs down ize and democratize the airlines, shipon any improvement...
...I am sure program, they would begin with the the answer is, 'Yes," but I can't help sick industries that, at present, are regretting it...
...Lately the welfare state has been undergoing a subtle change into the rich man's welfare state, aiding those who do not need help or who don't deserve it at public expense...
...Does this elegant dole charged with imposing high standards have to continue...
...How the Natural Gas Act was sabotaged by Mon Walgren, Truman's crony and appointee to the Federal Power Commission...
...But the record is writ large and one could go on ticking off innumerable acts of collusion...
Vol. 2 • July 1955 • No. 3
