Anti-Business Backlash Could Hurt Gop Image
People are getting as fed up with giant corporations as they are big government.
Multimillionaire executives and attorneys for tobacco conglomerates have the arrogance to swear before Congress that nicotine is not addictive.
Pick up a paper or click on TV, and some chief executive who makes umpteen million dollars a minute and just axed thousands of workers starts whining about how tough it is to run a business these days.
US West is slashing jobs with one hand, cutting services with the other, and trying to raise rates.
Congressional pols extol “shared sacrifice” while they continue to rip off taxpayers for everything they can get.
Corporate fatcats and GOP budget-slashers preach “patriotism” for low-income elderly on Medicare whom they would force to enroll in health maintenance organizations to cut costs. But they themselves would continue to rate Cadillac care at others’ expense.
Writes William McKenzie of the Dallas Morning News, “Cash and stock benefits for the chief executives of the nation’s seven largest HMOs last year averaged $7 million.”
That’s $7 million each. A year.
“Companies certainly have the right to craft their financial packages,” McKenzie allows. “But must medical executives profit so handsomely from a health care system that asks others to rearrange their lives?”
The pro-business political climate stemming from corporate America’s support for the Republican right is generating huge gains for big business.
But this alliance also is creating a serious image problem that most small businesses don’t need and don’t deserve.
A backlash is building.
Even Newt Gingrich is getting skittish.
Monday the speaker of the House ducked out of a meeting where he was supposed to discuss changes in Medicare, as a huge throng of trade unionists showed up to question the fairness of slashing seniors’ health care to finance tax cuts for the rich. “Gingrich did not confront the protestors face to face,” the New York Times reported, “and he returned later to speak unhindered.”
On CNN’s Money Line last week, anchorman Lou Dobbs noted that big-bank mergers are defended on the basis that economies of scale create lower costs. Sure enough, profits are booming. But fees keep going up. How come?
“Greed,” replied CNN business analyst Myron Kandel. “Just greed.”
At one of the largest banks in Chicago, it costs $3 to talk to a live teller.
President Clinton and presidential contender Bob Dole agreed that the crushing weight of media sex and violence is trashing America’s values.
“People are fed up,” chipped in Congresswoman Linda Smith, R-Wash. “Now it appears Hollywood has decided to take advantage of our children. They are looking to their mighty dollar and using freedom of speech as the excuse and harming our children.”
Writes U.S. News and World Report columnist John Leo, “The campaign to clarify the social responsibility of media moguls is just beginning.
“This is a culture in crisis,” declares Leo, “and we need more from the entertainment industry than simple money-making and the continued trashing of our sensibilities.”
Meantime, corporate America reports hefty earnings, which experts attribute to continued employee cuts. “We’ve been though a lot of agony,” the Associated Press quotes Bill Berger, president of a Denver-based mutual fund company, as remarking. “A lot of people have paid a big price. And a lot of people are still paying a big price.
“But, we had to do it?”
Who is this we?
Unless the GOP and big corporations begin to exercise a modicum of restraint and exhibit a scintilla of respect for the common man, the conservative revolution seems sure to come a cropper.
Says U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich, “Profits are up. Productivity is up. But the median wage is dropping. This raises the question of who is going to buy the products?”
An ultra-conservative friend informs me he will probably vote Democratic next year. I am shocked.
But he is both repulsed and scared by the Republicans’ obsession with cutting taxes for the wellheeled at the expense of the downtrodden.
He’s not alone.
, DataTimes MEMO: Associate Editor Frank Bartel’s column appears on Monday, Wednesday and Sunday.