SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks at the White House in Washington, D.C., on August 5, 2021. (Photo: Win McNamee/AFP via Getty Images)
Joe Biden: Stop Telling People You're on Their Side and Start Showing Them You Are
Breaking the stranglehold that monopolistic corporations have on our economy and our people is not a job for the politically meek.
Apr 20, 2022
For years, as ever-bigger corporate combines grabbed ever-bigger chunks of market power, America's political, media and academic establishment scoffed at critics, drowning them out with jolly rounds of "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah." But the concentration of corporate power can no longer be dismissed, for it's all too real. It wreaks real havoc on entire economic sectors, workaday families, communities and our nation's essential uniting value of fairness. Pontificators of the status quo can coo all the free-enterprise platitudes they want, but a rising grassroots majority (including supposedly conservative farmers and ranchers) is experiencing corporate repression firsthand. Those families are doing their own kitchen-table tabulations and realizing that the game has been deliberately rigged against them. A mad-as-hell moment is percolating at the grassroots.
The key to winning is not by schmoozing McConnell and Manchin, but by going into the countryside and rallying the majority of people fed up with corporate arrogance and abuse.
Biden at least recognizes this, seems to feel people's pain and anger, and (unlike other recent Democratic presidents) has put it on his national agenda: "Capitalism without competition isn't capitalism," he recently said, "it's exploitation." All right, then: You go, Joe!
But he hasn't. Yes, he's made some good reform proposals, appointed a couple of top-notch antitrust regulators, issued a few useful procedural changes, held some closed-door White House meetings on the topic, and been willing to call out a few of the worst gougers and profiteers. That's good. But wholly inadequate. It's all inside-the-Beltway stuff, and even though Biden has been a consummate, 48-year inside player who promised that his collegial skills would let him "get things done," the people being run over just see more political talk without action. Supermarket beef prices still rise, cattle prices fall, meatpacker power and profits soar, and grassroots people keep getting bulled. In fairness, Biden has a heavy load: sour old Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Manchin-Sinema blob, the monopoly lobby, milquetoast Democrats, a clueless media corps, etc. But don't whine; get out of Washington!
Breaking the stranglehold that monopolistic corporations have on our economy and our people is not a job for the politically meek. The establishment's standard responses of loud denunciation, investigative task forces and regulatory proposals don't do anything but stall actual change. Rather, asserting democracy over plutocracy is a momentous, brawling struggle for fundamental structural repair, requiring gutsy leaders willing to go right at the bastards with unconventional outsider strategies. The key to winning is not by schmoozing McConnell and Manchin, but by going into the countryside and rallying the majority of people fed up with corporate arrogance and abuse. So, Joe...
- Go to the people. Embark on a series of whistle-stop tours to excite and enlist grassroots fighters.
- Join ranchers and workers at the Big Four meatpacking plants to dramatize and protest the abuses.
- File actions under the Justice Department's authority to break up anti-competitive combines.
- Pursue high-profile criminal charges against price-fixing executives.
- Ban stock buybacks.
- Deploy cabinet members across the country to publicize local abuses and demand stronger anti-trust laws.
- Bring small family farmers and ranchers to the White House to tell their stories and personalize the issue.
In short, stop telling people you're on their side and start showing them that you are. As historian Meg Jacobs recently put it: "Inflation is largely the result of choices that businesses make. And history shows that presidents have the power to stem inflation by taking on corporate power--if they choose.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
© 2023 Creators Syndicate
Jim Hightower
Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the books "Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow" (2008) and "There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos: A Work of Political Subversion" (1998). Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.
For years, as ever-bigger corporate combines grabbed ever-bigger chunks of market power, America's political, media and academic establishment scoffed at critics, drowning them out with jolly rounds of "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah." But the concentration of corporate power can no longer be dismissed, for it's all too real. It wreaks real havoc on entire economic sectors, workaday families, communities and our nation's essential uniting value of fairness. Pontificators of the status quo can coo all the free-enterprise platitudes they want, but a rising grassroots majority (including supposedly conservative farmers and ranchers) is experiencing corporate repression firsthand. Those families are doing their own kitchen-table tabulations and realizing that the game has been deliberately rigged against them. A mad-as-hell moment is percolating at the grassroots.
The key to winning is not by schmoozing McConnell and Manchin, but by going into the countryside and rallying the majority of people fed up with corporate arrogance and abuse.
Biden at least recognizes this, seems to feel people's pain and anger, and (unlike other recent Democratic presidents) has put it on his national agenda: "Capitalism without competition isn't capitalism," he recently said, "it's exploitation." All right, then: You go, Joe!
But he hasn't. Yes, he's made some good reform proposals, appointed a couple of top-notch antitrust regulators, issued a few useful procedural changes, held some closed-door White House meetings on the topic, and been willing to call out a few of the worst gougers and profiteers. That's good. But wholly inadequate. It's all inside-the-Beltway stuff, and even though Biden has been a consummate, 48-year inside player who promised that his collegial skills would let him "get things done," the people being run over just see more political talk without action. Supermarket beef prices still rise, cattle prices fall, meatpacker power and profits soar, and grassroots people keep getting bulled. In fairness, Biden has a heavy load: sour old Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Manchin-Sinema blob, the monopoly lobby, milquetoast Democrats, a clueless media corps, etc. But don't whine; get out of Washington!
Breaking the stranglehold that monopolistic corporations have on our economy and our people is not a job for the politically meek. The establishment's standard responses of loud denunciation, investigative task forces and regulatory proposals don't do anything but stall actual change. Rather, asserting democracy over plutocracy is a momentous, brawling struggle for fundamental structural repair, requiring gutsy leaders willing to go right at the bastards with unconventional outsider strategies. The key to winning is not by schmoozing McConnell and Manchin, but by going into the countryside and rallying the majority of people fed up with corporate arrogance and abuse. So, Joe...
- Go to the people. Embark on a series of whistle-stop tours to excite and enlist grassroots fighters.
- Join ranchers and workers at the Big Four meatpacking plants to dramatize and protest the abuses.
- File actions under the Justice Department's authority to break up anti-competitive combines.
- Pursue high-profile criminal charges against price-fixing executives.
- Ban stock buybacks.
- Deploy cabinet members across the country to publicize local abuses and demand stronger anti-trust laws.
- Bring small family farmers and ranchers to the White House to tell their stories and personalize the issue.
In short, stop telling people you're on their side and start showing them that you are. As historian Meg Jacobs recently put it: "Inflation is largely the result of choices that businesses make. And history shows that presidents have the power to stem inflation by taking on corporate power--if they choose.
Jim Hightower
Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the books "Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow" (2008) and "There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos: A Work of Political Subversion" (1998). Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.
For years, as ever-bigger corporate combines grabbed ever-bigger chunks of market power, America's political, media and academic establishment scoffed at critics, drowning them out with jolly rounds of "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah." But the concentration of corporate power can no longer be dismissed, for it's all too real. It wreaks real havoc on entire economic sectors, workaday families, communities and our nation's essential uniting value of fairness. Pontificators of the status quo can coo all the free-enterprise platitudes they want, but a rising grassroots majority (including supposedly conservative farmers and ranchers) is experiencing corporate repression firsthand. Those families are doing their own kitchen-table tabulations and realizing that the game has been deliberately rigged against them. A mad-as-hell moment is percolating at the grassroots.
The key to winning is not by schmoozing McConnell and Manchin, but by going into the countryside and rallying the majority of people fed up with corporate arrogance and abuse.
Biden at least recognizes this, seems to feel people's pain and anger, and (unlike other recent Democratic presidents) has put it on his national agenda: "Capitalism without competition isn't capitalism," he recently said, "it's exploitation." All right, then: You go, Joe!
But he hasn't. Yes, he's made some good reform proposals, appointed a couple of top-notch antitrust regulators, issued a few useful procedural changes, held some closed-door White House meetings on the topic, and been willing to call out a few of the worst gougers and profiteers. That's good. But wholly inadequate. It's all inside-the-Beltway stuff, and even though Biden has been a consummate, 48-year inside player who promised that his collegial skills would let him "get things done," the people being run over just see more political talk without action. Supermarket beef prices still rise, cattle prices fall, meatpacker power and profits soar, and grassroots people keep getting bulled. In fairness, Biden has a heavy load: sour old Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Manchin-Sinema blob, the monopoly lobby, milquetoast Democrats, a clueless media corps, etc. But don't whine; get out of Washington!
Breaking the stranglehold that monopolistic corporations have on our economy and our people is not a job for the politically meek. The establishment's standard responses of loud denunciation, investigative task forces and regulatory proposals don't do anything but stall actual change. Rather, asserting democracy over plutocracy is a momentous, brawling struggle for fundamental structural repair, requiring gutsy leaders willing to go right at the bastards with unconventional outsider strategies. The key to winning is not by schmoozing McConnell and Manchin, but by going into the countryside and rallying the majority of people fed up with corporate arrogance and abuse. So, Joe...
- Go to the people. Embark on a series of whistle-stop tours to excite and enlist grassroots fighters.
- Join ranchers and workers at the Big Four meatpacking plants to dramatize and protest the abuses.
- File actions under the Justice Department's authority to break up anti-competitive combines.
- Pursue high-profile criminal charges against price-fixing executives.
- Ban stock buybacks.
- Deploy cabinet members across the country to publicize local abuses and demand stronger anti-trust laws.
- Bring small family farmers and ranchers to the White House to tell their stories and personalize the issue.
In short, stop telling people you're on their side and start showing them that you are. As historian Meg Jacobs recently put it: "Inflation is largely the result of choices that businesses make. And history shows that presidents have the power to stem inflation by taking on corporate power--if they choose.
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.