Time to take Piggy to market

If that's the case, <fill in this blank>.with further financial fairy tales The truth be told, the irresponsible rich, as they were dubbed by former president Teddy Roosevelt, never give up anything voluntarily. The only thing trickling down on us is tinkling from the corporate toilets passing overhead. How have we allowed this to happen? Well,, consider just who it is we have entrusted with our governance. It is the rich. We have set the fox up in charge of the hen house.

The real question should be how could we be so blindly trusting? It is not a Republican/Democratic issue any more than it is a Conservative/Liberal issue. Despite the best of efforts to defuse any sort of "lass warfare' that is exactly from whense where the struggle emanates. Those that have want to protect and grow their assets. Those who have less want to believe the American Dream that hard work and virtue will get them more. As long as the mass of humanity believes it is possible, the rich can maintain their tenuous position. However, the moment the lie is exposed for what it is, all bets are off.

Does anyone believe that traffic laws could be done away while simply trusting individual drivers to all properly regulate their own behavior? Of course not. I do not even trust myself to behave properly at all times. Why should it be different in business? If we are going to live by "let the buyer beware," then we might as well all wear side-arms and return to the wilderness. While there are always some who would welcome such, I do not believe "survival of the fittest" is in the best interests of humankind.

<Examples of antisocial greed>

Crane Photo Caption

The Necessity of Corporate Regulation

In the Eighth Annual Message to Congress (1908), former president Theodore Roosevelt mentioned the need for federal government to regulate interstate corporations using the Interstate Commerce Clause, also mentioning how these corporations fought federal control by appealing to states' rights:

— "Of course there are many sincere men who now believe in unrestricted individualism in business, just as there were formerly many sincere men who believed in slavery -- that is, in the unrestricted right of an individual to own another individual. These men do not by themselves have great weight, however. The effective fight against adequate government control and supervision of individual, and especially of corporate, wealth engaged in interstate business is chiefly done under cover; and especially under cover of an appeal to States' rights.... The chief reason, among the many sound and compelling reasons, that led to the formation of the National Government was the absolute need that the Union, and not the several States, should deal with interstate and foreign commerce; and the power to deal with interstate commerce was granted absolutely and plenarily to the central government... The proposal to make the National Government supreme over, and therefore to give it complete control over, the railroads and other instruments of interstate commerce is merely a proposal to carry out to the letter one of the prime purposes, if not the prime purpose, for which the Constitution was founded. It does not represent centralization. It represents merely the acknowledgement of the patent fact that centralization has already come in business...
— I believe that the more far-sighted corporations are themselves coming to recognize the unwisdom of the violent hostility they have displayed during the last few years to regulation and control by the National Government of combinations [monopolies] engaged in interstate business. The truth is that we who believe in this movement of asserting and exercising a genuine control, in the public interest, over these great corporations have to contend against two sets of enemies, who, though nominally opposed to one another, are really allies in preventing a proper solution of the problem. There are, first, the big corporation men, and the extreme individualists among business men, who genuinely believe in utterly unregulated business -- that is, in the reign of plutocracy; and, second, the men who, being blind to the economic movements of the day, believe in a movement of repression rather than of regulation of corporations, and who denounce both the power of the railroads and the exercise of the Federal power which alone can really control the railroads."

 Government is to have no role in affecting social change?  

Abraham Lincoln and the

National Banking Act

Are you aware that, prior to the presidency of Honest Abe, the U/S. had no national currency. Prior to the National Banking Act, currency notes were issued by the various and sundry banking institutions. Can you imagine what a confusing financial situation THAT produced -- not to mention the power it focused into the hands of the few. It's no wonder Abe's quasi-constitutional act was so strongly resisted by the entrenched elite. Then, as now, difficult times call for a strong hand if only to squeeze the throats of the selfishly uncooperative.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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The National Bank Act (ch. 58, 12 Stat. 665, February 25, 1863) was a United States federal law that established a system of national charters for banks. It encouraged development of a national currency based on bank holdings of U.S. Treasury securities. It also established the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) as part of the Department of the Treasury. This was to establish a national security holding body for the existence of the monetary policy of the state. The Act, together with Abraham Lincoln's issuance of "greenbacks," raised money for the federal government in the American Civil War by enticing banks to buy federal bonds and taxed state bonds out of existence. The law proved defective and was replaced by the National Bank Act of 1864. The money was used to fund the Union army in the fight against the Confederacy. This authorized the OCC to examine and regulate nationally-chartered banks.

The act barely passed in the Senate by a 23-21 vote.

A later act, passed on March 3, 1865, imposed a tax of 10% on the notes of State banks to take effect on July 1, 1866. The tax effectively forced all non-federal currency from circulation and increased the number of national banks to 1,644 by October 1866.

The next major changes to bank regulation in the United States appeared in 1908 with the enactment of the Aldrich-Vreeland Act.

Square Deal

Theodore Roosevelt introduced the phrase "Square Deal" to describe his Progressive views in a speech delivered after leaving the office of the Presidency in August 1910. So many of the specifics outlined in the address anticipate Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal that TR could hardly have been disappointed in the work of his kinsman, had he lived to witness it:

— "Practical equality of opportunity for all citizens, when we achieve ti, will have two great results. First, every man will have a fair chance to make of himself all that in him lies; to reach the highest point to which his capacities, unassisted by special privilege of his own and unhampered by the special privilege of others, can carry him, and to get for himself and his family substantially what he has earned. Second, equality of opportunity means that the commonwealth will get from every citizen the highest service of which he is capable. No man who carries the burden of the special privileges of another can give to the commonwealth that service to which it is fairly entitled.
— I stand for the square deal. But when I say that I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service... When I say I want a square deal for the poor man, I do not mean that I want a square deal for the man who remains poor because he has not got the energy to work for himself. If a man who has had a chance will not make good, then he has got to quit... Now, this means that our government, National and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics... For every special interest is entitled to justice, but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to representation in any public office. The Constitution guarantees protection to property, and we must make that promise good. But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation. The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man's making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have themselves called into being."