Ah, the good old days before our party was bought and sold to the highest corporate bidders (No, I don't mean Obama). Listening to this interview on Bill Moyers' Journal harkened me back to the days before seedy little corporacrats invaded our party with the Third Way which it turned out was really just the First Way painted up like a pony.
Fritz Hollings, who resigned from the Senate in 2003, explains to Bill Moyers in pretty blunt terms one of the more obvious ways in which our government has been overthrown. The old fashioned way, with bribery.
BILL MOYERS: What do you make of the fact, as you point out in your book, three days before the first presidential primary in Iowa; The New York Times listed the positions of all the candidates on eight important issues. Not one of them on trade or outsourcing of jobs.
FRITZ HOLLINGS: That's right. And they came way out. We had, in South Carolina, since President George W. Bush has been in; we have lost 94,500 manufacturing a net loss. We're getting' some more jobs in BMW in Spartanburg, but a net loss. And they never mentioned it in the early Democratic primaries. They're-
BILL MOYERS: Why?
FRITZ HOLLINGS: Because they gotta get the money.
BILL MOYERS: And who gives them the money?
FRITZ HOLLINGS: Wall Street, the banks, and business BILL MOYERS Yeah, you say presidents negotiate trade agreements not to open markets, but to protect corporate America's foreign investment. That's how you see it.
FRITZ HOLLINGS: Well, I know it. I mean look at the Congress. Under article one, section 8, the Congress shall regulate. Not free-
BILL MOYERS: Regulate--
FRITZ HOLLINGS: Congress regulates trade both domestic and foreign.
BILL MOYERS: And you say in your book that Congress is not doing that.
FRITZ HOLLINGS: They can't do it because they've gotta get the money. You put in a trade bill and down on your head comes THE WALL STREET JOURNAL and the big banks and The Business Round Table and The National Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufactures they're not for domestic. They're for Chinese and Indian manufacturer even The National Chamber of Commerce is not worried about Main Street, Peoria, Illinois; Main Street, Shanghai.
You see, Henry Ford built up the middle class along with organized labor. He said I want the fellow making the car to be able to buy the car. So, he doubled the minimum wage. He put in health care and retirement costs and everything else of that kind, benefits. And so we had a good working relationship between labor and that-- now, all of these trade agreements for the investors to protect their investment in China and India, but, uh-uh forget about labor.
BILL MOYERS: You write--
FRITZ HOLLINGS: Yeah.
BILL MOYERS: Your country and mine, that's the United States of America, is going out of business?
FRITZ HOLLINGS: Oh yeah. What hasn't been outsourced is being bought with that cheap dollar. Vodophone is gone to the Germans. Bell Labs is gone to the French with all their research and everything else. Westinghouse Nuclear with all of their research and technology and everything, is going to Toshiba, Japan. And Anheuser-Busch, the Belgians. Anheuser-Busch is beholden to the stockholders but nobody's beholden to the people other than the congressmen and senators. And they're not doing their job.
BILL MOYERS: But they're voting for NAFTA. They're voting for these trade agreements.
FRITZ HOLLINGS: Yeah, we've gone to an outright trade war and globalization and that's were we're AWOL. The way to get free trade is raise a barrier to a barrier and remove them both. Then you got free trade.
BILL MOYERS: But when you were chairman of this very powerful Commerce Committee, here in the Senate, you'd make these cases.
FRITZ HOLLINGS: Yeah.
BILL MOYERS: They would call you protectionist, they would call you--
FRITZ HOLLINGS: Yeah, I am a protectionist. You-- you got Social Security to protect you from the ravages of old age, Medicare to protect you from ill health. You got food and drugs and clean air, the water we drink, the food we eat, antitrust to protect the openness of the market and everything else. Before I open up Moyer Manufactory, you gotta have clean air, clean water, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, plant closing notice, parental leave, safe working place, safe machinery, antitrust. You can go to China for 58 cents an hour. They'd get you the plant, they own the workers, and you don't have any investments so you don't have to worry about it.
BILL MOYERS: You say all we need to do to make the country work, is follow the lead of the forefathers to compete in globalization. To build the country's economy Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison, made sure the first bill to pass the Congress in its history on July 4th 1789--
FRITZ HOLLINGS: Seventeen eighty nine.
BILL MOYERS: Was a--
FRITZ HOLLINGS: Protectionist bill, tariff bill on 60 articles. We financed the country's development with tariffs. That's how we--that's the Treasurer's Building is the best building here in Washington. The best building in Charleston is the custom house. The best building in Brooklyn is the custom house. Treasury had the money. Teddy Roosevelt said, "Thank God I am not a free trader." Oh, Lincoln, everybody says, I'm either for Roosevelt, I'm a Lincoln Republican. He was a big protectionist. Oh, he raised tariffs. They were gonna build a transcontinental railroad on the Abraham Lincoln. And they said we could get the steel cheap from England. He said, ah - wait a minute, we're gonna build our own steel mills, and then we'll have not only a steel capacity, but we'll have the railroad. And so he was a builder. Everybody was a builder. Eisenhower, he protected oil. Jack Kennedy, I went to him, and he protected textiles. Ronald Reagan, he protected computers and Harley Davidson. He saved it. I saw George W. the other day about three weeks or a month ago, he was at the Harley Davidson plant, but protectionism saved it. That's why they were making money at Harley Davidson.
Oh, and if you have any doubt that the mass media propaganda complex is just accidentally bad, note that, according to Nexis, this is the only television interview Fritz Hollings, esteemed senator, chairman of the Commerce Committee, was allowed to have to promote his new book.
There is simply no one who is powerful enough not to get blacklisted when they start telling the truth.