Inspired by reading this,
Did Evan Bayh Quit Because Reid Refused to Give Paris Hilton a Tax Break?
By: emptywheel Tuesday February 16, 2010
What important initiative did Evan Bayh support in the interests of the rest of us, at the expense of the wealthiest?
In a similar period of high employment, this was language from the platform of Bayh's dad.:
http://www.4president.org/...
Birch Bayh for President 1976 Campaign Brochure
...Our economy is at a crucial turning point. The problems of skyrocketing energy and food costs and the inability of the free market to function effectively have led me to conclude that recent policy failures are the result of an outdated view of the American economy. Therefore, I am proposing the establishment of a Temporary National Economic Committee -- similar to the Committee established by President Roosevelt in 1938 -- to publicly investigate the concentration of economic power in America today....
There must have been some negative things found out in the course of the 1940 TNEC investigations, because.....
To this day....68 years later....the SEC records are still sealed:
http://www.archives.gov/...
Records of the Temporary National Economic Committee [TNEC]
Search ARC for Entries from this Record Group
* 144.1 ADMINISTRATIVE HISTORY
* 144.2 RECORDS OF THE COMMITTEE 1938-41 967 lin. ft.
144.1 ADMINISTRATIVE HISTORY
Established: As a joint Congressional-Executive branch committee, composed of members of both houses of Congress and representatives of several Executive departments and commissions, by joint resolution of Congress, June 16, 1938 (52 Stat. 705). Functions: Studied monopoly and concentration of economic power, and made recommendations for legislation.
Abolished: April 3, 1941, by expiration of extension granted by joint resolution, December 16, 1940 (54 Stat. 1225). Liquidation deadline of December 31, 1941, set by Additional Urgent Deficiency Appropriation Act of 1941, May 24, 1941 (55 Stat. 200).
144.2 RECORDS OF THE COMMITTEE
1938-41
967 lin. ft.
...Specific Restrictions: As specified by the SEC, no one, except government officials for official purposes, may have access to records created and filed by the SEC on behalf of the TNEC
Background: (What has been hidden for 69 years must be even more grievous that this Time Magazine description of concentrated wealth and power...)
http://www.time.com/...
Thirteen Families
Monday, Oct. 28, 1940
Last week the Securities and Exchange Commission published its report to null a 121-page study of "The Distribution of Ownership in the 200 Largest Non-Financial* Corporations."...
...Of an estimated 8,500,000 U. S. stockholders, less than 75,000 (.06% of the population) own fully one-half of all corporate stock held by individuals....
The 13 most potent family groups' holdings were worth $2,700,000,000, comprised over 8% of the stock of the 200 corporations:...
....» Three groups—Du Fonts, Mellons, Rockefellers—have shareholdings valued at nearly $1,400,000,000, control, directly or indirectly, 15 of the 200 corporations....
Evan Bayh comes from the state where the Middletown studies (of Muncie, Indiana) achieved the largest body of work on the stddy of the rise of a consume society and the exploitation it was subjected to by the bisiness class in its own community and by corporate advertising and news media, and the lessons of Middletown were not learned by Rich Men's tool, Evan Bayh.:
http://www.pbs.org/...
Middletown I
...The rough egalitarianism of the farmland had been replaced by a two-class system in the city. The Lynds found a business class, which worked with people and symbols, and a working class, which worked with things. And the Lynds found that these two groups were as different as two different tribes. They had different values, different expectations and did not mingle. Among the differences between the two groups was financial security: the working class was subject to frequent layoffs with no notice, while the business class was almost never laid off.
* FEBRUARY 13, 2010
http://online.wsj.com/...
From Deal Journal, MarketBeat and Wealth Report
Unemployment? Not for the Rich
Top Decile Earners' Rate Is 3%, New Study Says; Bottom 10th Is at 31%
Middletown, Teetering On the Divide
An Indiana City With an Average Past Anxiously Faces an Uncertain Future
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
....Muncie looks okay from certain angles, kind of like America. North of the White River, which bisects Muncie, things are pretty good. There's Ball State University and Ball Memorial Hospital, both large employers. There's Muncie Mall and the big-box stores, and -- why would anyone shop in Muncie's historic downtown anymore? How could those little shops possibly compare with Wal-Mart?
South of the river is the industrial part of town, and this is where you see the frayed seams of the Rust Belt. Here are the slumped houses, the abandoned fast-food joint, the wreckage of a leveled auto parts plant. Manufacturing jobs, long the backbone of the city's economy, have been leaving. Muncie has lost more than 10,000 people since 1980, and the population is now 66,000. ...
Buhh-Bye, Evan Bayh. Now you can sell your influence on Capital Hill and openly cash in from the money that the concentrated wealth you've always worked for, will eagerly pay you. Meanwhile, the middle and lower classes in Muncue and in the rest of Indiana struggle with high unemployemnt while the wealthiest class is unfazed with a 3 percent rate of unemployment. Did I mention that US gini is 45, the most inequitable measure of wealth distribution of any ODC? Gini was still in the mid 30's in the 1970's. What policies did you ever propose, Evan Bayh, that mirrored your father's proposal to investigate why wealth was becoming more concentrated in America?