On September 13th, I attended a town-hall meeting with Rep. Betty McCollum (D). Not surprisingly, the Q & A segment of the program was dominated by Tea Party plants from outside McCollum's district. She seemed to take this in stride and did her best to give civil answers to some rather uncivil questions.
Afterward, several people hung back - myself included - hoping to have a brief one-on-one exchange with Rep. McCollum.
Most of those who stayed seemed to be conservative-leaning, judging by the number of times I heard the word "taxes," but I was too far away from the scrum to hear everything. I was, however, close enough to hear what passed between Rep. McCollum and the gentleman immediately in front of me.
This is when it became interesting.
The gentleman said to Ms. McCollum (I didn't take notes, so I am paraphrasing slightly):
"When you hear the word "corporation" you think taxes. When I hear the word "corporation" I think jobs."
Betty responded, with a smile: "Did I say that? I don't remember speaking about that." (She hadn't.)
After a bit of harrumphing, the gentleman countered with:
"You just see corporations as sources of revenue, whereas I see them as the job creators. You just want to tax and regulate them until they go out of business or move somewhere else out of state. But they are the ones who create jobs."
"Well, I very much support local businesses and corporations," responded McCollum, "but I think we've seen in the last few years that we need sensible regulation to protect consumers."
"Why does the government need to do that?" The man asks. "You always think government has to do everything. I think if you just left these corporations... if you left people alone...if people could just...if you just left everybody alone, everything would be fine."
Where, I wonder, has this man been living? This is while the BP spill is still in the news, the financial industry that wrecked the global economy is raking in new and bigger profits, the mortgage companies are still screwing homeowners left and right, health insurance companies are raising premiums like crazy in order to make "Obamacare" look bad, and - well, there are just too many other examples to cite.
But, we should just leave corporations alone and everything would be fine.
Jane Mayer's profile of the Koch brothers in the August 30th New Yorker provides a fine example of just how wonderfully, delightfully perfect life would be if we "just left corporations alone", especially as Koch Industries has become one of the main backers of the Tea Party - that is, the party made up of people who most fervently believe that we should "just leave everybody alone":
...at the same time that David Koch has been casting himself as a champion in the fight against cancer, Koch Industries has been lobbying to prevent the E.P.A. from classifying formaldehyde, which the company produces in great quantities, as a “known carcinogen” in humans.
Scientists have long known that formaldehyde causes cancer in rats, and several major scientific studies have concluded that formaldehyde causes cancer in human beings—including one published last year by the National Cancer Institute, on whose advisory board Koch sits...[A]n expert panel within the National Institutes of Health...conclude[d] that formaldehyde should be categorized as a known carcinogen, and be strictly controlled by the government.
Corporations have resisted regulations on formaldehyde for decades, however, and Koch Industries has been a large funder of members of Congress who have stymied the E.P.A., requiring it to defer new regulations until more studies are completed.
Overhearing the above exchange, after having just read Mayer's New Yorker piece, it suddenly struck me that the political myth-makers - specifically the conservative intelligentsia who for years have portrayed liberals and progressives as unrealistic day-dreamers too naive and idealistic to face the realities of politics, human nature and the world - actually have it backwards. It's the conservatives who are living in bat-shit-crazy land.
Have they not been paying attention? Along with rampant greed and egregious incompetence, it was precisely this conservative, Utopian vision of unregulated, American-style capitalism that ran amok and brought the country to where it is today.
Yet, despite all empirical evidence to the contrary, despite our country's recent and past history, despite the Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the well-documented failures of de-regulation and trickle-down economics, conservatives still live in a fantasy world in which unregulated free-markets magically make everything okay.
If we just had limited government and lower taxes, the United States would be strong and vibrant again. If we just left corporations alone, economic well-being would rain down abundantly on the Land of the Free, like manna from heaven. If we just left people alone, if we just believed in liberty, dammit, everything would be just fine!
Have they learned nothing? Conservatives think liberals have their heads in the clouds?
Please.