2/1/2010 11:25:00 AMWJBC Staff
This is Mike Matejka. With last week's Supreme Court ruling, opening the corporate floodgates for campaign donations, I shudder for our political process. Political advertisers have gotten so adept at twisting messages and images, that after viewing repeated ads, you might find yourself voting against something you believe in. An active democracy requires equality, and as long as a multi-billion dollar corporation is your supposed equal in the marketplace, you dont stand a chance. As I consider this, I revisited a figure from the Republican past, President Theodore Roosevelt. I'm not sure how Teddy the trust buster, a friend of the worker and strong believer in equal rights, would fare in today's Republican Party. Roosevelt was elected Vice-President with William McKinley in 1900 and elected to the Presidency in 1904. Both times, corporate underwriting gave the Republicans their edge. But as President Theodore Roosevelt looked at the nation, he saw a country divided between the few very rich and the many poor. New industrial giants, railroads, mining companies and commodity firms abused their workers and defrauded consumers. Senators were known not for their home state, but for the company they represented. Any time reform was mentioned, the hue and cry went up that it would be "bad for business." Roosevelt eventually embraced the Pure Food and Drug Act, supported Workers' Compensation laws and opposed child labor, all to the chagrin of his corporate contributors. Today, we face a growing income inequality gap, a nation with the rich growing richer and the middle stagnating, while the poor fall off the map. As we try to maintain balance in our democracy, I'll conclude with a few words from President Theodore Roosevelt, speaking to Civil War veterans in Osawatomie, Kansas, on August 31, 1910. Roosevelt said: "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;...... It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs." This is Mike Matejka on WJBC's Forum.