OK, here's your civics quiz for the week. Who said the following?
"It is no limitation upon property rights or freedom of contract to require that when men receive from government the privilege of doing business under corporate form … they shall do so upon absolutely truthful representations … Great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our right and duty to see that they work in harmony with these institutions … In the interests of the public, the government should have the right to inspect and examine the workings of the great corporations … The nation should … also assume power of supervision and regulation over all corporations doing interstate business."
Still stumped? Well, the same person said this:
"The great corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts are the creatures of the State, and the State not only has the right to control them, but it is duty bound to control them whenever need of such control is shown …"
All right, while you are thinking about whom may have uttered the foregoing, who said this?
"… 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. That is one of our tasks today … The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have themselves called into being. There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done."
President Theodore Roosevelt made all of those discerning remarks 100 years ago when he was battling the big corporations ("trusts), which were attempting to gain monopolistic control over various sectors of our economy. Folks back then called it "trust busting" when Roosevelt used the Sherman Act to break up the illegal monopolies.
If ol' Teddy were in the White House today, what do you think he'd do about all of the unchecked mergers, acquisitions, and consolidations occurring in our country in the name of Globalism and so-called free trade in that world-wide marketplace? What do you think he would think about the never before seen concentration of wealth in the hands of less than one-percent of the world's population.
Or how about what is Congress and the President doing to help workers and the ever-shrinking middle class as inflation and the ever increasing cost of living sink them ever deeper into economic insecurity and potential ruin.
Or how about California oil companies gouging the public with through-the-roof gasoline prices?
Or how about the deregulation deal cut by California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara with the insurance industry that will saddle homeowners and small businesses with a just approved 20% rate increase, or up to 50% if they live in wildfire impacted areas.
Or how about Mendocino County implementing an unworkable Cannabis Ordinance that has wrecked the economies of the unincorporated rural areas where nearly two-thirds of the population live.
Isn't it amazing, that just within our fairly recent past, we had people in public office who understood how government should work. Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican, his cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who entered the White House 25 years later, was a Democrat. They both put this country back on course in different perilous economic times. It can be argued that Teddy and FDR saved capitalism from self-destruction. The former broke up the monopolies that were economically strangling the country's life breath; the latter glued back together the shattered pieces of a country depressed in spirit and economy.
It kind of makes you both sad and angry that politics are now so broke.
Maybe what is needed today is not a radical reform of government.
Maybe all we need to do is return to a model and style of government that was working for people not all that long ago.
Isn't that something?
History tells us that two guys named Roosevelt, working with like-minded people, albeit in different eras, were able to solve some monumental problems. So there's hope for us yet.
We probably shouldn't set our sights to high to begin with, though.
So let's start by solving our monumental problems here locally first.
Anybody know of any Roosevelts living in the county?
Jim Shields is the Mendocino County Observer's editor and publisher, observer@pacific.net, the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District, and is also chairman of the Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council. Listen to his radio program "This and That" every Saturday at 12 noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org
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