Winner-Take-All Politics:

• Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—And Turner It’s Back on the Middle Class, by Jacob Hacker (Yale political scientist), and Paul Pierson (Berkeley Political scientist).

“The Debate should not be whether government is involved in the formation of markets. It always is. The debate should be whether it is involved in a manner conducive to a good society.” [p. 82 Legal Realism]



See, Walter Lippmann, “Drift and Mastery.” Drift is the failure of a captured politics to adjust to the ever-changing markets and the way the lust for money and power finds a way to get around established rules. 83



Politics must “master” the greed of the market.



In American politics it’s easy to create gridlock—the filibuster. 85



The economic tyranny of the few. FDR



Calvinist social Darwinism 87 Economic success as a sign of superior personal character, and the reverse as a sign of individual moral failing. 87 (CNBC commentator in 2009 launched a tyrade against the government promoting bad behavior by helping out “loosers” and the surrounding traders cheered.



During three progressive eras, “a dynamic democracy tempered and civilized a dynamic capitalism.” 91



Nixon and the politics of resentment (95) [interface with Christian resentment].



A new metaphor of politics based on what actually gets done, i.e., policy, is based individuals, but on “organized combat”. 102



The individualism myth or narrative (as well as the moral accounting metaphor or morality tale: people get what they disserve) is uniquely American, and it hides the “massive organizational realities [that] lurk behind the individualist façade.” 103



The myth of the “entrepreneur”: “We extol scrappy upstart competitors even as we drive our Toyotas to Wal-Mart, pick up remodeling supplies from Home Depot, grab fast food from McDonalds, and check out our Bank of America accounts with software from Microsoft running on an Intel chip.”104



Why aren’t politicians voting for policies that promote middle and low income families: The politics of organized combat. 113



Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a metaphor for the relentless pursuit of profit by banks and big companies.115



Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB).119



Business Roundtable an the March Group restricted to corporate CEO’s 113 of the top Fortune 200 accounting for nearly half the economy in 1972. 120



The emergence of “idea factories” [independent of academia], foundations and think tanks. Conservative: American Enterprise Institute.

Josephy Coors, John Olin (Olin Foundation), William Simon.

Heritage Foundation was not based on the academic model of investigation objective policy analysis, but one of ideology and marketing for the purposes of public policy persuasion; marketing, and “proselytizing” rather than investigate. For the GOP. 123



Charles Walker: American Council For Capital Formation, “…to sell the proposition that what was good for America’s richest corporations and individuals was good for America.” 124



Business groups initiated the politics of obstruction: drift. 127



An old rule of politics: Don’t field the team unless you can win. 129



“Business bankrolled an intellectual infrastructure committed to advancing the religion of free markets, refining messages for public consumption, and marketing them [marketing religion]..” 180



Money to democrats played as different role: insurance [like short selling]…and went to “moderates” for the purposes of blocking, dilution, or delay. 180



“Gramm was perhaps second only to Alan Greenspan as a high priest of deregulation.” 197-98 (huge $ for his wife as well) Graham went to work for UBS (Switzerland’s largest bank) which had to be bailed out by the Swiss gov. in 2008.



Greenspan “When I am on Wall Street, to me that’s a holy place.” 198



National Federation of Independent Businesses (600,000 members); Tom Delay..former pest control business owner who said EPA was “the Gestapo of Government, pure and simple. 205



Chamber of Commerce (large employer organization) 206



Radical tax organizations: Grover Norquist’s, American’s for tax Reform (ATR); and Stephen Moore’s Club for Growth (CFG)208



What will it take to pry up the “poisonous roots” of the winner-take-all culture and politics. 288



What is the difference between an hereditary aristocracy and a economic artistocracy?



“As in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid...the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang lost out to their much more resourceful and coordinated opponents..”301



“A vibrant, dynamic capitalism requires the guidance that only a vibrant, dynamic democracy can provide” 301