In Oct. 1982 I pointed out a principle enunciated by AtE reader James E. Foy (but in a similar way also by Milton Friedman and others) that capitalism favors the consumer, it disciplines the capitalist (who usually goes to the government to protect him from the competition when a better product cannot protect him). This is the root of corporate servility and Big Business's collaboration with the Greens and other deadly enemies of capitalism.
In a letter to the WSJ (3/5), Arnold Beichman of the Hoover Institution again points this out. The Chamber of commerce did not "defect" to Clinton, he is their natural patron. Beichman reminds us how Pepsico's D. Kendall lauded Leonid Brezhnev, and another representative of Big Business, Cyrus Vance (yes, the same) declared that "Leonid Brezhnev is a man who shares our dreams and aspirations," and that a WSJ full-page ad signed by the CEOs of the US's largest corporation welcomed Romania's butcher Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife to the US (and, I might add, Pacific Telesis took out a double spread in the WSJ with almost a full page showing the protrait of Chinese butcher Deng, and on and on and on).
This perverse, yet in its own way logical wimpishness was nowhere greater than in Detroit (see Paid H. Weaver
¾an ex-PR man for Ford¾ The suicidal corporation, Simon & Schuster, 1988). And yet GM at long last hit back and found that NBC's piece on their trucks with sidesaddle gasoline tanks was rigged, including model rocket engines that ensured ignition of the gasoline: an act of arson posing as a documentary. GM had recently been convicted for a fire after a crash of one of these trucks with the vehicle of a drunk driver and ordered to pay $120 ($140?) million in punitive damages, so that GM underwent the only form of education that works: being hit over the head with a stick. However, they quickly stopped the counter-attack when NBC admitted the fraud and apologized, though they could have sued them to pay the unjust punitive damages. Still, one must be thankful for even a little normal behavior when it comes to these obsequious sissies.As for NBC, except for getting caught, they are no different from CBS, NBC or CNN; and PBS (NPR) is even worse. There must have been tens of "journalists" who knew about the fraud; but not one of them was upright enough to open his mouth
¾which is the very essence of his profession. Remember that when you next see a "documentary:" it will have been made by these same cowardly swindlers.
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Vol. 20, No. 8
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Volume 20 Issue/No.: Vol. 20, No. 8 Date: April 01, 1993 11:14 AM Title: The New Nevilles
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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