Powell Memo; where everything began to go wrong.

Click here for Robert Reich's article on Substack entitled "Today is the anniversary of the worst memo in history." Like I said, it's where everything began to go wrong.

 

It is, of course, the Powell memo, from Lewis F. Powell, Jr., to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. (Powell was appointed to the Supreme Court by Richard Nixon less than two months later).

It was titled “Attack On American Free Enterprise System” and it outlined ways in which corporate America should defend and counter attack against "disquieting voices” — environmentalists, consumer advocates, and labor unions. Powell warned that their voices were growing louder and their influence was gaining in the halls of Congress.

 Reich says:

Corporate America duly followed Powell’s’ advice. An entire corporate-political complex was born, including tens of thousands of lobbyists, lawyers, political operatives, and public relations flacks.

Within a few decades, big corporations became the largest political force in Washington and in most state capitals. The number of corporate political action committees (PACs) mushroomed from under 300 in 1976 to over 1,200 four years later. Between the late 1970s and the late 1980s, corporate PACs increased their expenditures on congressional races nearly fivefold. Labor union PAC spending rose only about half as fast.

It was the beginning of the corporate takeover of the government, as big money flooded in to influence elections.

That tsunami of big money from giant corporations, their CEOs, top executives, and major investors, was engulfing American politics. It not only sunk reform; it began to rig the entire system in favor of the moneyed interests and against average working people.

In subsequent years, the Supreme Court opened the floodgates, ruling absurdly that money was speech under the First Amendment and corporations were people.

And America is in a second Gilded Age of near-record inequality and corruption, featuring robber barons like Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and the biggest robber of them all — Trump.

Click on the article, which includes a link to a video, "The Memo that Broke American Politics."