What TR Would Do

Teddy Roosevelt is a hero of mine. Brilliant, environmentally advanced and intellectually curious, TR took crap from no one, a situation totally opposite to what we have now in the White House, a president all too willing to kowtow to the unenlightened self interests of the corporate and financial elite of this nation.

"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.


We must have complete and effective publicity of corporate affairs, so that the people may know beyond peradventure whether the corporations obey the law and whether their management entitles them to the confidence of the public. 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."

When viewed in the context of the rise of China and the loss of US jobs, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what happens when unbridled greed works against the national interest, something the so called political leaders of our country have forgotten about while taking monies from the powers at be in order to get elected.

"It took a courageous -- and at the time crazy -- leader by the name of Teddy Roosevelt to step up and change that. He took on the biggest financial giant there was, JP Morgan, and he won. Roosevelt's underlying premise -- if you're too powerful and you're profiting at the expense of the American people -- then you are an enemy of freedom and the government must break you up. It was that simple.


Here we find ourselves today in a similar situation, where six industries have a stranglehold over Washington. And the draining of our current and future wealth will only continue as both the media and the political class not only tolerates but spreads the phrase "free market" when the reality doesn't match the rhetoric.


Our politicians continue to take money from massive corporations to subsidize them in a rigged marketplace that only cares about protecting the incumbent structure. At the same time, the American people are drowning in a red sea of debt caused by perpetuating banking, health care, energy and defense systems that are expensive, ineffective and protected from competition.


So I have a challenge for those so-called free market Republicans who rode a wave of voter discontent into Washington. I challenge you to end massive corporate subsidies. To end tax loopholes. And to end rigged trade with China and release the true power of free markets."

To all incoming politicos, read Regulation Blues to learn why regulation does not work if there no transparency, a concept Obama blissfully ignores while China continues to screw us in ways TR never would have tolerated.