Regardless
of possible calamities with the Fall elections the two part series in the NY
Times this week makes clear who’s in charge. It’s the Brookings Institute, or
the American Enterprise Institute, or the Center for International Studies,
etc. Two of them are building new hundred million dollar office complexes with
annual budgets running over a hundred million dollars according to the Washington Post.
"...donors like JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank; K.K.R., the global
investment firm; Microsoft, the software giant; and Hitachi, the
Japanese conglomerate” all donate to
“Think Tanks” and they in return help the companies with myriad tasks like calling
in university researchers without disclosing that they’re being paid for their
so-called objective testimony about their next big project or blocking or altering government regulations that threaten their
profit margins.
“On issues as varied as
military sales to foreign countries, international trade, highway management
systems and real estate development, think tanks have frequently become
vehicles for corporate influence and branding campaigns….setting up events
featuring corporate executives with government officials, according to
documents obtained by The New York Times and the New England Center for
Investigative Reporting.”
The Think
Tanks hire professors from our great universities to be consultants for the
projects of the nation’s largest corporations. The public and Congress is
usually unaware of these compromised relations.
“This is about giant corporations who figured out that by
spending, hey, a few tens of millions of dollars, if they can influence
outcomes here in Washington, they can make billions of dollars,” said Senator
Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, a frequent critic of
undisclosed Wall Street donations to think tanks.”
This helps
to explain the huge pressures faced by presidents and congresspersons,
including the larger failures of the Obama-led liberal democrats that neither
prosecuted nor curbed the banks, did not raise taxes on the rich, did not
emphasize the shrinking market for middle class workers. Mark Shields on the PBS News Hour has
repeatedly pointed out over the past six months that Hillary Clinton’s
candidacy wrapped itself in Obama’s legacy, preceded by her own husband’s NAFTA
legacy.
What’s not to hate among those left behind who lean toward Donald Trump?
What’s not to hate among those left behind who lean toward Donald Trump?
Even if Trump is forced out or resigns from the Fall elections he has given further articulation to a rising clamor in the countryside raised by left behinders, a very large segment of the population. OpEd columnist, Roger Cohen put it succinctly
“America…whose fault lines Obama…stepped across 12 years ago,
is perhaps more divided than ever….There was something about Obama’s blackness,
his intellectualism, his cool distillation of problems that was intolerable to
a wide swath of the white working class angered by lost jobs, lost wars, lost
security and lost pride. These Americans have felt left behind. They have
perceived not outreach from Obama’s White House but condescension.” [Roger Cohen August 1 NYT]
This is not
substance but mirrors that conceal how the so-called democratic process often
leaves us with a picture of what is actually small scale politics—however
lethal—that conceal the principalities and powers of our age.
Martin Indyk
is the supreme Think Tank prototype: Vice President and Director for Foreign
Policy at the Brookings Institution, chief architect of U. S. foreign policy
toward Israel, formerly deputy research director for the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), special assistant to
President Bill Clinton as senior director of Near East and South
Asian Affairs at the United States National Security Council. While at the
NSC, he served as principal adviser to the President and the National
Security Advisor on Arab–Israeli issues, Iraq, Iran, and South Asia. He
was a senior member of Secretary of State Warren Christopher's Middle
East peace team and served as the White House representative on the U.S. Israel
Science and Technology Commission. Today at Brookings he directs programs such
as their Global Cities Initiative. This, a Brookings senior fellow explained “must
mean a marriage between JP Morgan Chase corporate interests” and “Brookings
continued thought leadership.”
JPMorgan, in
a document dated a month before the agreement was signed, said the pending
donation to Brookings “deepens/extends relationships with important client base
among business and civic leaders both in the U.S. and abroad.”
The lengthy
two part series in this week’s NY Times should be read thoroughly and you can
do that by clicking on these URLs
Part I. Think Tank Scholar or Consultant? It Depends
on the Day http://p.nytimes.com/email/re?location=InCMR7g4BCJTYuyKqXu41vAkMIWfA6rd&user_id=2e01af80f96bffbd607768c4547f7ab3&email_type=eta&task_id=1470863064812753®i_id=0
Part II. How Think Tanks Amplify Corporate America’s
Influence
http://p.nytimes.com/email/re?location=InCMR7g4BCJTYuyKqXu41o8Me/5hd4gV&user_id=c4b68bb7cbdc5711a37a5ddb2eb23cf5&email_type=eta&task_id=1470862091479220®i_id=0
You can also read the apostle Paul’s description of the situation in
his letter to the Ephesians (6:12)
12 For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but
against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of
this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness.
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