Jennifer Rubin on business in reality vs business in the right-wing epistemic bubble:
As business leaders and the rest of the country learned in the Trump years, economic prosperity does not rely on deregulation or tax cuts for the rich, but on fundamentals such as a functioning health-care system that can confront a pandemic, a robust international trading system, the rule of law and corruption-free government. While right-wing donors and think tank ideologues may believe that supply-side tax cuts and a roll back of environmental regulations are the keys to prosperity, business leaders rarely prioritize these issues. (And in fact, having invested in green energy, businesses are now pushing back on efforts to revert to excessive carbon output.)
Likewise, the MAGA crowd may seek to demonize Black Lives Matter, but private industry, sensitive to public opinion, largely embraced the message of racial justice and reform.
Given all that, it should not be surprising that Business Roundtable chief executives (who lead companies with nearly $9 trillion in annual revenue and employ close to 19 million workers) are sounding the alarm against the obstructionism, penny pinching and covid-19 denialism that color Republicans’ outlook these days. In a statement released Monday, the Business Roundtable argued that the top priority for the next administration and Congress should be “to help American families amid the global coronavirus pandemic, as their plans and economic outlook improve from historic lows set earlier this year.” [WaPo]
Citizen’s United v. FEC has become notorious for, among other things, giving corporations many of the same rights as people, as I understand it. I think that’s silly, but that’s neither here nor there; and, given its existence, I think Rubin should have extended her argument a little further under the aegis of Corporate Personhood.
She should have called on businesses to refuse to fund right wing politicos until they reform or retire.
This is not a hard argument to make, following Rubin’s take on fertile corporate ground. Good health, educated workers, enlightened governance: while these may be anathema to supremacists of all stripes, as well as wanna-be robber barons, most corporations greatly value those conditions. While there’s many reasons for Silicon Valley’s location, one reason it isn’t located in a State with poor health and education, such as Mississippi, is because it couldn’t prosper there. Between the bad governance (which I happily grant has improved recently with reformations to the election laws) and the bad health, corporations would stumble and crash, despite the low taxes. Meanwhile, in California, land of high taxes, it continues to prosper.
On the flip side, autocracies and theocracies are notorious for their negative effects on both populace and corporations. Sure, if you’re a CEO that is personally related to one of the political or theocratic leaders, you may do extraordinarily well – if you enjoy being surrounded by intrusive 24 hour security and are enough of a narcissist that universal dislike of yourself doesn’t bother you. But most corporations will do only mediocre, and, worse, autocracies are very well known for unilateral actions which damage or destroy corporations, with no recourse to the law for recompense. And theocracies? They just accuse you of blasphemy and execute you.
Rubin cites the Business Roundtable, and that would be a fine place to start. They could compose a letter to be sent to the Republican National Committee and every single Republican elected official specifying the following:
[Official’s Name] will get no more money from the undersigned until
- You accept Biden is the legitimately elected President, and publicly announce same. That the judiciary has rejected all charges of fraud, as well as requests for theft of Electoral Votes, should inform you that this is the proper American position to take.
- You denounce all threats and violence emanating from right wing sources.
- Given our business interests, Senator McConnell helps pass an economic stimulus package that keeps ourselves and our customers afloat. Your responsibility? To call McConnell and urge him to fulfill his responsibilities.
- You call on President Trump to concede and desist from any more attempts to damage the Republic.
- You denounce all clerics who have supported you and are attempting to raise a revolt against the legitimately elected Biden Administration. Sedition and treason are not good for business. Don’t be silent on the issue.
This letter should be published in relevant newspapers and online.
Corporations are what make this country run, whether you like it or not, and if they step up and take responsibility for their own future, that would be a big step towards telling an artificially aggrieved minority that it’s time to grow up and reassess. Nothing’s been stolen from the aggrieved.
Their candidate was simply horrible. And rejected.
