Friday, September 10, 2010

Falstad's Intellectually Dishonest Mailer

Jay Falstad’s latest mailer from the Republican Environmental Alliance—paid for by Falstad’s mortgage holder, Alan Griffith and Freddie Mac fraudster Leland Brendsel—urges voters in the September 14th Republican primary to “vote for 3 Conservative Republicans” and features an image of Teddy Roosevelt.























Apparently Jay is as unfamiliar with history as he is with state campaign finance and ethics laws.
Teddy Roosevelt is no conservative. In fact he is widely regarded as progressive. Roosevelt was avid devotee of Hebert Croly one of the four horsemen of American progressivism. TR was a statist through and through.

In his New Nationalism speech Roosevelt said:



We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community. This, I know, implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in governmental control is now necessary.


Roosevelt also practiced corporatist economics. From Jonah Goldberg’s indispensable book Liberal Fascism:



Since the dawn of the Progressive Era, reformers have constructed an army of straw men, conjured a maelstrom of myths, to justify blurring the lines between business and government. According to civics textbooks, Upton Sinclair and his fellow muckrakers unleashed populist rage against the cruel excesses of the meatpacking industry, and as a result Teddy Roosevelt and his fellow Progressives boldly reined in an industry run amok. The same story repeats itself for the accomplishments of other muckrakers, including the pro-Mussolini icons Ida Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens. This narrative lives on as generations of journalism students’ dream of exposing corporate malfeasance and prompting government-imposed “reform.”

The problem is that it’s totally untrue, a fact Sinclair freely acknowledged.“The Federal inspection of meat was, historically, established at the packers’ request,” Sinclair wrote in 1906. “It is maintained and paid for by the people of the United States for the benefit of the packers.” The historian Gabriel Kolko concurs: “The reality of the matter, of course, is that the big packers were warm friends of regulation, especially when it primarily affected their innumerable small competitors.” A spokesman for “Big Meat” (as we might call it today) told Congress, “We are now and have always been in favor of the extension of the inspection, also to the adoption of the sanitary regulations that will insure the very best possible conditions.” The meatpacking conglomerates knew that federal inspection would become a marketing tool for their products and, eventually, a minimum standard. Small firms and butchers who’d earned the trust of consumers would be forced to endure onerous compliance costs, while large firms not only could absorb the costs more easily but would be able to claim their products were superior to uncertified meats.



If Roosevelt is a conservative then the word has lost all meaning.



Interestingly enough Falstad’s mailer goes a long way in proving BQA correct that the anti-growth crowd’s candidates are indeed wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Falstad is free to invoke Roosevelt in his appeal, but he should at least be intellectually honest with voters and properly identify Roosevelt as a progressive.

2 comments:

  1. I just viewed this- the return address on the mailing is Steve Kline's home address in Centreville. Kline is Dunmyer's campaign manager.

    How can someone not officially connected to a PAC send out "official" literature?

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  2. TY, Charles - It reminds me of the 'suggested donation' membership fee to become a member of the Citizens for Greater Centreville (CGC) - QACA is the suggested recipient.
    When asked about the connection a few months ago, I was told that Mr.Falstad/QACA didn't know anything about the workings of the CGC. I thought that odd, to say the least.

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