permissiveness: the cause of terrorism

Nathan Newman nathan at newman.org
Wed Dec 19 08:10:42 PST 2001


----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com> -Wouldn't it be nice if Bloomberg were to spin out of control, -bringing an end to the cult of the billionaire entrepreneur, in the -same way that Lindsay's failure represented the terminal crisis of -60s big city liberalism?

It might put a damper on the idea that billionaires are great at running economies, but then folks never really bought it with folks like Perot and have shot down most billionaire types for office. Recently rightwing self-financing candidates (Huffington and a number of other folks, especially in California) have done far less well than liberal rich candidates (notably Corzine), since folks trust self-financed candidates to fulfill their promises to betray their class more than to be such econ whiz kids. Similarly, the GOP has done best with candidates who came from hard-scrabble backgrounds (Reagan, Nixon) with the Bush's being interesting exceptions-- but whom the charge of selling out to their rich friends does stick in the public mind.

-- Nathan Newman



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list