Predatory Pachyderms

[Dover]

Government of Big Business, by Big Business, and for Big Business.


In his new book, The Predator State, James Galbraith charts the course of U.S. economic policy over the past 30 years, leading to the disastrous economics of the Bush presidency. Galbraith—an Observer contributing writer and holder of the Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas—shows how the ideology of the free market failed in application under Reagan but devolved into a mythology that still has many Democratic leaders mouthing its creed. Meanwhile, Republicans under Bush have moved on to a new vision of the corporate republic, in which public purpose and public resources become fodder for corporate profit. In the following excerpt from the book, Galbraith—son of the late economist, author, and ambassador, John Kenneth Galbraith—explains the current health-care and public- education debates as they play out in the “predator state.”

http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2837