True to form, the Richmond Times-Disgrace spent about half of its front page this morning toasting the elevation of their hometown favorite, Eric Cantor, to his new position as House Majority Leader, following the GOP rout in November elections.
None of the major newspapers — the New York Times, Washington Post or Wall Street Journal — afforded the “Young Gun” the same type of type of fawning coverage. But, then, Cantor is exactly what the newspapers owners like, a non-threatening, non-dynamic protector of their business interests, not to mention that his wife is on the board of parent firm Media General (cue disclaimer!).
Cantor promises the lead the charge to dismantle Obamacare, refusing to believe the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate that it will CUT $140 billion or so from the budget in its first 10 years. Cantor wants weekly budget cutting suggestions from various House committees. One would have to assume, of course, that they wouldn’t involve funding for Rolls Royce North America or any major corporate entity with a headquarters in the Old Dominion.
Cantor is an icon for what Virginia’s dying oligarchs such as the Stewart Bryan family and others want from their politicians, namely one-sided policies that favor CEOs rather than ordinary people.
Consider that the late Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., another member of the Old Richmond elite deified by the Richmond newspaper, was front-and-center pro-business to the point of absurdity.
According to a New York Times piece on the current pro-business Supreme Court, before he was named to the court, Powell took it upon himself to advise the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to assemble a “highly competent staff of lawyers” to thwart what he saw as a massive legal onslaught against business interests.
A year later, Powell was named to the Supreme Court and he sure got his wish later with the court of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, which has, according to a study for the Times by Northwestern University and University of Chicago professors, ruled in favor of business interests 61 percent of the time while the previous chief justice’s court so ruled 42 percent of the time.
And, the U.S. Chamber, housed in a mausoleum-style mansion across Lafayette Park from the White House, has, under its combative president Tom Donohue, aggressively shouted down just about any kind of regulation be it Sarbanes-Oxley, needed after Enron, and the more recent but weak financial industry reforms following the worst crisis since the Great Depression which was caused in large part by the unbridled greed of the Banks of America, Wachovias, Merrill Lynchs, Bear Stearns, Citigroups, and so on.
It should come as no surprise that Cantor is going after Obamacare and refuting independent and credible analysis suggesting it won’t sink the federal debt as conservatives want you to think it will. The Young Gun is generously funded by the managed care and health industry. For a cool couple K, you can arrange a “coffee with Cantor” at a Starbuck’s on Capitol Hill.
And speaking of Cantor, he never questioned President George W. Bush’s War in Iraq, which was absolutely unnecessary because the “Weapons of Mass Destruction” that Bush gave as the reason for the war, did not exist. Meanwhile, the war has cost 4,400 Americans killed and 30,000 wounded, 100,000 or so Iraqi casualties, several million refugees and $1 trillion in taxpayer costs that haven’t been paid for, according to Joseph Lelyveld in The New York Review of Books.
So where’s Eric on this one? If you are stuck in Richmond reading the Times-Disgrace, you will never find out.
Peter Galuszka
