John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, provides this important history lesson. Progressives constantly repeat the big lie that they are for the little guy. Just read The Nation or Salon. Goodman documents that from the start they are for big business and government imposed business cartels.
The fundamental economic vision of progressivism was to not to combat special interests, but to embrace and empower them. In a very real sense, “progressivism” means rule by special interests….
As the leftist historian Gabriel Kolko has documented, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) — our first progressive-era federal regulatory agency — was dominated by, and served the interest of, the railroads. The main accomplishments of regulation were to outlaw price cutting, establish minimum prices and make the railroads more profitable than they had ever been. The experience was far from unique…..
By the time Franklin Roosevelt established the National Recovery Administration (NRA) during the Depression years, planners could draw not only upon the experience of the Wilson-era WIB, [War Industries Board] but also on the far more extensive experience of Mussolini’s Italian economy — which was organized in the same way. In fact, Roosevelt’s economic vision for America was almost identical to the vision of Italian fascism.
