Talk Show Host Claims Big Business Will Do Good.

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Possibly Pragers Ideal Woman

Dennis Prager (1), a conservative talk radio host was a guest on the Commonwealth Club of California (2), a non-partisan forum for public affairs. He made lots of generalizations about the left and right, (left bad, right, well, right) and nobody called him out on them. Ok. He also said this, and I paraphrase: “People are afraid of Government. Government built Auschwitz. Governments preside over genocide. People are not afraid of Big Business. Big Business didn’t build Auschwitz or preside over genocides.” No body called him out on that either. Not Ok.

His thesis is pure “right”: that too much government is bad and business should be left alone to create and do good for us all. To which I say, partly true, partly very false. Let’s take a look at the premise that business didn’t preside over genocide. Consider the tobacco industry, the coal/electricity industry and the asbestos industry.
Tobacco: Millions die every year from using a product that the industry knows will kill them and denies that it will kill them. Chemical enhancements are included in the products to increase the level of addiction. This is corporate genocide.
Coal/Electricity: Millions of people get sick and die from lung diseases related to the pollution from coal-fired power plants and the industry knows it. Millions more sicken from the mercury emissions from the same plants. Millions more will die from the global effects of the carbon dioxide emissions from the same plants. And the industry knows it. This is corporate genocide.
Asbestos: Millions of people have died from crippling lung diseases as the result of asbestos inhalation. The industry fought the research for decades, insisting their material was not to blame. They knew it was. This is corporate genocide.
So wise up Prager. You may be right about the swelling government but you are so wrong about the benevolent nature of Big Business. Who polluted the Gulf of Mexico? Not Government.

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1. www.conservativetalknow.com/
2. www.commonwealthclub.org/