Businesses United for Stability

Businesses like stability. You generally can’t trust them to look after anyone but themselves, but they and the general public share a lot of common ground. Businesses make things we need. They innovate. They strive for efficiency. They do all that in the name of profit, but we all benefit from those efforts. Historically they haven’t been great stewards of the environment, and they are slow to fess up to other harms they cause, but we have laws and regulations to keep them more or less in check in those areas.

Businesses have to plan ahead, sometimes far ahead, so they don’t like unexpected changes in the rules of the game. They don’t like trade wars. They don’t like economic conflict. Businesses who need lots of workers like sensible immigration policies.

Not surprisingly, businesses want to have a say in government to assure their needs are considered. So, they liked the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which gave them broad rights to contribute to politicians. 

Many of us, including me, thought that decision was a bad one. We thought businesses didn’t need more political clout. 

I think I may have have changed my mind. Why? Because I like stability too.

Trump gave us the opposite of stability. The rest of the GOP is not much better. These days, businesses are looking like my friends. They are like a gyroscope on our national clown car to keep it from careening out of control.

Businesses got us where we are economically. So, if they want to make big donations to politicians who share their interests, fine. At least I know that most of their interests align with mine. I can’t say that about the MAGA wing of the Republican party, which seems to hold sway over most of the GOP these days.