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The Powell Memo: A Blueprint for a Class War - Part 2 · The Overlap

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Hey there, overlap podcast listeners. This is your cohost Joshua here.
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If you just so happen to pick us up at this specific podcast,
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this is part two of a two part podcast about the Powell memo.
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If you wouldn't mind, go back to last week's episode, start at part one,
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because otherwise it's going to feel very strange to be here.
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You're not going to understand what's going on.
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You're going to miss out on all of the backstory that led up to where we are now,
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and we look forward to meeting you back here as soon as you're done with that one.
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It's a short one. Thanks so much. Make sure to check out our socials. Fof.Foundation.
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We're on Mastodon and blue sky, the overlap podcast.
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Thanks so much for listening to the overlap.
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This is the point at which everything up until this was kind of giving you context.
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It's giving you a broad background of what America looked like in the first place.
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This is the point at which everything up until this was kind of giving you context is giving
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you a broad background of what America looked like in July 1971.
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Ultimately, that leads to the memorandum we're actually talking about.
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Will why don't you kick us off with that.
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So the memorandum, I think it's such a funny word, but the diatribe as you described before
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was titled Attack on American Free Enterprise System.
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I mean, can you ask for anything more like, you know, just, I mean, he knew his audience,
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right?
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That's all I can say.
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It's Alex Jones.
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I mean, it's literally like an Alex Jones headline.
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Right, right.
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So on August 23, 1971, he sends this memorandum confidentially, right?
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This is not a public playbook or it was not intended to be a public playbook, although
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it was rather quickly released to the public.
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And he sends this memorandum to the US Chamber of Commerce.
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And the US Chamber of Commerce, I mean, is basically like, it's an official sort of vision
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of the big businesses that he's trying to protect, right?
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This is where they gather together and talk about how to succeed in commerce.
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It's commerce, literally the Chamber of Commerce.
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It's literally just like your local Chamber of Commerce, just at a national level.
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Exactly.
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It's basically like, I mean, essentially, this is like the Ten Commandments moment or, you
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know, the golden...
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He comes down from the mountain with the tablet.
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Exactly.
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He's three, three golden tablets, two, two...
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He's emerged from his tobacco haze with the guideline, the playbook for saving America,
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or saving the free enterprise system from America, maybe, is the best way to put it.
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It does sound apocalyptic, like he's talking the equivalent of Fire and Brimstone coming
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down if we don't turn this around.
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And he claims that the system is under a broad attack not just from communists and new leftists,
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right?
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Not just from the...
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New leftists is my favorite one.
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New leftists, as opposed to old leftists.
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Right.
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These are the ones who went farther left.
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Yes.
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But this is more than just the usual players, right?
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This is not the ones that we know about, right?
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The ones that were outed in all the trials, you know, the communists and the witch hunts
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and all that kind of stuff, the McCarthyism.
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This is a broader attack, right?
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This is including perfectly respectable elements of society, which is kind of a shot at the
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other side, right?
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The usual suspects.
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These are just the crazies.
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These are the people you might run into at a dinner party.
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Professors, journalists, clergy, politicians.
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And these are real members of society that are stepping up and saying, "Hey, there's a
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problem here."
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This is you and me.
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And ultimately, what he's saying is people that look like me are attacking the United
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States in this way.
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Right.
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And then he sort of berates in a way his own people by saying that the business community,
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these business leaders, although they're such brilliant minds, they know how to make money,
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right?
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They know how to squeeze every dollar out of everything, out of a business, but they
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have no idea how to defend themselves in the court of public opinion.
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And so he calls them passive weak conciliatory.
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He basically just, you know...
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Reads them.
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Yeah, he eviscerates them and then says he bemoans their apathy and default of business
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in the face of this existential threat, responding with appeasement and aptitude and ignoring
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the problem.
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He's basically just shooting straight at these guys saying, "Hey, look, you can't just keep
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giving them what they're asking for because they're going to ask for more."
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And sets up this slippery slope where people are going to just walk all over businesses,
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which is of course in his mind the worst thing that could happen.
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Basically, you could be forgiven for imagining that Nader is like the vice presidential candidate
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that would drive around in the tank.
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I'm blanking on his name right now.
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Dan Quayle was... oh man, anyway... wasn't Ross Perot.
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No, it wasn't Perot.
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It'll come to me in a minute.
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But basically, you can be imagining like Ralph Nader at the head of a tank division, like
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right outside of DC, about to take over the way Powell is talking about this.
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He paints this picture of imminent invasion and attacks by all these people who are really,
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like, again, just keep in mind, asking for like seatbelt laws and not having poison in
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their food.
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Right.
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Like we're not talking crazy things like "Let's shut down all factories."
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Like no, just like, "Hey, maybe don't dump toxic chemicals into water reservoirs."
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Maybe don't set our rivers on fire because we kind of need them.
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Yeah.
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So, yeah.
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So, he's all fired up about the fact that they're not responding with a heavy enough
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hand and doesn't like these weak CEOs and he basically says, "All right, it's time to
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pony up.
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We need to get together.
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We need to fix this.
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And this is how we're going to do it."
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And then he lays out his strategy, which I, do you want to take over on the forefronts
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of his strategy?
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Yeah, yeah.
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For sure.
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So, basically he said that we have to attack this from all four fronts.
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Right?
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We can't just come at this like a typical army head to head.
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He says that it's got to be a detailed, long range strategic plan on all four fronts at
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one time.
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So, he laid out this kind of all-encompassing counteroffensive that needed to be waged across
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four key parts of American society.
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A commercial manifesto, if you will.
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Yes.
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And look, this is where you could really start to see the shaping of what we're dealing with
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right now today.
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First, the campus.
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He called for re-education of the youth.
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So, he kind of identified the university as the single most dynamic source of anti-business
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sentiment.
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Right?
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So, he was saying, "Colleges are the place where all anti-business sentiment starts."
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So, how did he suggest solving this?
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Well, with fire, of course.
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He called for the US Chamber of Commerce to create and fund its own staff of scholars
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to produce a stream of pro-business research, publications, and even propose creating what
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he called the Speaker's Bureau with polished executives to get the good corporate message
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into campuses to demand equal time to counter critics.
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And also, he called for the evaluation of textbooks in economic, sociology, and political
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science to make sure that the balance was there and that there were fair and factual treatment
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of the free enterprise system.
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Now, his goal was obviously to build a parallel intellectual infrastructure, what do we say,
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alternative black box of creation, and an infrastructure to create an academic counter-establishment
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loyal to corporate interests, not to people's interests.
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Number two, the media.
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He suggested that the US Chamber of Commerce start policing narratives by...and look,
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Powell was obsessed with the news, anything with the media specifically, but especially
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television.
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He saw television as a completely hostile force, completely anti-business, completely
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anti-corporate, completely anti-free market.
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He actually asked and advocated for a "constant surveillance" of the national media and for
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mounting aggressive campaigns to challenge any reporting deemed "unfair to business,"
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but his plan went further than that.
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He wasn't just complaining about it.
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He wanted businesses, again, to fund scholars, to create their own magazines, to publish their
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own books and pamphlets, all which had to meet the "most exciting standards of accuracy
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and professional excellence in order to build credibility and shape public opinion directly."
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This is very much where we have the corporations funding their own research studies and things
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like that.
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This is all where this originated.
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And this links directly back to Philip Morris.
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Exactly.
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Let's find nine out of 10 doctors that agree that Marlboro cigarettes or camels are the
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best, you know.
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The other guy doesn't smoke.
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Yes.
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But the tenth doctor is still alive.
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The next outlet we'll take since it's his specialty, the courthouse.
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Sure.
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So we've got to weaponize the judiciary, says Powell.
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This is where we can see it pay off in spades, right?
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As we're seeing it now that basically he's saying, "We've got to reshape the judiciary.
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We've got to create the candidates.
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We've got to appoint the judges.
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We've got to control the courthouse because that's where these battles are going to be
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fought."
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Right?
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Again, coming off of Big Tobacco, he knows where the battles are going to be, where the
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battle lines are drawn.
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And he sees that liberal and civil rights groups like the ACLU, he calls out by name,
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are far more astute in exploiting judicial action than his own side, right?
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So he sees they've got all the practice, they know how to do this.
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We're failing in this area.
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And so he urges the Chamber of Commerce to create its own legal arm, its own ACLU, counter-ACLU,
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with the stated goal of stop seeing the courts as neutral referees, right?
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So he's basically literally advocating the politicization of the courthouse.
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He's basically saying, "Look, and to be fair..."
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"Pack the courts."
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Right.
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And I don't know if this is being fair to him.
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I think it's being more than fair, but he's a true believer, right?
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When you read the memo, he's not just saying this.
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He really thinks that this is what needs to happen.
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He's convinced.
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A hundred percent.
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Just this reads like his autobiography.
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It doesn't read like a story he wrote.
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Right.
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He's legitimately all in on this.
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And he sees the judiciary as the most important instrument for social, economic, and political
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change.
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And so he says the goal is to stop seeing them as neutral referees, right?
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The vision you have...
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I think most people starting out in law school who aren't already in this world think, "Okay,
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the judge is the neutral referee, right?
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The judge is there to control, to make sure the right evidence gets in.
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They're not there to lean one way or the other.
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They're there to make sure that the case is heard fairly."
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And that's what you think a judge is supposed to do until you actually end up in the courtroom
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in front of one who's been politicized and then you realize, "Oh, wait, we're not playing
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the same game here."
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Suddenly, by evidence, although it fits all the rules of evidence, it's not getting in.
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And the other side, some made-up garbage is coming in by the truckload.
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And I can't imagine why the jury would not want to take my side, right?
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Right.
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It's ridiculous.
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But yeah, so he says, "Let's give up this idea of neutral courts.
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Let's not try to rebalance or make them objectively fair again.
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Let's just do what they're doing and stack the courts."
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And so that's what he said to them about to do and it's paid off.
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And it's because he thought and believed that that's already what was happening from the
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side of the ACLU, that somehow the left was so good at lobbying that they were able to
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get Republican president Richard Nixon to appoint anti-business Democrat leftist judges
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who would oppose business into office.
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It simply wasn't true.
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But he figured, "Let's fight fire with fire.
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Since they're already doing it, we have to do it back."
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But really what it was, it was just a natural occurrence of a progressive system progressing.
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Right.
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Much like it couldn't be true that...
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And he saw that as the threat.
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Yeah.
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It couldn't be true that Nader was actually pointing out all these safety issues and things
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like that.
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It couldn't be the case that the environment was actually being destroyed.
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So it must be leftist judges and people being smuggled in and it's just crazy.
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Exactly.
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Because his backyard was perfectly fine.
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Exactly.
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It was the paranoia that seeks...
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The pond on his family property wasn't polluted.
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Yeah, it was.
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It was just clean.
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There's no way.
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Yeah.
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And lastly, from the Capitol.
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Basically, from appeasement to domination.
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Finally, he argued that kind of business had been politically naive and outmaneuvered.
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Capital power, he wrote, for clarity is necessary to be assiduously cultivated and it must be
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used aggressively and with determination.
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He called for a gigantic, coordinated, relentless lobbying effort.
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So he understood that piecemeal efforts by individual companies were just not enough.
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Strength, he said, lies in organization in careful, long-range planning and implementation,
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in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing
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available only through joint effort and in the political power available only through
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united action and national organizations.
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So power wants the government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations.
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For the corporations.
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Exactly.
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And wants corporations to be able to use the earth and its resources and all of the things
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that the planet gives us as they see fit without any regard for individual liberty, individual
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freedom.
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And look, the genius of this memo, right, this diatribe, is in its own dark and evil
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way, it's kind of brilliant.
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Oh yeah.
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Because it takes the language of liberalism that essentially was winning hand over fist
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and re-maneuvers it.
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Where do you see that happening today?
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You know, it takes the language and literally uses it to mean the opposite but then puts
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out such a cultural push to reverse it.
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Almost like a dark enlightenment of some sort.
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Almost.
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I think we have some posts about that.
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About that.
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One or two.
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Who knows.
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But so, he wasn't calling for censorship, right?
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Just like the left wasn't calling for censorship.
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The left was calling for balance.
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So Powell asked for balance.
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He didn't demand that there be propaganda.
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He was just asking for fairness and equal time.
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Fairness and balance?
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I wonder where we're going to find that.
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Fair and balanced.
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Especially in news sources.
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He knew that a naked call for corporate domination of these American institutions would be rejected
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out of hand and should have been, right?
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Instead, he frames this project as a defensive measure.
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It's just an effort to create a level playing field for business in an anti-business world.
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So this sort of rhetorical ninja move was really effective, honestly.
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It gave sort of a respectable, almost like civic minded public face to a terrible plan
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to build a parallel ecosystem of ideas, media, legal power, designed not to create a healthy
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debate, but to win the debate by overwhelming the opposition with a tidal wave of well-funded,
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highly coordinated messaging, and a whole lot of propaganda shared through social media
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by Boomer.
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Maybe that last part was my own editorial comment.
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Now, give equal time to the other side.
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Exactly.
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Got to give equal time.
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He mailed this memo in August of 1971.
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It quickly spread through the entirety of Congress and was leaked very, very quickly.
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Two months later, actually, Nixon himself nominated him to the Supreme Court.
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It sounds like Nixon not only read it, but loved it and was like, "We got to do this,"
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ASAP, and immediately nominated him to the Supreme Court.
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So the memo, it technically remained confidential.
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What that meant was, the government couldn't put it out officially, but it was being leaked
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through multiple sources.
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And so it didn't actually come to light during the confirmation hearings because confirmation
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hearings are public meetings.
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If something is marked confidential, it cannot be revealed in open.
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The judge can see it, but there is no judge in this case.
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The judge, ultimately, is the Senate and is Congress.
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So it wasn't until, actually, officially, September of 1972, that a journalist, Jack
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Anderson, actually got hands on a physical copy and exposed it to the world.
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He, Jack, called it, or Mr. Anderson, I don't know, whatever.
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But Mr. Anderson sounds weird.
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It sounds like I'm in the Matrix.
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Mr. Anderson called it a blueprint for an assault by big business on its critics.
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But surprisingly, and I don't know how this didn't happen, but this public exposure didn't
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actually kill the plan.
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It supercharged it.
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It became a rallying cry in boardrooms across America immediately.
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So phase one, the 70s, they mobilized.
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Tell us about it, Will.
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Well, by the end of 1973, there was a task force stacked with executives from companies
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like GE and General Motors, public enemy number one of Ralph Nader.
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They had translated it into a concrete action plan.
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They basically filled in the bullet points.
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The numbers tell you everything, from 1974 to 1980, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce doubled
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its membership and tripled its budget.
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That's fast.
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That's in the pre-internet days, folks.
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I mean that's not a small thing.
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In six years, that's 26 minutes in internet time.
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That's right.
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In 1972, they formed the Business Roundtable, which is a nice dressing for basically a lobbying
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group entirely composed of CEOs from the largest companies, which is designed to bring maximum
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pressure on Washington.
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So basically, this is all the powerful heads of the most powerful companies all coming
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together to get their stories aligned and basically pressure Washington to get on board
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or get out of their way.
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The number of corporations with their own registered lobbying offices in D.C. exploded.
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Remember you were talking about lobbyists.
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The days before this lobbying was that backroom kind of deal.
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This is where lobbyists went mainstream.
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Exactly.
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This was sort of that pivotal moment where lobbying went from something you did through
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protests and through civil action to "we pay people now to hound these elected leaders
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relentlessly."
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Right, and either make their lives miserable or make their lives so cushy they can't leave,
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right, depending on which side they're on.
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They went from 175 registered lobbying offices in 1971 to just one decade later, not 5x-ing,
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not even 10x-ing, but up to 2,500 registered lobbying offices almost in just a decade.
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It was an army of policy warriors, as one might put it.
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That's what it was.
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Powell mobilized an army.
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The mobilization is exactly the right term.
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These people were out there writing laws and submitting them to senators and congresspeople
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for them to submit on their behalf by funding their campaigns, by giving them RVs if you're
21:39
a member of the Supreme Court, by giving them fancy dinners, huge vacations, you name it.
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There's almost no limitation at this point because lobbying before then was really such
21:50
a grassroots kind of thing.
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These people didn't have money.
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They had time.
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Now it's the businesses funding it.
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They have the money.
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And the time and the resources and everything else they need.
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Exactly.
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So, why don't you tell us about how this ecosystem of influence developed from there?
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Yeah, so this wasn't just about adding lobbyists to Washington really.
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Following the blueprint put out by this memo, the business community actually build this
22:26
giant interconnected megalith ecosystem of institutions and corporations and businesses
22:35
specifically designed to fight and win the war of ideas on every single front.
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1973, the Heritage Foundation, our favorite new one, was directly born out of this new
22:51
business activist movement inspired by the Powell Memorandum.
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It was created in 1973 by conservative activists, Paul Weirich and Edwin Fuehlner, with seed
23:01
money from the brewing magnet Joseph Coor and tens of millions more from billionaire
23:08
Richard Mellon Scaife.
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Their main goal was to create a conservative version of the respected Brookings Institution,
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but with a crucial difference.
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The Heritage Foundation didn't want to create these dense academic books and studies that
23:29
gathered dust on shelves.
23:32
They wanted to be marketers.
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They were the first, I guess, admin of the political space.
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It produced basically short, punchy, easy to read, easy to digest backgrounders that
23:47
they called them, and policy papers designed to be read by busy congressmen either on the
23:53
way to a floor vote or a quick gaze in the toilet room.
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So it's masterpiece from the 1981 Mandate for Leadership.
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Now, this is a 3000 page document, a 20 volume report.
24:07
So even though they said they didn't want to create these large academic texts, they did,
24:12
and they still do.
24:13
I did not read this 3000 page report, it's 20 volumes.
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It has 2000 specific policy recommendations for the Reagan administration.
24:22
So again, where does this sound familiar?
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1981 Mandate for Leadership was essentially Project 2025, but for Reagan.
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So it was Project 1980.
24:35
I did have AI summarize it.
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It is essentially every building block that led to Project 2025.
24:43
It's a playbook for the Reagan Revolution.
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Reagan was so impressed that he actually had printed and bound a copy to every member of
24:52
his cabinet.
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At the end of the first year in office, 60% of the proposals from that Mandate for Leadership
24:59
had been implemented or initiated.
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This direct pipeline of influence continues right now in Project 2025.
25:09
That's incredible.
25:12
It's insane that Project 2025 started in 1971.
25:16
Right.
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But really in 1981, with the Heritage Foundation making this happen and the right person and
25:24
the right amount of money to put this on the president's desk and the president to buy
25:29
it wholesale.
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It was awful and it still is.
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The next, the American Legislative Exchange Council called ALEC also in 1973.
25:42
This was a bill mill.
25:45
Literally exactly what it is.
25:48
The Heritage, you know, was the idea factory.
25:52
It was the marketing arm.
25:54
ALEC was an assembly line for turning those ideas into laws.
25:57
Right.
25:58
It was also co-founded by Paul Weirich in 1973.
26:04
ALEC's creation has actually been attributed also back to the MIMO's influence.
26:09
It operates as this undercover Black Ops pay to play operation where corporate lobbyists
26:17
and state senators meet behind closed doors away from the public to vote as equals on
26:24
pre-written model bills.
26:26
News paying corporations from fossil fuel giants, pharmaceutical companies, private prison operations,
26:33
they all get a seat at the table to draft legislation that serves their bottom line.
26:40
And these legislators then take these corporate approved bills back to their home states, introduce
26:46
them often word for word, copy for copy, verbatim as their own work.
26:52
I imagine they probably have a style guide.
26:54
This is even still happening today.
26:55
Oh, I'm sure.
26:56
It's like the APA guidelines is the new ALEC guide.
27:00
I'm sure hell.
27:01
I'm sure they've co-opted the tech billionaires, that it's basically just mad libs for horrible
27:07
causes.
27:08
Exactly.
27:09
You just plug in your tax breaks and your pork and you get a bill.
27:12
Exactly.
27:13
Good.
27:14
Done.
27:15
Basically, let's run through some of ALEC's worst, I guess, greatest hits.
27:21
Worst greatest hits.
27:22
Is that a thing?
27:23
If by hits you mean economic attacks, then yes, greatest hits.
27:29
The first they gave us is actually the Castle Doctrine.
27:32
You might know this as the Stand Your Ground laws.
27:36
This was pushed directly by the National Rifle Association and was adopted by-
27:40
Of course, how is it to stand your ground?
27:42
Exactly.
27:43
If you don't have a gun.
27:44
I mean-
27:45
Right.
27:46
Adopted in dozens of states.
27:47
It was to keep guns from being regulated.
27:51
So you can kill people willy-nilly as long as they're on your property.
27:54
I can remember when I was back in the day, when I was in my more conservative days, being
27:59
told that if a burglar is breaking into your house, shoot them and drag them across your
28:05
door and the police won't even ask.
28:08
Right.
28:09
I remember hearing also ideally, shoot them dead so that they don't have any-
28:14
They can't sue you.
28:15
They can't turn around and sue you.
28:16
Yeah, obviously, that-
28:17
I remember that burglar, it was because of that burglar that I don't even know if it's
28:22
urban legend, but a burglar broke into some lady's house through the skylight and-
28:27
Broke his leg.
28:28
Fell on a knife.
28:29
I see.
28:30
Yeah, okay.
28:31
It was.
28:32
It fell on a knife and it damaged his leg.
28:33
He ended up losing a portion of his leg and then sued the lady and won.
28:39
So, that was something that they used.
28:41
Also next, they wrote the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act.
28:45
Now, this is actually a favorite of the fossil fuel industry that they've now rebranded,
28:50
I believe, as the energy industry that reclassifies peaceful pipeline protest as felonies with
28:57
draconian penalties.
29:00
Versions of that law have passed in at least 19 states.
29:04
I mean, you can guess who they are.
29:06
It's like Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Florida,
29:12
it's all the ones you think.
29:15
They're also behind the very cleverly named Asbestos Transparency Act, which actually
29:22
makes it harder for dying mesothelioma patients to sue the corporations that poisoned them
29:30
by forcing them through a bureaucratic maze.
29:33
That's currently law in 12 states.
29:35
Basically, funded a giant pool of money and you basically got to buy your way out of any
29:40
future lawsuits as long as you're willing to put up the right amount and then they divvy
29:44
it out.
29:45
And surprised there's not enough to go around.
29:48
Imagine.
29:49
That's just to start.
29:50
ALEC has actually produced thousands of model bills, including ones we're seeing passed
29:56
almost every day now by executive order to weaken unions, cut corporate taxes, privatize
30:04
public schools, rollback environmental protections, and restrict voting rights.
30:09
Do you want to tell us about the next one, Will?
30:13
I think Legal Foundation, these are the legal eagles of the movement.
30:18
Basically this is the counter to groups like the Sierra Club.
30:23
You're so familiar with their protests and their work in the courtrooms.
30:28
This is the counter to them.
30:29
This is their counterinsurgency, so to speak.
30:32
The first conservative public interest law firm created specifically an account of groups
30:37
like the Sierra Club and they basically explicitly quoted, they again took words right out of
30:43
Powell's memo at length as their founding doctrine.
30:48
And their mission is to use a pro-business, anti-regulatory agenda in the courtroom to
30:52
litigate that agenda in those courtrooms that we're trying to stack in the favor of business.
30:59
And it's actually won 18 of the 20 cases it's argued before the Supreme Court.
31:04
That's an amazing win rate, 18 out of 20.
31:08
That's 96%, right?
31:10
90% I think.
31:11
90%.
31:12
Wow, my math is terrible today.
31:16
That's just, they're crazy.
31:19
Of course, they're smart about how they choose their cases.
31:21
They're efficient, they're good at what they do, but they've been just stunningly successful
31:26
at moving forward with their pro-business agenda and establishing presidential cases.
31:31
Right, I mean when the Supreme Court says something that's binding on the lower courts.
31:36
And so they've established these presidents-
31:37
I wonder how many court cases the ACLU has won in the Supreme Court.
31:42
I don't think it's anywhere near 90% and they are careful.
31:45
They make the same kind of choices.
31:47
They don't just take any case to the Supreme Court.
31:50
They choose their resources, but-
31:52
Let me look it up real quick.
31:53
We'll see.
31:55
Let's see.
31:56
It's not specified, however, it is known the ACLU has played a significant role in approximately
32:01
80% of the landmark cases brought before the court since its founding in 1920.
32:06
So they don't actually, I mean, I'm sure it's in the records somewhere, but I don't think
32:10
the ACLU makes a public statement about it.
32:13
If it was 90% they probably would.
32:16
I know, exactly.
32:17
If it was 90%, they would be putting that out from the rooftops.
32:22
But they've also had way more cases in general, which kind of makes sense.
32:28
If you have a lucky strike playing pool, you might win nine out of 10 games, but if you
32:34
extrapolate it over time, that percentage of luck tends to drop.
32:40
But regardless, they still have.
32:42
So ultimately, the success of the Powell memo wasn't actually in creating the memo itself,
32:49
right?
32:50
It wasn't even in, it wasn't even in writing it.
32:53
It's really the fact that he fostered and integrated a self-reinforcing ecosystem for creating,
33:02
spreading and defending conservative policy throughout the U.S. since 1971.
33:09
A corporation like ExxonMobil, right, can completely fund a study at the Heritage Foundation
33:16
that questions climate science, period.
33:20
But Heritage will take that and turn it into a policy brief.
33:23
ALEC, funded by Exxon, uses the brief to draft a model bill repealing clean energy standards.
33:31
Then an ALEC legislator introduces the bill.
33:35
Then the Chamber of Commerce lobbies for the bill.
33:38
And if the law is challenged, the Pacific Legal Foundation steps in to defend it before
33:42
a judge from the Federalist Society who is philosophically inclined to oppose the regulatory
33:48
state.
33:49
It's literally a closed loop system for laundering corporate money and influence into public
33:56
policy.
33:57
This is automation before AI.
33:59
Exactly.
34:00
It's, I mean, give credit where credit is due.
34:03
It is the perfect execution of what Powell laid out in his diatribe of United Action.
34:12
It is an entire factory that just does this.
34:15
So the results of this now coming upon half of a century campaign has entirely reshaped
34:25
the American political landscape and more than just political, socioeconomic, the wealth
34:31
inequality, equality, civil rights.
34:34
So the rise of corporate speech, right?
34:38
Powell himself, from his seat on the Supreme Court, began protecting and redefining corporate
34:44
money as protected speech.
34:46
He authored the 1978 majority opinion in the First National Bank of Boston versus Bellotti,
34:53
who for the first time granted corporations First Amendment rights to spend money influencing
34:59
ballot initiatives.
35:00
So the next time you receive a phone call about the next ballot initiative, realize
35:06
that this is a direct result of this memo and this corporate speech case that he championed
35:15
on the Supreme Court while he was a justice.
35:18
It was the first legal step that created the Supreme Court's infamous Citizens United decisions
35:25
decades later.
35:27
So this is where Citizens United even comes from.
35:30
And we know, anybody who is, let's say a leftist, knows the Ronald Reagan thing, the Citizens
35:38
United thing.
35:39
I haven't met one person in caulking that knows about the Powell memo and how all this
35:44
came to be, which is why I really, really felt passionate about this podcast today.
35:51
To be fair, I mean, there are some people who challenge the idea that the Powell memo
35:57
is the source of all of this.
35:59
People will say it was all in play, but nowhere is there articulated such a clear vision and
36:05
no other document is quoted at length in the founding documents of groups like Alec.
36:10
There's just so much evidence of it out there and nobody's talking about it.
36:16
And even if it is just a distillation of corporate thought that was happening at the time, it's
36:24
still a distillation versus random rumblings, right?
36:30
That could be directly action.
36:33
And all parts of it have been executed.
36:34
I mean, it really crossed the board.
36:37
Exactly.
36:38
The next one, deregulation, that was a big part of it.
36:41
The Powell network performed an act of jiu-jitsu politically in the 70s.
36:47
There was actually a bipartisan kind of left leaning movement to deregulate industries
36:52
like trucking and airlines.
36:54
And it was based on the argument that regulatory agencies had been captured by big business
36:58
to stifle competition.
37:01
But the conservative movement actually seized on this popular anti-government sentiment
37:07
and then cleverly shifted the target.
37:10
They conflated economic deregulation with a war on social regulation.
37:17
Basically the rules that protect public health, worker safety, and the environment, right?
37:23
Like reframing all government oversight as a drag on the economy because of the government
37:29
oversight on these two specific industries that seem to be stifling competition.
37:35
And that's why even today, I mean, it's part of the cultural zeitgeist of people born in
37:41
the 80s that government regulation has stifled businesses from doing what they needed to
37:47
be successful.
37:49
We constantly hear it promoted by Fox News, by Newsmax, by all these other organizations.
37:54
The ideas that were even promoted by this network, right, sort of created the beginnings
37:59
of the idea of supply side or trickle down economics, right?
38:04
Obviously, it became national policy under Reagan and we credit that to Reagan because
38:10
it led to massive tax cuts for corporations, and that led to massive tax cuts for the rich.
38:17
And it was a full-scale assault on labor, organized labor, and the beginning of the rise in economic
38:26
inequality, inequality, un equality, too.
38:30
Union membership, a key source of the kind of countervailing power to protect people
38:35
from corporations, plummeted 20% in the workforce in 1983 to 10.1% by 2022.
38:45
It halved in the last 40 years.
38:48
And that's not because things got so good for workers, they didn't feel like they needed
38:52
to do this anymore.
38:53
Exactly.
38:54
In the meantime, worker production was increasing exponentially because of innovation.
39:04
His judicial revolution to reshape judges and courts had the fruits of the rise of the
39:11
Federalist Society and the doctrine of originalism.
39:16
It was promoted heavily during the Reagan administration.
39:19
It was the idea that originalism provided the intellectual framework for appointing
39:25
a generation of conservative judges committed to rolling back the legacy of the Warren Court
39:31
and interpreting the Constitution in a way that is consistently favorable to corporate
39:35
power and hostile to regulation.
39:38
Where do you also see that?
39:39
They're starting to win, and we're seeing them win even now, the culture war.
39:44
Powell's fight for balance in textbooks and on campuses, it hasn't ended.
39:49
It hasn't gone anywhere.
39:51
And yeah, it sat beside in the wings for a little while during the 90s.
39:55
We all remember it.
39:56
We imagined a better world into the 2000s and then the dot com bubble.
40:01
But it evolved into this modern culture war over everything, everything, critical race
40:08
theory.
40:09
It was a war for LGBTQIA+ rights with organizations like the Heritage Foundation providing every
40:16
single talking point and policy proposal for this war on woke ideology in American education.
40:25
That's why if you turn to Fox News and you turn to Newsmax and you look at the boomers
40:29
on Facebook and the cesspool of Twitter, formerly known as Twitter X, it's the exact same points.
40:38
Like sometimes verbatim, right?
40:40
Sometimes bullet pointed verbatim as arguments because that's what they've heard.
40:45
They've heard it parroted at them time and time and time again.
40:50
But look, Lewis Powell is garbage, but he got his wish.
40:56
He got it.
40:57
Business organized together.
41:01
It has fought a long, patient, and brutally effective war on every front that Powell identified
41:10
in that original memo.
41:12
So the result is not a conspiracy.
41:15
It's a curriculum.
41:17
It's a business plan.
41:19
It's a framework.
41:20
It's a blueprint that succeeded beyond Powell's entire imagination.
41:25
We were never the target audience for the Powell memo, right?
41:29
Like it wasn't written for us, but we've all been subjected to it.
41:33
I'll try a different analogy or metaphor for this.
41:36
It's the DNA of a parasite that has been feeding off of the American people for the past few
41:44
decades and has now possibly done its host in and is now seeking to expand to the globe.
41:52
Because it was never going to be satisfied.
41:54
The parasite has grown larger than its host and its host is depleted.
41:57
Yeah.
41:58
So what does a parasite do when that happens?
42:00
It moves on to a new host and guess who that's going to be?
42:04
It's still going to be us.
42:07
Until our husk is drained of all life-giving fluids.
42:10
All nutrients.
42:11
Yeah, all nutrient value.
42:12
Yes.
42:13
But there will be others and then we're starting to see that now, right?
42:17
The corporations that are outgrowing their countries are happening everywhere.
42:20
Unfortunately, this playbook was copied by others playing their own games, their own political
42:26
war games.
42:27
And it turned out to be successful.
42:28
It's happening now in Germany with AFD.
42:30
It's happening in Australia.
42:33
It's happening in Belgium.
42:35
I mean, with Ertistan, it's happening everywhere around the globe right now because they found
42:42
success.
42:43
They found a winning formula, but it's not over.
42:46
Not as long as we're here with a voice.
42:49
That's not really the conclusion of the podcast today is not, "Oh, look how horrible this is.
42:54
It sucks."
42:55
Here's what it is.
42:56
One guy... one guy wrote a 34 page letter to a group that proliferated it through society.
43:05
That's why you see all the pundits, all the commentators, all of the right wing media...
43:12
or left wing media saying, "We need someone.
43:15
We need someone to stand up, take a cohesive vision and share it and spread it."
43:19
I challenge if to... especially to all of the leftist people who are listening to our
43:24
podcast, I challenge you please, I understand the necessity to gatekeep, to keep people
43:31
because of whatever.
43:32
And look, I do it.
43:33
I'm guilty of it.
43:34
I'm not a fan of Gavin Newsom.
43:36
I think he is part of the corporate demagoguery that the left has essentially become or the
43:44
democratic party has essentially become.
43:48
I am a progressive period.
43:50
I think that if we have a person with... and look, we know on the left there's a whole
43:57
lot of really genius political minds out there that puts forward a plan, even if you don't
44:04
like the face of the plan or the person delivering it, let's put something together and take
44:11
action together and make a change that dismantles this utter machine of turds that the right
44:21
wing has put together over the last 40 years.
44:24
45 now, right?
44:26
Has it been 45?
44:27
No, not since...
44:28
I did my math earlier.
44:30
55.
44:31
55 years.
44:32
Yeah.
44:33
Yeah.
44:34
Will pre does his math.
44:36
I do it on the fly.
44:38
55 years.
44:39
55 years that they've had their way and have sat by.
44:45
We might be able to turn it around sooner because the left is better at what?
44:50
The internet.
44:51
We're better at almost everything dealing with communications because for us it happens
44:57
organically.
44:58
Anyway, that is where I hope we can find the overlap in our next venture from here.
45:05
Where do we go from here?
45:06
I really hope we can.
45:08
You think we can?
45:09
Well, I think we can.
45:11
I'm always the optimist.
45:12
I think we can do it.
45:13
It's not going to be easy.
45:14
It's not going to be fun, but it can be done.
45:19
Look, you're going to have to swallow things you don't like.
45:21
It sucks.
45:23
It's like medicine, right?
45:24
Like medicine tastes terrible, but we know it's going to make us better.
45:28
If we can find that plan, and maybe that's democratic socialism, maybe that's something
45:33
else that none of us have ever heard of before, but it takes us being open and receptive.
45:37
Then, jumping on it because it's left of where we are right now until a better one comes
45:46
along.
45:47
I've heard one of the best analogies for this, and I genuinely love this analogy because
45:51
I think it fits so well.
45:53
A political candidate is not a car to your destination.
45:59
It's a bus that's heading in the direction that you need to go in.
46:04
It's not a last mile service.
46:06
Well, it is a last mile service.
46:07
It's not a less step service.
46:09
It's a last mile service.
46:11
Find a bus that's going in your direction.
46:13
If that's democratic socialism, awesome.
46:15
If that's democracy, awesome.
46:18
If that's the Democratic party, great.
46:22
If that's the Republican party, you're listening to the wrong show.
46:24
I'm sure there's plenty of Charlie Kirk's out there that are happy to give you all of
46:30
the wins that you guys have been racking up.
46:33
Yeah.
46:34
I'm not going to give you equal time here.
46:35
You don't deserve the equal time.
46:37
You've had 55 years and it's not going great for the rest of us.
46:41
So is it going great for you?
46:42
I doubt it.
46:44
It's going great for a lot of rich people.
46:46
It's not going great for you.
46:48
As always, as I am required to do by the contract that we wrote ourselves and agreed to at the
46:53
beginning, please check out our social media sites.
46:56
Are available through Blue Sky.
46:58
We are available through Mastodon.
47:00
You can go to our website, fof.foundation@https://fof.foundation.
47:08
Make sure you check us out there.
47:09
You can send us an email to overlappodcast@fof.foundation.
47:15
We will get that email and be happy to return your email if you have questions, comments,
47:19
concerns.
47:20
Will, thank you for being here with me today.
47:23
Thank you for having me here today as always.
47:26
Of course.
47:27
We hope that you will like and subscribe, give us a rating, tell us what you think, share
47:32
us with a friend that you think would really benefit from this podcast if you specifically
47:38
connected with it.
47:39
Or we taught you something that you didn't know before.
47:42
That is the overlap for this week's episode and we wish you the best.
47:48
Have a good one.
47:50
See you next time.
47:52
Bye.
47:54
[Music]