I wondered why my Tea Party friends weren’t hearing about it. Perhaps because of two final parts of Templet’s picture: a growing dominance of oil and its show of generous company largesse. As companies squeeze favors out of the state, he argued, the more urgent its citizens’ needs for good schools and hospitals, the less the poor are able to use what opportunities exist, and the more atrophied become other sectors of the economy—which further concentrates power in the hands of oil. Ironically, companies often privately give back to the community in gestures of goodwill. To do this they use the
...more
