{"id":159,"date":"2005-12-05T22:12:18","date_gmt":"2005-12-06T02:12:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2005\/12\/05\/where-to-now-modern-caesars-or-from-r"},"modified":"2005-12-05T22:12:18","modified_gmt":"2005-12-06T02:12:18","slug":"where-to-now-modern-caesars-or-from-republic-to-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2005\/12\/05\/where-to-now-modern-caesars-or-from-republic-to-empire\/","title":{"rendered":"Where to now, modern caesars? (or: from republic to empire&#8230;)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a2283'><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>Americans haven&rsquo;t always been so blas&eacute; about war profiteering. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously said: &#8220;I don&#8217;t want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>FDR&rsquo;s strong feelings about war profiteering were shared by his successor, Harry Truman. As a Senator, Truman had traveled around the country going from one defense industry factory to another to investigate charges that executives were reaping unfair rewards. He later formed an investigative committee that saved billions in military costs.<\/i>  [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/views05\/1201-30.htm\">More&#8230;<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That&#8217;s from a must-read article by Sarah Anderson, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/views05\/1201-30.htm\">War Profiteer Knows How to Party<\/a>, which chronicles, among other things, bulletproof vest maker DHB Industries&#8217; CEO David Brooks, whose fortunes have &#8220;skyrocketed&#8221; (in 2004, he made <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/12-04-2005\/news\/story\/371447p-316029c.html\">133 times his 2001 salary<\/a>, namely $70million&#8230;.), and who recently threw a Bat Mitzvah for his daughter Elizabeth, which everyone agrees was over-the-top excessive (guesstimates peg the party bill <a href=\"http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/views05\/1201-30.htm\">at $10million<\/a>; one wonders how Elizabeth, should she wish to, can possibly get out from under that pile&#8230;).  According to news reports, it was more like a belated <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/12-04-2005\/news\/story\/371447p-316029c.html\">party for Mr. Brooks<\/a> than anything resembling an honouring or  coming-of-age ceremony for the daughter&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, here on the planet Earth, in our living room, we&#8217;ve been enthralled of late by a viewing of the famous <a href=\"http:\/\/imdb.com\/title\/tt0074006\/?fr=c2l0ZT1kZnx0dD0xfGZiPXV8cG49MHxrdz0xfHE9ImkgY2xhdWRpdXMifGZ0PTF8bXg9MjB8bG09NTAwfGNvPTF8aHRtbD0xfG5tPTE_;fc=1;ft=21;fm=1\">I, Claudius<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.historyinfilm.com\/claudius\/\">series<\/a>.  Talk about apposite&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.comics.com\/comics\/frazz\/archive\/frazz-20051205.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"215\" src=\"http:\/\/www.comics.com\/comics\/frazz\/archive\/images\/frazz2610540051205.gif\" width=\"600\" border=\"0\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Thanks to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ips-dc.org\/\">The Institute for Policy Studies<\/a> for these links&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Americans haven&rsquo;t always been so blas&eacute; about war profiteering. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously said: &#8220;I don&#8217;t want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster.&rdquo; FDR&rsquo;s strong feelings about war profiteering were shared by his successor, Harry Truman. As a Senator, Truman had traveled [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[600],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-yulelogstories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}