 |
| Free Speech with attentive listeners. Are you dreaming? |
Many Americans still dream of an egalitarian American society in which education and/ or hard work somehow guarantee that anyone can climb from the lowest economic rungs of our society to, at the very least, a comfortable, economically secure existence that includes a home and a secure retirement. Is that still a likely outcome?
It's not, and it hasn't been since sometime in the 1970's. Economic statistics show that between 1984 and 2009 America's GNP (Gross National Product) virtually exploded and climbed from $2.75 trillion to $14.56 Trillion. During that same period the median income of the average American, however, actually fell while the income of the top 1% - CEOs for example - increased, some economists say, by several thousand percent. It seems that the wealth that was produced by hard work and long hours wasn't shared. It all bubbled up to the top 1% of this country's population, and in fact, most of it ended up in the hands of the .01%. How could this happen? Here's a clue.
During the same period of time the median net worth of a member of the House of Representatives more than doubled from $280,000 to $725,000 in inflation-adjusted 2009 dollars, and that doesn't even include home equity in their McMansions. While Main Street got poorer politicians and Wall Street got richer. More than half the members of Congress are millionaires, some of them many times over. They have little understanding, and apparently little interest, in the plight of those of us who live on Main Street rather than Wall Street. Some of the wealthiest members of Congress represent some of the poorest districts, but that doesn't seem to matter. The Congressmen and women are ignoring the wishes of the majority of the American people anyway.
Research shows that a Congressperson votes his personal interests first, and the interests of his constituents only if that doesn't interfere with his personal agenda. Black hat Republicans and 'gray' hat Blue Dog Democrats have cooperated to pass a boat load of legislation that benefited them and their wealthy contributors without so much as a thought for their constituents.
A no better example can be found than the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. Originally passed in 1933 Glass-Steagall mandated the separation of commercial and investment banking in order to protect depositors from the danger of speculation and risky investments. It worked fine for fifty years.
Then in the 1970s there was a new feeling abroad. A well funded campaign began to expand the number of lobbyist and lobbying firms in Washington, almost all of them working in the interest of Wall Street and the financial industry. In the next twenty or so years the number of lobbyists doubled and the amount of money used to lobby the Congress grew almost 700%.
At the same time the amount of money necessary to run a successful Congressional political campaign grew rapidly as well. It's generally agreed that to run for the House one needs to have at least $1.5 million dollars - to run for the Senate requires a minimum of $10 million - and the lobbyists have the money. Obama's successful bid for the Presidency was largely funded, despite silly talk about "$5.00 at a time", by Wall Street firms. So it's no surprise that he appointed Wall Street habitues to take charge of the country's economics. And they knew who they owed their good fortune to: Wall Street.
Anyway, to get back to the story, during the heady years of the Reagan Administration the banking industry began lobbying for the repeal of Glass-Steagall. It was holding back the economy, they insisted. Republicans, of course, jumped on board the band wagon, but so did the majority of Democrats under the rubric of "Neoliberalism".
When the repeal of Glass-Steagall finally came to a vote in the Senate the Republicans voted 52 to 1 to repeal the Act. But, Gentle Reader, so did the Democrats - the millionaire Democrats. Now that the financial industry has used the de-regulation of their industry to engage in some of the most unethical practices seen since the days of the robber barons to bring this America's economy to its' knees in the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression, various Democrats are crying "holier than thou" and trying to pin the whole mess on the Republicans, but the record is embarrassingly clear on this. Democrats voted 38 to 5 to repeal Glass-Steagall and the die was cast and economic excess was the order of the day.
And when the traditional poop hit the fan and the housing bubble burst with financial shrapnel flying everywhere, the Democratic Congress and the Democratic President bailed out the banks, the ones who'd caused the mess in the first place, and left Main Street and the middle class to fend for themselves. Oh sure, a few crumbs fell off the political table: extended unemployment, etc. But the Congress, the millionaire Congress, is taking care of it's own.
And, of course, the Supreme Court has now pitched in and declared that corporations are people and have all the rights that you and I have: free speech (unless you want to speak on the Capitol steps, or course), the right to privacy. Yes, corporations have all the rights you and I have. I wonder why they don't also have the same responsibilities.
What can we do about all this? Maybe nothing. The plutocrats, emboldened by past successes, are already trying to go a little further. Wisconsin's Governor tried to deny workers the right to collective bargaining, Michigan's Governor has given himself the right to ignore elected officials and simply take over any town or city that seems to be having financial difficulties. He's appointing conservators to run these formerly democratically run entities and has declared that he has the right to abbrogate contracts and sell the entities assets without any recourse to a democratic process.
If we're going to have any chance at all to preserve our democracy and our Republic from these greedy and undemocratic S.O.B.s we need to start working urgently on a couple of things. First, we need to elect truly Progressive Congress people who will pass legislation stating that corporations are most emphatically NOT people. Only people are people. Second, we need to change the way our Constitution is amended. At the moment it's almost impossible to amend the Constitution no matter how outdated some of it's provisions are. Third, we need to do away with the electoral college. It's a dinosaur that is no longer needed. We need to set up a system where the person who gets the most votes gets to be President, or dog catcher, or whatever office is up for grabs. Most votes wins. How's that for a radical concept. And finally, and here I'm really off in lala land, let's work out a way to take big money out of politics. Let's require the radio and television companies, who all operate under license anyway, to give a certain amount of television time to any candidate who collects a certain minimum of signatures supporting his or her candidacy. Or, alternatively, we can do what Norway does ban political advertising of any kind during the actual election period. This would force candidates to actually go and meet their constituents in person. What a concept.
Pie in the Sky, I know. But if we don't do something we'll all be working just to stave off hunger, like about a quarter of our population does right now.
The alternative to democratic political change - and I've seen this abroad - is blood; blood in the streets. We've come close to this before, but never as close as we are now.
Who represents your interests. The answer at the moment seems to be, almost “no one”. Democrats, Republicans, all of them seem to operate with the motto: party first, people second.
Time for a change.
