Countdown 41 Day Election

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TRUMP – HOW IT ALL ENDS                                                                         

The Declaration of Independence begins with “We the people”, and to that end I have always assumed that “we the people” had meant that the people were the government. The government taking a representative form as a Constitutional Republic, whereas the head of state is not elected directly by the people but representatives chosen by the people including a formula that gives greater representation to those states with less population. Known as the Electoral College.  So it’s not entirely “We the people.”

Wikipedia -The Electoral College consists of 538 electors, and an absolute majority of at least 270 electoral votes is required to win the election. According to Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution, each state legislature determines the manner by which its state’s electors are chosen. The number of each state’s electors is equal to the sum of the state’s membership in the Senate and House of Representatives; currently there are 100 senators and 435 House members totaling the 535. There were 3 added to cover territories bringing the total to 538 electors.

To the point, with the exception of our heads of state (Pres/& VP), it is we the people electing both Representatives and Senators being elected by the people.  It was Ronald Reagan and the Republican party that declared war on government (I translate to a war on the people), using lousy economic theories by cutting taxes on the wealthy and spreading the bill over the middle class.  Reagan said “the problem was the government.”  Economists at the time wanted to shrink government so it could be drowned in a bathtub.  Some economists even thought that if you cut taxes the stimulus would benefit spending and taxes would then be recovered with increased economic activity.  This theory introduced by Arthur Laffer.  This philosophy has been proven wrong time and time again.  The Republicans keep using it because it serves to help in their drowning and starvation government exercises.

Arthur Laffer was  a member of Ronald Reagan’s Economic Policy Advisory Board (1981–89). Laffer is best known for the Laffer curve, an illustration of the concept that there exists some tax rate between 0% and 100% that will result in maximum tax revenue for government. In certain circumstances, this would allow governments to cut taxes, and simultaneously increase revenue and economic growth.  Laffer was an economic advisor to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

This is the beginning of the end of democracy and how the experiment has begun to morph into Oligarchy or Plutocracy. When Ronald Reagan began the war on government saying “the government is the problem” that signaled the Republican party to war against the people of the United States.  After all it is “we the people.” The war continues with the republican party morphing into the party of Trump where values are what he says they are owing only Putin, corporations, and the 1%.

Before Reagan the approval rating for government was at 67%, it is now at 17% to what does one attribute the decline? The honesty and effectiveness of government?  When you first cut the legs off organizations by reducing funding then point to it saying how poorly its run and attempt to eliminate it you have the playbook of what the republicans have been doing over the last 50 years since Reagan.  First you create a problem and promise to fix it.  Look at Trump and the pandemic by ignoring the problem it got worse so he could say he is fixed it and as a result he becomes the hero?  He is attempting to kill Obamacare so he can swoop down eliminate pre- existing conditions, provide cheap plans that do not cover anything but checkups.

Combine the Ronald Reagan war on “We the people” government, with the Milton Freedman philosophy that corporations are only there for profit, the government should stand back, and with the Citizens United decisions giving money speech status, thus giving corporations and those with means all the power.  Allowing individuals with wealth to contribute through various means any amount to a campaign you have a government bought and paid for.

As the greed and avarice of corporations and individuals has made it into the public domain making profit a higher calling (higher than Christin ethics and values) has resulted in corporations and the 1% pillaging and raping the environment in the name of profit over public health and safety.  That’s what you get when the government is run by career politicians that only seek power and status driven by greed and avarice and not public service.

The decline in the approval of government is directly attributable to the decline in the numbers of public servants that are willing to put science, honesty, public health, and integrity, over the party line.  The government is not the problem as Milton Freedman would have you believe.   It is the solution to all economic woes if politicians would only put public health, safety, security over their party and act on critical long term issues such as climate change.  Where the greed and avarice of corporations and the profit motif ends, that is where the responsibility of the government begins.  Corporations have no feelings, no empathy and do not care about any long term effects of the environment, the health, or well-being only making profit for shareholders.

The fossil fuel and insurance industries are the energy behind Trump’s party, there will be no sign of science in any policy regarding energy or public health.  The  Insurance industry only wants the pre-existing condition eliminated for profit sake. The coal industry cannot make enough profit if they are also required  to clean up spills and pollution or even be responsible for spills and the destruction of water supplies.  Because of maximizing profits you see fracking creating earthquakes,  polluting water supplies, and venting of polluting gases by the oil industry.  We are all screwed unless we the people elect honest individuals willing to be a real public servants of the people, by the people and for the people.

  Corporatocracy is a  term used to refer to an economic and political system controlled by corporations or corporate interests. It is a form of Plutocracy.  The concept has been used in explanations of bank bailouts, payouts to fossil fuel industry, Big Agra payouts, Big Pharma getting billions, excessive pay for CEOs as well as complaints such as the exploitation of national treasuries, people and natural resources.  

Plutocrats v. Oligarchs

An opinion article by DAVID ROSEN in the publication Counter Punch (written in 2014 and I updated the part concerning the 2016 elections to make it relevant for 2020 elections.  This article makes my point)

The Supreme Court’s recent decision, McCutcheon v FEC, granted further political influence to the 1 percent, enabling them to spend as much as they wish influencing political campaigns.  It followed the Court’s 2010 ruling, Citizens United v. FEC, allowing the rich to spend unlimited sums on political advertising.  Some wonder if this is not a 21st century form of buying an election?

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) lamented the toll these decisions will likely have on American popular democracy.  “If present trends continue, elections will not be decided by one-person, one-vote,” he warned.  He added, “this process — a handful of the wealthiest people in our country controlling the political process — is called ‘oligarchy.’”

Sanders acknowledged the potential consequences of the Court’s decisions: “The great political struggle we now face is whether the United States retains its democratic heritage or whether we move toward an oligarchic form of society where the real political power rests with a handful of billionaires, not ordinary Americans.”

The contemporary concept of oligarchy was popularized by the Russian experience.  Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, innumerable state companies were privatized.  The country was in disarray and, in an effort to stabilize the economy, the Yeltsin government “redistributed” state-owned enterprises to trusted cronies.  They came to wield unprecedented power over the economy, the state apparatus and the mass media.

The term “oligarchs” is gaining currency in the U.S.  Sanders defined them as “a small number of very wealthy families who spend huge amounts of money supporting right-wing candidates who protect their interests.”  He means to differentiate this “small number” from the larger world of the rich and superrich, the plutocrats, who – as a class – have long exercised considerable influence on the U.S. political system.  Who are these oligarchs and how do they different from today’s plutocrats?  And how does this generation of oligarchs differ from previous generations of the superrich who, over the last century, have dominated American politics?

Oligarchy is defined as “government by the few” and came into English use around 1570.  The term derives from two Greek words: oligos meaning “few” and arch for “rule”; similar English-language terms include monarch or hierarchy.  Plutocracy is derived from the Greek ploutos meaning “wealth” and kratos for “govern.”

Today, both concepts — plutocrats and oligarchs — refer to the growing influence the rich – and especially the superrich – have on the national (and international) political economy.  Oligarchs are plutocrats who use their enormous wealth to further a particularly conservative, if not rightwing, agenda.

Thomas Piketty’s study, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, reveals that the U.S. – along with much of the advanced capitalist world — is returning to what economist Paul Krugman calls the “new Gilded Age.”  Piketty finds that that in 2010, the top 1 percent controlled 20 percent of U.S. income and, together with the next 9 percent, the superrich controlled 50 percent of all income.  The IRS recently noted that in 2011, 11,445 U.S. taxpayers declared incomes of more than $10 million.

According to Forbes, the three richest Americans in 2013 were: Bill Gates ($72 bil net worth), Warren Buffet ($58.5 bil) and Larry Ellison ($41 bil).  They may well be plutocrats in the old-fashioned sense of Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie and Ford.  But are they oligarchs?

Michael Bloomberg was New York’s mayor for 12 long years and is ranked 10th on Fortune’s list of wealthiest Americans with a net worth of $31 billion.  He leveraged his public position and private wealth vigorously promoting two pet projects, gun control and obesity?  Both initiatives stalled in the political marketplace.  Is he an oligarch?

Today’s grand plutocrats include the Walton family, the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson.  They makeup seven of the top 11 wealthiest Americans: Charles Koch ($36 bil), David Koch ($36 bil), Christy Walton ($35.4 bil), Jim Walton ($33.8 bil), Alice Walton ($33.5 bil), Samuel Robson Walton ($33.3 bil) and Adelson ($28.5 bil).  This is real money. [a billion here and a billion there pretty soon your talking some real money]

These plutocrats become oligarchs by employing their vast wealth in an apparently more aggressive – and conservative – way then, for example, Gates, Buffet or Bloomberg.  The Koch brothers are major backers of the Tea Party and Americans for Prosperity; they are reported to have donated an estimated $196 millions to fight the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).  The Walton’s have led the charge against public education, committing an estimated $1 billion promoting privatization – no teachers’ union or community accountability — through charter schools.  Adelson famously holds court for Republican presidential hopefuls who visit his Las Vegas castle to kiss his ring and proclaim their undying support for Israel.

America is stuck.  The “American Century” is over and globalization is restructuring capitalism.  The rich are getting phenomenally richer while the income of the rest of Americans stagnates or falls.  Both American plutocrats and oligarchs are fighting to hold on to — and increase! — their wealth and influence during this restructuring.  And they are succeeding.

Over the last quarter-century, globalization has spawned a new class of superrich who wield historically unprecedented power.  This elite truly enjoys the privileges of its social status, operating on its own economic, political and moral terms.  It’s a value system shared by plutocrats around the globe.  They endow cultural institutions, their names shameful promoted; they are delivered anywhere on the globe via private jets; they are escorted in chauffeured limousines through busy city streets; and they are celebrated at exclusive get-togethers like the Davos World Economic Forum.  Like nobility of old, the obsequies media present them – like other celebrities – in the most favorable light.

In the U.S., pay-to-play payoffs — whether in cash or kind — define everyday politics.  Local Chambers of Commerce, real-estate interests, financial players, large retailers, trade associations, unions and other special interests lubricate the wheels of government.  Lobbyists facilitate, legislators dutifully legislate, deals are cut, someone wins and – in most cases – the vast majority of ordinary Americans loose.  It’s the way the game is played.

However, the U.S. is not Russia, let alone Greece or Afghanistan or almost anywhere else around the globe.  Most U.S. officials don’t take cheap bribes.  Corruption takes place, but low-level scammers, whether from the private or public sector, are regularly busted.  However, when it comes to real money, that’s another story.

American plutocrats are at the top of the political food chain.  Their wealth buys influence.  They use their financial power to determine public policy, involving laws, court decisions, tax codes, zoning ordinances, corporate subsidies, outsourcing and purchasing contracts.  Their wealth enables them to promulgate their self-serving vision at the local, state and federal levels, benefiting every step of the way.  They link economic policy to social programs, seeking to dictate civic values — public morality — with regard to abortion rights, teen sex and gay rights.

This is nothing new.  For more than a century, plutocrats have used their wealth to influence public policy.  In the fin de siècle era, modern, industrial capitalists like Rockefeller and Carnegie remade America, promoting not only free-market capitalism but eugenics as well.  These grand oligarchs garnered their wealth the old-fashioned way, by brutally exploiting their wage-labor workers.  And in those good-old-days, politicians were really for sale, no questions asked.  And then came the Progressives.

Ford — and the Fordist manufacturing process — defined the modern era.  He introduced the assembly line and the $5-per-day salary – ostensibly so his workers could buy the cars they made.  The collapse of the Great Depression stalled economic growth.  The enormous expansion of the national economy during World War II and the post-war recovery made Ford # 1.  Ford symbolizes the highpoint of consumer capitalism.  And then came globalizations and a new generation of plutocrats and oligarchs.

In 1937, amidst the Great Depression, Ferdinand Lundberg published an influential book, America’s 60 Families.  It revealed the financial and political power of the nation’s great fortunes.  Nearly three-quarters of a century ago he warned:

The United States is owned and dominated today by a hierarchy of its sixty richest families, buttressed by no more than ninety families of lesser wealth… These families are the living center of the modern industrial oligarchy which dominates the United States, functioning discreetly under a de jure democratic form of government behind which a de facto government, absolutist and plutocratic in its lineaments …. It is the government of money in a dollar democracy.

It’s more important than ever to wonder just how much has changed.  A century ago the Progressive movement, led by Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, W.E.B. DuBois and Teddy Roosevelt, focused national attention on the robber barons.   The Occupy Movement focused popular attention on the 1 percent.  Inequality – and the growing power of the oligarchs – is becoming a national political issue, most evident in the election of Bill de Blasio as New York’s mayor.

Today’s plutocrats and oligarchs, backing both Democrats and Republicans, have failed to deliver.  They’ve backed two expensive — in dollars and blood – failed foreign military interventions.  They championed financial and economic policies contributing to the great recession of 2008-2010 from which the nation has yet to fully recover.  And they’ve made the lives of ordinary Americans harder, materially worse.  Their policies have failed, yet they remain in power.

For many Americans, Obama was the great black hope who realized far less then hoped for.  He did move (however slowly) to end the military misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq.  And he did secure the passage of Obamacare, a possible stepping-stone to a national, single-payer program.  Yet, he dutifully bailed out the banks and let walk the perpetrators of the financial crisis.  And he’s backed the most reactionary immigration and intelligence policies as well as promoted the worst trade pact (the Trans-Pacific Partnership) since NAFTA. (I as blogger disagree on this front.  The pact was designed to reign in China with competition in the region.)

The plutocratic ruling class has no national answer, a workable program, to address the changes the nation faces amidst capitalism’s global restructuring.  Their goal is to maximize private gain at the expense of the vast majority of ordinary Americans. 

Given this possibility, could a Republican victory in the 2020 presidential election be a good thing for “progressives”?  If both the presidency and the Congress fell under Republican control, life in the U.S. for middle-income, working-class and poor would get really worse.  But at least no one will have any illusions that it could be different.  End.

Corporatocracy will not last, as it will destroy the environment utilizing all of its assets for profit’s sake.  Before the end , and before it’s too late, will the honest people relying on science, not profit, take the reins of government?  Only if the public realizes that any party that is controlled by corporations that pollute will never give a crap about science when it comes to the environment.  Unfortunately the major polluters are ambidextrous dolling it out for the  politicians, all who enter here. With both hands to all parties.  No one wins when the deck is loaded.  Especially when no one realizes they are all dishonest with a  faux expression of caring for the environment while taking in all the graft.

As I’ve said before if the object of government is to provide some semblance of equity between the highest earners and the lowest paid workers the last 50 years has been an abject failure.  If the object is as in Monopoly where the winner is the one with all the money and property, the game seems to be headed for the home stretch with the top 1% controlling 20% of the wealth, supported by the next 9% controlling an additional 30%.  Trump is not listed as one of the rich just because he owns property on Park Place,  Although he does look like the Monopoly man without the top hat and cane.  Same weird posture like it’s like he’s wearing a girdle?