Capital Domination: The Sale of Democracy

THE REALITY
While 2% of the wealthiest Americans have owned 50% of the nation’s wealth for many years, for the first time in American history our wealth is not derived from the production and sale of goods and services. Rather immense wealth comes from money making money through investments and business deals that take advantage of laws and regulations written by the wealthy through the purchase of political power.

Because it takes real wealth to make money this way, only a very few prosper at levels unknown in our history while the rest of the country stagnates. This kind of wealth grows our economy but there is no job growth and people don’t prosper. It is the reason our middle class is disappearing.

There is enough evidence that they now “own” what they have bought – One Senator, One Congressperson – at a time and so get what they want when they want it. America is a country of laws and when you can write your own laws to profit by, that’s all you need.

The reality is that America is no longer a representative democracy when every decision or lack of action in every area in our society is dictated by the power of wealth not the will of the people.

The reality is that neither Democrats nor Republicans seem very different when each and every elected official of either party is more interested in keeping that job than in acting for the good and welfare of the nation.

The reality is that the Liberal Party’s belief that the Federal Government should be the architect of a balance between the power of business and the needs of people – what we call a level playing field or equal opportunities for all – is endangered when that government no longer exists as a representative democracy.

THE CHANGE
Once there were the industrial giants – the Vanderbilts and Harrimans in railroads, Carnegie in steel, the Rockefellers in oil, Ford and automobiles.

And there were the great companies: Kodak, Kimberley-Clark, Proctor and Gamble, Johnson and Johnson, GE, Kellogg, General Mills, IBM, Xerox and on and on. These were the companies that made markets work; that designed, produced and sold goods and had the jobs that made it all successful.

Today industry is gone and what does exists is robotized. The great employee-driven companies are all but gone. Instead we have Facebook and Google and Amazon with relatively few jobs. Apple produces – but in China. Walmart. Fast food. The kind of jobs that never produced nor can maintain the middle class we have known since World War II and are watching disappear before our eyes.

At this writing 330,000 New Yorkers have been out of work for more than eight months. Even the Stock Market no longer works the way it did. Business analysts have given way to superfast computers and highly sophisticated mathematical formulas written by physicists. Even the famous Trading Floor exists for show only.

Corporate power is now so enormous that there are no trusts. No cartels. They no longer band together to rule a marketplace, they simply buy the competition…with no government agencies protecting the consumer against the obvious monopoly when one or two companies control an entire market.

When laws – like Dodd-Frank – are written to put some control on banks and investment bankers so they can no longer be too big to fail, they are ignored, loopholes are found or there is unsatisfactory compliance.

Wealth produced this way is not controlled by the only institution in our society big enough and rich enough to deal with it – the Federal Government. And so almost to add insult to injury, corporations are moving their headquarters to Europe to save on corporate taxes even as they have withheld billions in profits in foreign banks to save tax money on that income.

GOVERNMENT

Not that rules the playing field – as many charge – just the entity that guarantees equal opportunity for all.

But when that government no longer represents the will of people but rather the dictates of money, its role is not only weakened but distorted.

So that Federal money for education bribes State Governors into accepting teaching and testing programs that fail but does nothing to stop the privatizing of public schools by hedge funds, major corporations and Big Education businesses.

Federal money buys $34 billion of surplus heavy weaponry used in Iraq to place in the hands of local police departments nationwide making them look like armies patrolling the streets…not local policemen trying to protect and serve.

Government contracts with the private sector include regulations that guarantee fair employment but no guarantees of employment so that jobs are not sent to Asia or Europe.

The cost of a college education has ballooned beyond anything rational. But the banks are right there to provide the loans co-signed by parents. Government helped limit the interest charged on these college loans but now sits quietly as the debts grow into the trillions of dollars – larger than all the credit card debt.

When Blue Ribbon panels from respected independent sources bluntly state that teachers are being inadequately prepared to go into a classroom, nothing is being done to improve the teaching systems at our Schools of Education and the Federal Government continues to pour billions into failure. When government remembers that it works for children too…results might follow. But with this Federal Government we are not sure.

THE FIGHT FOR REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY

That career status and the salaries and benefits that come with it causes these people to protect that job – no matter what it takes – much the same as any person with a job would do. In this case that job is our government and their votes are for sale…to fund the next campaign to keep that job.

If we can term limit the Presidency, we can term limit our legislators. And we must. No matter what the term of office, once that term is finished, they must wait a cycle before they can run for that office again.

Will lobbyists do their best anyway? Of course. But the office holder with a limited term of office will no longer need the campaign money for reelection. Maybe then elected officials will be able to deal with their votes in a very different way.

But the damning truth is that term limits would have to be supported by the very Congress that would put itself out of a job. A constitutional amendment would have to be passed and then sent to the States for ratification. In 1947 a Republican Congress did that to prevent another Roosevelt from serving for four terms. What’s the chance of that happening today? Without an intense public outcry amounting almost to a public rebellion and the kind of leadership provided by a Teddy Roosevelt who took on his own people to bust the trusts monopolizing American industry…NOTHING WILL HAPPEN. “Nothing” is an untenable state.

TRAINING

No great nation attains and maintains that position without an educated population.

We must focus our attention on the jobs of the future which will be in science, technology, mathematics and energy.

Unless we become a producing nation again – and world history shows that has never happened – we must be prepared to teach and train our very best students to look at Asia, South America and eventually Africa for the best jobs of the future. The kind of jobs that made a productive America great but has made the America we know today a mecca for immigrants but a difficult place to live comfortably for the majority of our citizens. Once we could make America better for our children. The facts show that those days are over.

THE EASY ANSWER
Is money the answer?

Liberals believe that increasing taxes and using that additional money to provide necessary services and programs to help people, is an answer to how to keep America productive and growing. Facts and studies show that here and abroad that approach works.

But the facts also show that money alone is not the answer. When something doesn’t work, money makes no difference. New York State spends more money on the education of each student than any other State in the nation and we are now ranked 32nd.

Conservatives believe that allowing wealth to be maintained and even increased will grow the economy as that wealth is spent on providing jobs etc. But this simply makes the wealthiest wealthier; that wealth is not spent to produce jobs or anything else but another off-shore bank account.

As long as Democrats and Republicans remain “sympathetic” to the needs of wealth, nothing will happen. Until we bring back representative government, wealth rules and not a government of the people, by the people and for the people.