Government for the wealthy

By Tom Maertens
The Mankato Free Press
Sat Nov 20, 2010

American voters are apparently very, very angry at big government. To demonstrate how angry they are, they put the party in charge of the House that just spent eight years doubling the debt and almost doubling spending.

That party hasn’t changed its goals: redistributing wealth upward by cutting taxes for the wealthy and cutting services and the safety net for everyone else.

The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income; it was less than 9 percent in 1976. The CBO says extending the Bush tax cuts will cost $4 trillion in debt but Republicans are still pretending the tax fairy will sprinkle pixie dust on them so that they magically pay for themselves.

Four trillion is what the entire Social Security shortfall is over the next 75 years.

As Simon Johnson, former IMF chief economist noted recently, the suggestion that more tax cuts will get our fiscal house in order would get you laughed out of the room anywhere else in the world. The CBO has attributed 40 percent of Obama’s deficit to Bush’s debt-financed tax cuts. In addition to undermining our fiscal integrity, Republican legislators will also continue their attack on government regulations, the rules that guarantee us drinkable water, reasonably clean air, mostly uncontaminated food, safe air travel and highways, utilities that work, and deposit insurance.

Without government intervention, tobacco companies would still be claiming that smoking is safe; the Ethyl Corporation would still be arguing that lead in our gasoline, toys and paint is safe; industry would still be denying that asbestos is dangerous; chemical companies would still be dumping their poisons into our aquifers; and we would be driving unsafe gas-guzzlers.

What they are seeking is a plutocracy, a government by the wealthy. They deploy vast sums of money to bamboozle the rubes into opposing their own self-interests, using front groups and paid shills.

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post cited an example last month, when a flood of donations crashed servers at the Chamber of Commerce. What caused the flood?

Glenn Beck had told his viewers: “Put your money where your mouth is. If you have a dollar, please go to . . . the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and donate today.” Chamber members, he said, “are our parents. They’re our grandparents. They are us.”

Hardly. The Chamber of Commerce, according to Bloomberg, collected $350 million in the last two years which it used to fund a massive campaign of negative political advertising, including anonymous smearmail, as detailed by Representative Steve Elkins Nov. 11 in the StarTribune. Using their financial resources to dominate the media, the plutocrats try to convince “low information voters” that their interests are identical with oil billionaires who campaign against clean air and water, as Tesoro and Valero, two Texas oil companies just did, reportedly spending $10 million to repeal California’s clean air regulations.

This assault on our quality of life would have earned them Teddy Roosevelt’s opprobrium as “malefactors of great wealth.” The plutocrats would like to turn the clock back to the days when the country was safe for monopolies, when workers had no rights, no costly medical insurance, and no retirement pensions. They spent close to a billion dollars fighting just two bills, bank reform and health insurance reform. Relentless, misleading propaganda is effective, as the fear-mongering about “death panels” showed. According to a recent survey, up to 40 percent of respondents believed the lie, even though the real death panels exist only among private insurance companies, which routinely cancel out the sick. Reuters reported earlier this year that Fortis (now Assurant Health) systematically cancelled policyholders diagnosed with HIV, imposing likely death sentences for many. Labor unions and government have become less effective counterweights to this corporatist agenda: Industrial unions have declined as manufacturing jobs move overseas; and government oversight has been compromised by corporate cash.

The Senate in particular, has become a millionaires’ club, while practically all Republican legislators are beholden to corporate lobbyists. John Boehner, the incoming Speaker of the House, has even admitted passing out tobacco lobbyists’ checks to Republican colleagues on the House floor. More recently, he led a rally by lobbyists against bank reform, doubtless knowing a payoff would follow.

With the “Citizens United” decision by the Supreme Court last January, corporations and lobbying organizations can now buy unlimited campaign advertising without disclosing their hidden hand. That means an even greater deluge of corporatist propaganda and anonymous, negative campaigning next election. The result will be a growing plutocracy.

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