Since Powell's memo, the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and other wealthy
and powerful groups and individuals have staged a slow-motion takeover
of our government. These oligarchs, through their money, have corrupted
all branches of government as well as many of the regulatory agencies.
This corruption has led to a system of crony capitalism.
Here are a few examples demonstrating the extent of the takeover.
Campaign Financing
Recent Supreme Court decisions on the
2010 Citizens United case and the April 2, 2014 McCutcheon vs. the FEC
case opened the floodgates to huge amounts of money pouring into
elections. These decisions allow the wealthy and powerful to exercise
even more undue influence over candidates and the outcomes of elections.
The unseemly pilgrimage to Las Vegas over
the last weekend in March of some possible Republican candidates for
president demonstrated these politicians' lust for campaign funds. These
men went to Las Vegas to participate in the 'Sheldon Adelson primary'
and to meet other wealthy Jewish donors. In case you don't recognize
Adelson's name, he and his wife Miriam spent $93 million during the 2012
election and they intend to invest more in 2016. Given that a key
Adelson litmus test is support for Israel, these Republican politicians
tried to outdo one another in showing their devotion to Israel.
Housing Finance Reform
On March 11th, the leaders of the Senate
Banking committee announced an agreement on a housing finance reform
proposal. The proposal, despite all the groups backing it and the
support from President Obama, appears to be another huge taxpayer
ripoff. A key provision of the proposal would limit investors' losses in
mortgage backed securities to 10% of their investments. Taxpayers would
be required to reimburse investors for any additional losses. This
federal support would make these investments very attractive while
hurting competing investments such as municipal bonds that fund state
and local improvements.
However, provision of this assurance,
without real improvement in upgrading the criteria for qualifying for a
mortgage, would likely lead to another huge financial disaster. Instead
of providing more corporate welfare for the too-big-to-fail banks, a
reasonable reform would be to continue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as
public entities.
Trans-Pacific Partnership Negotiations
Six hundred representatives from the
corporate world, and almost nobody representing the public interest,
have been working with the U.S. trade negotiators on the Trans-Pacific
Partnership since March 2010. Although marketed as a trade agreement,
only 5 of its 29 chapters deal with traditional trade issues such as
tariffs. Most of the chapters deal with topics such as increasing the
length of drug patents, removal of bank regulations, and empowering
corporations to challenge laws protecting our environmental and health
safeguards.
If you have not heard of this
negotiation, don't be surprised since the oligarch-controlled media have
generally avoided this topic, called ‘NAFTA on steroids’ by many
activists. We know how poorly NAFTA turned out for the average worker
versus how well it turned out for the rich and powerful.
As of August 2013, there were 12 Pacific
Rim nations secretly negotiating the details of the agreement. Obama
strongly supports these negotiations that would lead to a further
entrenchment of corporate control at the expense of democracy and
sovereignty.
Climate change, Wall Street, and health care
Three additional examples are the roles
of: 1) the fossil fuel companies in preventing any real movement on
climate change; 2) the gigantic banks that led to the transfer of
trillions of dollars from the 99.99% of us to the those at the very top
of the wealth ladder; and 3) the health insurance and pharmaceutical
industries in increasing health care costs unnecessarily while limiting
health care coverage.
Community Rights Networks
One way of reclaiming our rights from
this corrupt system is to join with others. One group working to promote
local self government is the Colorado Community Rights Network
(http://www.cocrn.org/). This group is attempting to get an initiative
on the ballot here this year. The Community Environmental Legal Defense
Fund (http://www.celdf.org/) works nationally to help us reclaim our
rights.
Ron Forthofer, Ph.D. is
retired Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Texas School of
Public Health, Houston, Texas; former Green Party candidate for Congress
and for Governor of Colorado
Whilst agreeing in very large part with the thrust of this article, we at SOYMB would seek to point out our fundamental disagreement with the idea that we can 'reclaim our rights from this corrupt system' from within the system. We do not view each of the separate points raised here as single issues as possible to be dealt with in isolation but as part of the structure of the capitalist system as a whole. It is this structure, the capitalist system, that we promote has to be overcome in total (not reformed) and be replaced by a system - socialism - that works in favour of people as a whole with no possibility of pecuniary advantage. We say that capitalism must go. Full stop.
For more detail on how we work to achieve this goal see the previous post here.
JS
No comments:
Post a Comment