Income inequality is grinding down the middle class and threatens to create a permanent underclass of able but jobless people. The financial sector in collusion with regulators and elected officials inflated and profited from the credit card bubble and then watched it burst, costing millions of American jobs and trillions of dollars of lost wealth.
The banks and Wall Street then either stood by or were actually involved in the destruction of our housing sector through their involvement in the mortgage crisis which was created by a perfect storm of stupidity, dishonesty and greed.
These initial outrages were compounded by unregulated bailouts for the banks, used not for small business loans, which was their purpose, but for huge bonuses paid to the thieves and morons who caused the problem in the first place. The balance of wealth in the United States has undergone a huge upheaval, from a point in the ‘70s when the top 1% of earners held 10% of total U.S. wealth to today when they own 90%, a horrendous surge, accomplishing an inequality not seen in this country since the 1870’s.
Extreme inequality leads to extreme ills, the worst of which include, lack of educational accomplishment, poor general health conditions, lack of research investment and the lack of shared political power which, results in only the view of the rich being seriously considered.
What we need to offset this inequality of wealth is a new series of policies that seek balance, but unfortunately there will be no such policies as long as the men and women who run our government are in thrall to the big business establishment.
It’s a two-fold problem. How do we stop big business’ control of the government and how do we create a new government that is not in debt to corporate America?
This is a hard problem even for men of good will to solve but it will never be solved as long as those involved in the solution all have agendas that are in conflict.
If one could pick 10 people, 5 Right and 5 Left, none of whom had electoral expectations and lock them in a room, one could solve all our problems in a week. It’s true, the solutions are out there, all it takes to arrive at them are selfless men of good will. Gee is that all?
Now I know many selfless people of good will in this country but the problem is how to get them the power to do this job because there are many stupid, greedy, conniving, evil people who have struggled very hard for many years to get into those positions of power just so they can get their way. Many of those people are called congressmen.
“Throw them out,” you may cry, “throw them out and start over.” Well, it’s just not that easy. Running a government is a complicated business that takes know how and experience, along with good will and a desire to do the right thing. The Tea Party tried it. They believed that they had the answer and they actually elected about 60 odd members of the House in the 2010 election. The concept was fresh faces and fresh ideas, the only problem was that they forgot about the ability to govern part, the principal job that they were elected to do. Of the sixty odd members elected to the House about three can be considered functioning legislators. The rest are a combination of fanatic cause mongers, dedicated yes men, obstructionists and deadwood; and Christine O’Donnell didn’t even get elected. There is no reason to think that a like attempt by the Left would turn out a lineup that would be any different.
Look, there’s no such thing as a perfect system. Ours has been pretty good for about 235 years but it needs constant tweaking. Like anything else money is at the heart of the problem. It just takes too much money to get elected to office in this country. The amount spent is criminal, especially considering all the real problems that could be solved by it, if spent in other, more appropriate, areas. The pundits are now saying that it will take a billion bucks to get elected president in 2012. That’s outrageous. Something must be done about it, but what?
Before I go any further, let me say that of all the solutions I will propose in this essay, none can be accomplished without an enormous groundswell of popular outrage. I am speaking of an almost revolutionary uprising of the people to demand that congress provide solutions that are contrary to their own interests but are mandatory for the benefit of the United States citizenry. This is one big bill to fill. It has taken congress and a number of presidents, almost two and a half centuries to overturn and supplant many of the wishes of the men who framed the constitution. Getting them to unravel all the bad they have done will take some doing. It takes enormous pressure to induce anyone to act contrary to his or her own self-interest. Understanding that, here is what I think has to be done to make America a place that will work better for all of us.
It all starts with the money. You want to be a politician, you want to be elected to office, you have to raise a bundle of bucks, which, in the process of doing, you put yourself in debt to a lot of people. If you get elected, those people expect that their largess will be repaid and now you have the problem of how do you legislate fairly for your constituency, while also trying to help the people to whom you are indebted, when their needs are often in direct conflict.
History tells us that the debts get paid and the constituents wait in the wings. So we already have lousy government. How do we avoid this? Two ways; avoid or lower the cost of getting elected and reduce the amount any one person, business or organization can give to any one campaigning politician, and, oh yeah, take away the tax exemption. Senator Bernie Saunders has put forth an amendment to the constitution that would reverse the Supreme Court’s catastrophic decision in the Citizens United case that allowed for corporations to be considered people, a brain dead, politically motivated decision that has caused millions to be shoved into the political process and effectively destroyed the concept of democracy as a political system of government.
The concept in this country has been one man, one vote, (I’ll get to the electoral college later) but when one of those men is David Koch who is throwing millions in back of his candidate and the other is Joe Blow who sends in his five bucks, that principle is brutally compromised. Right now the Koch brothers are building a $200 million plus war chest while Carl Rove’s group is raising over $250 million. This is outrageous and a huge waste of money.
The best kind of election is one in which, all reasonable candidates get a hearing. What are reasonable candidates? We could probably debate this for a couple of thousand pages but as with the basis of our voting model, a reasonable candidate should be one who can acquire a significant enough number of signatures, before he spends serious money, to prove interest in his candidacy. This is an interesting situation because right now it isn’t lack of signatures but lack of funds that keep most independent candidates from getting on the ballot. If the fund raising problem were somewhat solved there would be a huge rush of crackpot candidates that would just muddy up the waters. I suggest, therefore, that the number of signatures needed to participate in what I will now call public funding but really isn’t, be of a high enough number to weed through the chaff. The current requirements for running would still be in place but the requirements for public funding would be significantly higher.
And where would this public funding come from? One place would actually be the public. Candidates would be allowed to raise their own money under the guidelines suggested above but that money would be limited by the same guidelines. To supplement that money the government would supply a like amount to each candidate that qualified. That should still leave a significant void, especially in the area of publicity and advertising. It is an area that can be filled by every TV and radio station that operates with an FCC license donating time to the candidates in equal measure and in equal time slots. This, of course, is an idea that will meet hysterical opposition. “Why,” the stations will scream, “must we bare the brunt of this problem?”
Well, It’s kind of like the problem of rent regulation in some American cities. The landlords ask the same question and it’s the same answer, because you are in a position to solve the problem. No it isn’t really fair but it is a viable solution. Possibly it can be somewhat ameliorated by some kind of tax write off, but it is a solution whose time has definitely come and it can’t come too soon.
Without a solution to the money problem in our election process we can never hope to have an influence free congress and never hope to have a really democratic process for running the country and without that we are doomed to inefficiency, inequality and the eventual complete loss of the American dream.
There are a lot of other problems that need to be solved to get this country back on a functioning track and I’l get to them in later blogs but the solutions to all of them start with electability and that, at this moment in time, is governed by money. If we stop the money flow, the money needs, we blunt the power of the super rich and return it to the people in general, a first step to restoring true democracy to the United Sattes.