I celebrated my 65th birthday
a few weeks ago. For several weeks
before that day, I spent literally hours considering the meaning of the event. My contemplation was occasioned by receiving
my Medicare card in late March (Medicare starts the first day of the month you
turn sixty-five). I was very happy to
get that card, along with the notice that the Medicare system would be
deducting $127 each month from my Social Security check. I started drawing my Social Security at the
age of 62, the earliest age at which one may take their monthly benefit. This was because I had, three months earlier,
been forced to claim unemployment as a result of losing my last job, as a Title
Officer with the National Commercial Division of a major title insurance
company, assisting companies in doing real estate transactions around the
nation, a job for which I was eminently well suited, and which I performed
flawlessly. Sadly, although I am one of
the foremost experts in my chosen field of endeavor in the entire country, I
was unable to find any kind of permanent employment after being laid off, and
decided that I would stop drawing unemployment compensation after three months. Although my monthly benefit would have been
greater had I waited to turn 65, now, about two years following the near
economic collapse, my decision looks very good, indeed, since that employment
market is now even worse than when I made my decision, and promises to stay
that way from some months and perhaps many years to come.
As a part of my birthday contemplation,
I thought of my family, of course. My
children are adults, each with children of their own. I have two younger brothers who are at the
peak of their professional careers, and many other loved family members in
various stages of their lives. Most, if
not all, have expressed chagrin about what the country is becoming. So, all things considered, I decided to write
a regarding my birthday and send it to my family and friends.
Needless to say, I am an early Baby
Boomer, having been born in 1946. I grew
up in Baltimore and its environs. My
family had only one car until I was about 12; we got our first television in
1951, a small tube, black and white set which was one of three in our
neighborhood; my mother didn’t work, but focused on running the home, taking
care of our family, and being a great mother.
We had one phone, a black one with a dial (push buttons wouldn’t even
become available for a couple of decades).
Gasoline was about 14 cents a gallon, a loaf of bread cost about 20
cents. We went out for dinner about once
a year, as a family (no hardship, since Mom was a great cook). When clothes became worn or frayed, they were
repaired and handed down to the next in line.
Mom made our Halloween costumes, and they were great (to be fair,
though, they should have been, since she was a professional artist). We were happy. We were solidly middle class. We had everything we needed. The streets were so safe in our neighborhood;
we didn’t even need to lock our doors. We
not only knew all of our neighbors, but we were a real neighborhood, where
people cared about each other and all adults saw that a part of their
responsibility was to see to the safety of all neighborhood children and each
other.
That was sixty years ago. The world has changed. America has changed. We Americans expect to have nice cars (with lots of gizmos, GPS, etc.), cell
phones (with lots of clever apps, of course), HD TVs, internet access, 500
cable channels, and endless other trappings of our spoiled American lives. Are we wrong?
The answer is no, but. But, like
spoiled children, most of us tend to believe that we, as Americans, being such exceptional people, deserve such things;
we believe it’s our birthright. One of
the problems with creating such social expectations is that once people think
that way, the American Dream (the fulfilling of all of those expectations)
becomes a right, not a blessing, not something we must work to have, but
something we deserve, simply for being born American. Further, we create the certainty that some,
or even many, will become highly dissatisfied with their lives when that Dream
doesn’t magically materialize. How has our
America become such a land of unrealized, and maybe even unrealizable,
dreams? Oh, I do understand that there
are still many who are can and may experience those dreams, but those numbers
are rapidly dwindling, and the numbers of those who are not likely to do so are
rapidly increasing.
Who are those people who are losing
their dreams? In the last three years,
more than five million of us have lost a major part of their dream called a
home, as foreclosures moved them into the street, shelters, relatives’ homes,
cheap apartments, etc. Many of those (dream)
homes were lost because these people lost their jobs, or had some catastrophic
medical issue and no health insurance, or for some other of life’s vicissitudes
intervened to destroy their financial security, or were simply sold an absurd
adjustable loan by a loan officer or bank just looking for a quick buck. Not since the Great Depression have so many
been brutally and cruelly humbled by a national financial crisis. As I write, the BLS tells us that there are
9% of us unemployed. If we look at an adult
employable labor force of about 180 million, this means that more than 16
million are officially not earning anything but a meager unemployment check, at
best. That number is not real. The real number of people who are essentially
unemployed is about double that, if we include the long term unemployed and
underemployed. As of this past February,
there were about 45 million Americans using food stamps, and children comprise
about 2/3rds of that number. In
addition, many families also utilize food banks and other government and
non-government programs in order just to eat. Many of those who have borrowed mightily to
sponsor their college educations can’t find jobs (the latest numbers indicate
that about 85% of new 2011 graduates will be forced to move back home). About 1.6 million new workers enter the labor
force each year. In the last 6 months,
the economy has generated about 230,000 new jobs per month. At that rate, it will take about 28 years to
achieve what our government tells us is “full” employment (about 4.5%
unemployment, statistically, is considered “full”).
Meanwhile, we have a Congress that is
agonizing over our national debt. Sadly,
this agony is totally misplaced. We “own”
the world’s “reserve currency”, which means that we are completely unlike the
nations of Greece and Spain. Our
national debt doesn’t hurt us, unless we try to deal with it. The debate is a pure political red herring; a
distraction intended to focus us in an area of no importance. As the nation with the world’s reserve
currency, we can print as much money as we need to without causing
inflation. The Federal Reserve (FED) has
printed about seven trillion over the past three years. Most of it went into alleviating the effects
of the deteriorating loan portfolios residing the major banks who caused the
debacle of 2008 by creating massive numbers of completely irresponsibly sold
mortgages. They not only failed to
properly underwrite these, but then securitized them by creating bond issues
which were converted to tradable securities and hedged with billions in credit
default swaps. All of this failed, and
after TARP was put into effect and about $350 billion spent to overcome the
initial market problem, the FED bought more than four trillion dollars worth of
rotting credit paper from the banks.
Even before that, since the Iran and Afghan wars were not budgeted by President
Bush, the FED printed money to pay for these.
Not only are we not like Spain or Greece, but we are not like a
household. We don’t need to balance our
budget. We can’t go broke. We can’t default. It is not possible. We can create as much money as we need to
fuel a recovery. So long as the money
the FED prints is used to buy things of real value, there will be no
inflation. So, if we need stimulus, the
FED could fund a bank for energy research and development, a bank for
infrastructure upgrade, a bank specifically for education, fund the rehiring of
teachers, fund all kinds of useful research.
Because each one of these things creates taxable value and additional taxation,
the money would flow all through the economy.
People could continue to own and buy homes, send children to college,
retire on time, etc. So, don’t listen to
the blather about the deficit and debt.
It is intended to create an atmosphere that allows all kinds of money to
flow up the “food chain” to the top, as has been happening for years, while the
rich get richer and you and I get closer to poverty and despair.
Well, it actually started with Bill
Clinton’s administration, when the Congress passed Gramm-Leach-Bliley, giving
the banks the right to become much more than banks. This was a breach of the firewall between
banking and other activities, such as investment banking which had been
prudently put in place in the mid-1930’s by the passage of the Glass-Steagall
Act restricting banking powers, after the then out-of-control banks had
destroyed the economy in the late 1920’s.
Destroying this firewall especially worked to the benefit of the largest
Federal banks, who, as members of the Federal Reserve System, gained the right
to buy and sell stocks, issue bonds, become investment bankers, insurance
companies, or anything else they wanted to do.
These massive banks can borrow endlessly from the Federal Reserve, at
essentially the world’s lowest interest rates, play with their books, play in
the markets, and generally control almost all financial matters under one roof,
and, should they make some serious mistakes, we will bail them out, contrary to
what we have been recently told following the latest round of financial reform.
Then the Bush administration came into
office, and, about a year and nine months later, we lost the World Trade
Center, Osama Bin Laden took center stage, and the Bush administration somehow
convinced us that not only was Saddam Hussein acting to assist Bin Laden (not
proven or even likely), but also had Weapons of Mass Destruction (proven to be
false) which could threaten the very being of this country. We started the War on Terror, sending troops
to Afghanistan to root out Bin Laden, and started the second Gulf War to quash
the Hussein regime’s WPM threat. None of
the associated costs (mega billions) of these military actions went “on the
books” as we pursued this absurd strategy – as we know now, no WPM’s were ever
found. Then the Bush Administration
pushed for a tax reduction, and passed an unfunded prescription drug plan to
supplement the Medicare program. They
also sponsored a major expansion of our housing policy which resulted in
massive growth of private housing financed under the auspices of the largest
banks (selling securitized mortgage debt, a lot of which is now rotting on
their books or the books of the FED, FNMA and Freddie) and substantially
expanded the roles of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Oddly enough, though the resulting major
increases in housing construction fueled substantial new employment in those
sectors, the actual growth of overall employment during the Bush Presidency was
incredibly anemic. That’s because, along
with other factors, many jobs held in manufacturing and other employment areas
were being outsourced offshore, as American companies found it more profitable
to ship their jobs elsewhere in the world where workers were paid a mere
fraction of what American workers cost them.
What happened? Ever since Eisenhower warned us of the
dangers of the power of the Military-Industrial Complex, as he left office in
late 1959, we have been seeing his prophecy bear fruit. In 1963, we decided, under then President
Kennedy, to take over the defense of South Vietnam, previously under the control
of France, against a perceived Communist threat from North Vietnam. Looking back, it is clear to see that this
was the first of many military forays which would be “encouraged” by the
MIC. I would defy anyone to come up with
an example of the clear necessity of the use of our military in the years
subsequent to Eisenhower’s departure and Kennedy’s assassination. We even know that the Soviet Union’s vaunted
military strength during the Cold War years was greatly exaggerated by the CIA
and others to strengthen arguments for the vast increase in our nuclear and
conventional weaponry and general military strength. Even now, when we are supposed to be experiencing
a “peace dividend” resulting from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 1991
collapse of Soviet Russia, that hasn’t materialized. We are still spending hundreds of billions of
dollars on Cold War style weapons programs, like Reagan’s Star Wars Space
Missile Defense Program, which, in more than 25 years and after the expenditure
of tens of billions, hasn’t produced any effective defensive deterrence which
can be deployed in orbit. Sadly, George
Shultz recently disclosed that, during the Nuclear Disarmament Conference with
the USSR which took place in October of 1986, in Reykjavik, Iceland, Russia
actually agreed to full, verified nuclear disarmament, if Reagan would agree to
scrap SDI. Reagan refused – end of story.
We’ve now spent 10 years in Afghanistan,
and, lo and behold, where has Bin Laden been residing for the past five
years? Not in Afghanistan, but in
Pakistan, where we spend billions in military and civilian aid to prop up a
country with nuclear weapons and half of whose leadership can’t decide whether
they like us or not, while their arch enemy India is actually a far more
valuable friend, if Pakistan is one at all.
Since end of the Second Iraq War, how have things gone, that is after
our “victory” which cost us many thousands of lives, nearly a trillion dollars,
and left an unstable democracy in a tribal state which continues to be plagued
by massive sectarian violence? I’d say
that Iraq might redefine the whole concept of “Pyrrhic Victory”, that is, if it
weren’t for Vietnam. And, finally,
before moving on, allow me to mention a couple of other “national security”
details. How many of you are aware that
the US has more than 800 military installations in foreign countries? Just think how you might feel if another
country wanted to locate one of their bases on our soil. You just might not be very thrilled with the
idea. In fact, many of those who live
close to US bases located in America
are not entirely sanguine regarding the location of those bases, unless they
profit from the fact of their proximity.
Or, think about the fact that we spend more than twice the amount of
money as the rest of the world combined on our military. Is there any surprise at the fact that we are
counted on by our allies to be the world’s police. Then consider that one fighter jet costs more
than tens of millions dollars (the new F-22 costs $70 million per plane by the
latest calculations) and think about what that those millions or even billions
could do in infrastructure, education, basic research, border security,
employment, etc.
Also consider the fact that this country
is not ranked in the top ten among the world’s nations in life expectancy (49th
last year according to our own CIA) and have a higher infant mortality rate
than 45 other nations, all in spite of the fact that we have many of the best
doctors, most successful pharmaceutical companies, largest and best hospitals,
etc. We are not ranked in the top ten
educationally. Our high school
graduation rates are pathetic and dropping (nearly 35% don’t graduate!!). We have a far higher percentage of our
population housed in our prison system than any other country in the world (now
more than 2 million inmates), and far more illegal alien residents than
anywhere else. Our crime rates are
higher than almost anywhere else. Illegal
drug use is higher than anywhere else.
Yes, my fellow citizens, we are a truly exceptional country!!!
Now, let’s visit a little world history,
but before we do, I want to make a thesis statement: America is the largest and most successful
imperial power in the history of the world.
Sadly, though, the follow up is that no great empire has successfully
withstood the test of time. We are also
not going to be successful or exceptional in that regard. Let’s look a bit at some examples in the
historical records. The first major
empire outside of China was Babylon.
That city-state behemoth lasted around 1800 years (America, from
Columbus to the present is barely 500 and our elite nation status perhaps 150
years at best). It was the major city in
ancient Persia, and the rule was not consistent, but the power emanating from
it was. It is hard to find even traces
of it today, though most of the major structures were built with stone. Or there was ancient Greece, which gave us
Alexander the Great, Socrates and Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, and countless
other historic notables and is now mostly famous for its architectural ruins. It and Egypt were the chief competitors with
Rome during the last millennium BC and the first five centuries AD. Where are they now? We know them now for many things, but the
great empires that they were vanished centuries ago after being dominant
“world” cultures and powers. How about the
Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan and his scions? This is now 1000 years behind us. What about the Roman Empire? Rome controlled about 90% of the civilized
world at one time, running from Scotland south and east all the way to
Arabia. It had a total lock on commerce,
and the only country that could challenge Rome’s authority or dominance was the
Egypt of the Pharaohs, which, by the way, is also gone, but for the Pyramids. After the fall of Rome, the greatest
centralized power for the next 700 years was the Roman Catholic Church, which
essentially sponsored all European monarchs from the early middle ages until
their power started to erode during the Reformation. During that time and later times, three
European powers had massive empires, France, England and Spain. Notice that, though these countries continue to
exist, their empires are gone. Each of
these three lost their empires for different reasons, but, the point is that
none could maintain them. I think that
very few Americans under the age of thirty today are even aware that, until
this century, Great Britain counted India, Australia and South Africa, as well
as a multitude of smaller territories, as parts of its empire, and now only
Canada, very marginally, remains.
But, wait, why do I claim that America is
“imperial?” Simple, it is obvious that
we are, as a nation, control freaks.
When I hear the words “national security interest” I shiver. When those words are used, they are intended
to make us afraid that, somehow, our national security is under threat. But, think about it. In the past 100 years we have been attacked,
with any success at all, on only four occasions: during WWII, at Pearl Harbor, and in the
Philippines; and once in Alaska over half a century ago, very briefly. And, if you are willing to count it as an
attack (I see it as simple terrorism, and unrelated to any other specific
nation), the World Trade Center in 2001.
Three of these were “sneak” attacks.
In each case we had intelligence that could have prevented them and
didn’t act on that intelligence in time to stop the threats. We have bases in more than 40 countries. We have an empire. Whatever we don’t control militarily, we try
to control economically. We have an
empire.
Why does this matter? It matters because we are not the humble,
“Christian” nation that many, if not most, proclaim us to be. Americans have been led to believe in our
nation’s inchoate superiority. Simply
being The United States of America does not make us superior to anyone, a
priori. A truly superior nation must
prove its superiority. We are not superior,
but, at this moment we are dominant, and have serious competition even in
that. Global dominance should mean that
we have the greatest responsibility, not just to our own citizens, but to the
world in general. We love to claim the moral
“high ground” amongst nations, but only when it suits us. The sad fact is that we are, in our
dominance, some of the world’s poorest actors and greatest abusers among all
nations. I would challenge anyone to
present a valid argument, on purely rational bases that the USA is a truly
superior nation, especially on a moral basis.
As Clint Eastwood once famously uttered, “go ahead, make my day” by
making a case for our superiority, other than militarily. Next you’ll say that
I don’t love this country. Quite to the contrary,
I passionately love this country, always have and always will. But, I am greatly saddened to see what
pariahs that this nation has become, as a world force, life force, and home to
all those who love it.
What I next want to do is to paint a picture
of how we came to be attacked on September 11, 2001. My guess would be that about 98% of our
citizens still believe that the attack was heinous and unprovoked. If, in fact, that attack was purely the
successful plot of a terror network with its base in the mountains of
Afghanistan, and directed by a Muslim jihadist with a long beard and a radical
following who carefully and systematically, and successfully, plotted and
carried out an attack on the Twin Towers in Manhattan, killing about 3000 of our
citizens, then there must be major flaws with our security, and we know now
from recent information, that the NSA and others simply didn’t do their job. However, since that date, many of the details
of this attack have come under serious scrutiny, and, regardless of many
extensive investigations, in the ten years after the attack, much is yet to be
successfully and adequately answered.
There remain serious doubts about the validity of the results of the
official investigation. Oddly enough,
this episode is quite similar to the Kennedy assassination which occurred
nearly 38 years earlier, and the government’s version of the reality is still
in question today. I am not saying
either investigation has been proven wrong.
Regarding the World Trade Center, however, we do know that our
intelligence apparatus did not do its job at the time, and, in fact, failed
those three thousand people by not properly following important information
which had been gathered prior to the date of the tragic attack that was later
acknowledged could have prevented it.
Why, if Bin Laden did this treachery,
was he motivated to lead such an action?
There are many seeds of jihad which have been firmly planted by America
and many of its allies over the centuries.
I will only consider the modern era, beginning with the founding of
Israel in 1948, and our subsequent and steadfast support of the Jewish
population, consistently and steadfastly and to the detriment of the Arab
populations of that region, and specifically within what was, prior to Israel
being recognized by the UN in 1949 as a nation, Palestine, a predominantly Arab
nation. Ever since it was founded,
Israel has had to work hard to maintain the integrity of itself and its
boundaries. The US has always taken
Israeli’s side and perhaps that is the greatest reason why no final accord has yet
been reached regarding the disposition of the Palestinian populace despite
decades of effort by most American presidents and their administrations. Of course, we have never been even-handed in
our treatment of this situation.
The next greatest reason is because of
our consistent abusive policies regarding the entire region. We were heavily involved in support of the
Shah in Iran, a dictatorial autocrat whose abusiveness towards his population
was very similar to that of Syrian President Assad and Muammar Gaddafi of
Libya. The Iranian Shah brutally
oppressed his population, and that is why the Ayatollah Khomeini was successful
in his revolution which resulted in the Shah’s departure, and why so many
Iranians at that time engaged in anti-American protests. Next, when Russia invaded Afghanistan, we
armed and supported the Taliban in its success over the Russian invasion, but,
immediately thereafter simply abandoned the nation. It became clear that our friendship in
providing support was only one of convenience, and we did nothing to assist
them in recovering from the destructive results of the Russian invasion,
however, of course, as with Iraq, we armed the very Taliban that we are
fighting now. Next, when Iran and Iraq
became engaged in their war, in 1980, and because of the antipathetic
relationship caused by the ascent of the Ayatollah, we decided to provide major
military assistance to Saddam Hussein to enable him to beat back the Iranis. Is the picture beginning to become a bit
clearer? So, we now begin to see the
fact that America is only an ally of convenience, and, if its partner doesn’t
obey what it wants, it either abandons, or attacks that former
ally/friend. Even now, we are engaged in
nation building in Afghanistan, assisting a corrupt, bogusly elected leader and
spending over a million dollars a day to do it, while our troops die,
Afghanistan continues to be the world’s largest heroin producer, is vastly
corrupt and tribal, and is home to proven natural resources worth trillions of
dollars. Even now, after declaring
victory in Iraq, and after their formation of a democratic government, we
choose to leave behind 50,000 troops, build major bases there, and major
sectarian/tribal violence continues to plague that country. What are our plans for the rest of the Arab
world? They are wondering where our
imperialism will lead us next. So am I.
Now, back to America, and its multiple
oligarchies. What is an oligarchy? It is a group of wealthy companies and/or
individuals who assert control over markets by exerting political
influence. America is rife with
oligarchs.
First let us consider the energy
oligarchy. The price of oil is going up
and will continue to go up, as the world’s reserves go down. That’s simple economics, simple supply and
demand. When a necessary commodity is in
short supply, there’s more money competing for less of it, and a price rise is
inevitable. But then, it is made far
worse by the fact that our petroleum companies are given massive tax subsidies,
get special treatment when they screw up (BP?), and are making greater profits
than ever. The same goes for most other
areas of energy, and few, if any of these massively profitable enterprises are
engaged in providing new solutions to our energy costs and production. They are rich, fat, lazy, and abusive. Get the picture? This is what oligarchy is about.
How about food? Except
for very stringent restrictions on food imports, generally speaking (except, of
course as to American companies producing food elsewhere and bringing it here),
food is largely controlled by our agricultural conglomerates. If you want to understand this, start reading
packaging at the grocery stores. You
will note the amazing dominance of companies like Proctor and Gamble, Kraft,
Nabisco, Coke and Pepsi, Hunts, Dole, and so many other giant
corporations. These megaliths dominate
agricultural products, distribution, manufacture and packaging, and virtually
every other area. They all receive
substantial hidden tax benefits and subsidies from their friends in
Congress. These companies are the reason
why we are producing corn ethanol as a gasoline additive (actually mandated in
many states), which is unbelievably inefficient, and results in the higher
prices of all products utilizing corn and its various byproducts, a truly long
list, in case you hadn’t noticed. Large
agricultural conglomerates are completely dominant oligarchs, on your grocery
store shelves, and on Capitol Hill.
The media in this country is controlled
by very few people. If you closely
examine who owns TV and radio stations, newspapers, magazines, movie production
companies, etc., it is a very small group, many with interlocking boards of
directors. These companies control the
“free” speech in this country because they control the advertising dollars
which keep their holdings profitable. In
order to control the advertising dollars, they must not provide news coverage
which threatens the interests which pay for them to exist, their
advertisers. This is why, if you have a
large cable service, it is nearly impossible to get the complete, unvarnished
truth about anything. Sure, there’s
public television, with wonderful shows like Nova, Frontline, and lots of other
great specials. How many of us even tune
in. How many are willing to watch C-Span
to find out what is being said. Most of
us watch the four major news outlets (NBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX, as well as CNN
and MSNBC). Check out who owns
them. Without going into great detail,
suffice it to say that CNN also controls the Weather Channel, and General
Electric owns NBC, which owns CNBC, MSNBC, and others, including the Golf
Channel. If you really want to get
nauseous, just check the chart at this link:
http://www.freepress.net/ownership/chart/main
Now we move to what is probably the
second most powerful oligarchy in America.
That is the health care industry.
It is comprised of truly massive and powerful companies including huge
multinational pharmaceutical manufacturers, which largely control the FDA and
which manufacture, distribute and sell drugs, both prescription and
over-the-counter. There are about 19
very large drug manufacturers, worldwide, and of those, 11 are companies based
in the US. In 2006 alone, these
companies averaged more than $5.5 billion in profits. Once again, for further reading I
recommend: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_industry. Then we have the care providers, whether
clinics, hospitals, doctor groups or others.
Of these, aside from illegalities, the real prime oligarchs are the
health networks which control, among them, many major hospitals and massive
clinics. For further reading I recommend, once again, the Wikipedia
article at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_systems, it is entirely
fascinating to see how we compare to other countries, and how other nations go
about providing care for their populations.
In signing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in the spring
of last year, our political leadership expressed wholehearted, unflinching
support for the health care oligarchy.
It included no public option, no real cost control mechanism, no real
rein on health insurance premiums (while establishing a mandate for all people
to have coverage), or any other means for controlling the spiraling costs of
health care. As of 2006, we spend 16.2%
of GDP on health care, and that percentage continues to grow. What I find amazing is the number of
politicians who say that that should be abolished in favor of a different
methodology. Of all the alternatives
discussed during the bill’s journey through Congress, the single most rational,
and popular one, according to polls,
was the suggestion of Medicare for all (essentially the same as the Canadian
single payer). I’m not holding my
breath, as the industry coffers are opening to support candidates during the
next election cycle.
The last of the major oligarchies is the
financial industry, led by the nation’s largest banking conglomerates. We know that the financial markets are under
the control of a fairly small elite of banking behemoths, many of which are
located in this country, but whose influence stretches into nearly every
country around the globe. Literally
hundreds of books and articles have been written about these massively abusive,
controlling enterprises. The financial
collapse of late 2007 can be completely blamed on them. The Great Depression, occurring about 80
years before, happened primarily because of the fact that the banks at that
time had acceded to similar powers that they now have, since the abrogation of
Glass-Steagall in favor of Gramm-Leach-Bliley in 1999. Ask Ben Bernanke, he’s an economist, and an
recognized expert on the Great Depression.
I would refer you to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banking_in_the_United_States which tells the
entire, relatively unvarnished, truth about our banking industry, its power and
control. But, surely the easiest thing
is just to realize that even after the passage of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street
Reform and Consumer Protection Act in July of last year, the banks are
presently making larger profits and handing out more massive bonuses than
before the crash. All of them are larger
now than they were, more leveraged, and this is all happening during the
lingering of the recession. This is
nearly impossible to believe, and yet it is true. These massive organizations exert nearly
complete control over our governance as it pertains to anything financial. It is truly and deeply nauseating. And we are, at present, completely helpless
to curtail or even effectively modify it.
There are other, smaller oligarchies in
America, but the ones described above are the major players. If the governance of a country is under
control of the wealthy elite, it is termed a “plutocracy” or “plutarchy” (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy). America is a plutocracy. The greatest evidence of this, aside from the
content of our 15,000 page tax code (about 2% of which applies to those making
less than $100,000 a year), is the massive subsidies and other benefits
conferred upon industry after industry, shamelessly by our legislators, both
state and national. The wealthy elite in
this country don’t pick favorites. If
you look at where the election funding sources for any candidate, it is easy to
see that all who are viable candidates receive money from the same
sources. There is a reason why the
Citizens United case was decided by the Supremes in the way it was. Even the Supreme Court, the grand arbiter of
American justice and prime interpreter of the US Constitution, is a part of the
plutocracy. Sadly, just today, I read
that a judge in Virginia has ruled that corporations may make direct, unlimited
political contributions to any candidate, once again claiming that if their
contributions are disallowed, it will violate their First Amendment rights to
free speech.
My greatest desire in writing this
article is to encourage my fellow citizens to look in the mirror and decide
what they want the future of this country to be, for themselves, their
families, friends, and neighbors. There
are seven billion people on this planet, and only about five percent are
Americans. Do we want to police the world,
be there whenever there is a catastrophe, think that we need massive military
spending, and many billions in foreign aid?
Or do we want to make a greater effort to restoring this country to a
land where we live right, care about each other and what happens within our
borders to a far greater extent? All I
ask is that my fellow Americans pay attention and realize that if we all act
together, we can make a difference. Stop
listening to hollow campaign promises and political hyperbole. Read extensively. Find answers and think about solutions. If we don’t do what is needed to restore this
country to a land of real promise, we are fully to blame if it continues on its
present path, as sad and sorry one, which will, in the near future, lead to far
greater pain and sadness for us and the ones we love.
