The Rich Are Creating A Country Even They Wouldn't Like

 

The following is a thought-provoking article by Paul Krugman in The New York Times:

The rich are different from you and me: They have immensely more power. But when they try to exercise that power they can trap themselves — supporting politicians who will, if they can, create a society the rich themselves wouldn’t want to live in.

This, I’d argue, is the common theme running through four major stories that have been playing out over the past few months. They are: the relationship between Justice Clarence Thomas and the billionaire Harlan Crow; the rise and seeming decline of Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign; the trials (literally) of Fox News; and the Muskopalypse at Twitter.

First, some notes on the role of vast wealth in a democracy.

People on the right often insist that expressing any concern about highly concentrated wealth is “un-American.” The truth, however, is that worrying about the dangers great wealth poses for democracy is very much part of the American tradition. And our nation basically invented progressive taxation, which was traditionally seen not just as a source of revenue but also as a way to limit excessive wealth.

In fact, if you read what prominent figures said during the Progressive Era, many expressed views that would be hysterically denounced as class warfare today. Theodore Roosevelt warnedagainst “a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power.” Woodrow Wilson declared, “If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it.”

How does great wealth translate into great power? Campaign finance is dominated by a tiny number of extremely rich donors. But there are several other channels of influence.

Until recently I would have said that outright corruption — direct purchase of favors from policymakers — was rare. ProPublica’s revelation that Justice Thomas enjoyed many lavish, undisclosed vacations at Crow’s expense suggests that I may have been insufficiently cynical.

Beyond that, there’s the revolving door: Former politicians and officials who supported the interests of the wealthy find comfortable sinecures at billionaire-supported lobbying firms, think tanks and media organizations. These organizations also help shape what military analysts call the “information space,” defining public discourse in ways that favor the interests of the superrich.

Despite all that, however, there’s only so much you can achieve in America, imperfect and gerrymandered as our democracy may be, unless you can win over large numbers of voters who don’t support a pro-billionaire economic agenda.

It’s a simplification, but I think fundamentally true, to say that the U.S. right has won many elections, despite an inherently unpopular economic agenda, by appealing to intolerance — racism, homophobia and these days anti-“wokeness.” Yet there’s a risk in that strategy: Plutocrats who imagine that the forces of intolerance are working for them can wake up and discover that it’s the other way around.

Which brings us to the other stories I mentioned.

For a while DeSantis seemed to be surging in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Much of his apparent rise reflected support from big G.O.P. donors, who saw him as a saner alternative to Donald Trump — someone who would serve their financial interests while attracting working-class support with his social conservatism and willingness to play footsie with conspiracy theories.

But some of those donors are now bailing, because it looks increasingly as if DeSantis’s intolerance and conspiracy theorizing weren’t a political show — they’re who he really is. And the big money was looking for a charlatan, not a genuine fanatic.

Among the forces pushing a DeSantis candidacy has been Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News. Fox was essentially founded to carry out the right-wing strategy of pushing plutocratic policy while winning over working-class whites with intolerance and conspiracy theories. But emails and texts uncovered by the defamation suit by Dominion Voting Systems show that Fox has become a prisoner of the audience it created. It found itself endorsing claims about a stolen election, even though its own people knew they were false, because it feared losing market share among viewers who wanted to believe the Big Lie.

And does anyone doubt that if the Republican primary goes the way it seems to be heading, Fox will soon be back in Trump’s corner?

Rupert Murdoch’s organization, then, has effectively been taken hostage by the very forces he helped conjure up.

But Elon Musk’s story is, if anything, even sadder. As Kara Swisherrecently noted for Time magazine, he’s become “the world’s richest online troll.” The crazy he helped foment hasn’t taken over his organization — it has taken over his mind.

I still believe that the concentration of wealth at the top is undermining democracy. But it isn’t a simple story of plutocratic rule. It is, instead, a story in which the attempts of the superrich to get what they want have unleashed forces that may destroy America as we know it. And it’s terrifying.

GOP Doesn't Want Democracy - They Want A Plutocracy

The Republican Party has made it very clear recently that they don't want a democracy in this country. What do they want? The same thing they've always wanted -- a plutocracy (rule by the wealthy).

Here is part of how Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman describes it:

I can’t tell you what the official Republican economic program is, because the party doesn’t have one — in fact, it has made a point of not saying what it will do if it regains power.

We do, however, know what the party did when it was last in power: It gave huge tax cuts to the wealthy, while almost succeeding in repealing the Affordable Care Act, which would have caused tens of millions of Americans to lose health insurance. There’s no reason to believe it won’t once again pursue anti-worker, pro-plutocrat policies if it regains control.

At the state level, the debacle in Kansas has apparently done nothing to shake Republicans’ faith in the magical power of tax cuts for the affluent. Mississippi — America’s poorest state, with the lowest life expectancy and facing a collapse of its rural hospitals — is slashing income taxes.

And recently Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who heads the Republican senatorial campaign, released a “Rescue America” plan that called for tax increases on the half of Americans whose incomes are low enough that they don’t pay income taxes (even though they pay payroll taxes, sales taxes and so on). He also warned, falsely, that Social Security and Medicare are headed for bankruptcy, without offering any suggestions about how to preserve them.

Senior Republicans have said that they don’t support Scott’s agenda, but haven’t explained what their actual agenda is — and have left Scott in his key campaign position, suggesting that his views have wide support within the party.

So everything suggests that the Republican Party is as pro-wealthy, anti-worker as ever. Unlike right-wing European parties, it hasn’t made any gestures toward actual populism. Why?

The answer, presumably, is that the G.O.P. caters to plutocrats, even as it attacks “elites,” because it thinks it can. After all, being nice to plutocrats and crony capitalists can yield tangible rewards, not just in the form of campaign contributions but also in the form of personal enrichment.

And the Republican Party doesn’t believe that it will pay any price for pursuing these rewards. It believes that its supporters will focus on denunciations of critical race theory and buy into conspiracy theories — almost half of Republicans agree that top Democrats are involved in child sex-trafficking — while not even being aware of what the party is doing for the very rich. After The Times revealed Jared Kushner’s highly questionable $2 billion dealwith the Saudis, Fox News simply ignored the report, while harping endlessly on Hunter Biden.

I wish I could say with any confidence that this cynicism will backfire. But I can’t. In particular, Democrats who want to campaign on bread-and-butter issues are assuming that voters will understand who’s actually buttering their bread. And that doesn’t look at all like a safe assumption. 

Supreme Court Justices: As Rich As Members Of Congress

We already know that the members of Congress are some of the richest people in this country, and as a whole, this is the richest Congress this nation has ever had -- making it understandable why they have so little understanding or care for those Americans struggling to keep their heads above water financially.

We also know that the president is a billionaire, and his cabinet is made up mostly of millionaires and billionaires.

Now the Center for Public Integrity gives us the estimated minimum wealth of the justices of the United States Supreme Court -- and it turns out to also be a millionaire's club.

It is now a fact that the majority of all three branches of our government is made up of millionaires. The country is being ruled by the wealthy (and sadly, for the wealthy).

The PLUTOCRACY is here!

The Plutocracy Is Here - Say Goodbye To Democracy

Americans like to think of their government as being a democracy (actually a representative democracy) -- rule by the people. But for a while now, many (including me) have been warning that we are well on the way to abandoning our democracy in favor of a plutocracy -- rule by the wealthy. And with the election of Donald Trump, we may well have crossed the line into a true plutocracy.

The current Congress, for the first time, had a majority of members who were millionaires -- and the incoming Congress did not change that. Add in the fact that we will soon have a self-reported multi-billionaire as president. And then we have the cabinet that billionaire has picked so far -- the people who will direct and set policy for the many government departments.

The 17 people Trump has chosen so far for cabinet-level positions have a combined wealth of $9.5 billion. That's more money than the combined wealth of about a third of the households in the United States -- the 43 million least wealthy households. That is unprecedented.

One has to wonder if any of those people have actually done any real work in their lives. Do they have any conception of how difficult it is for hard-working Americans to buy food, shelter, and clothing for their families? Do they understand that half of all Americans live within 150% of the poverty line, and are just a paycheck or two away from poverty? Do they understand that ordinary working Americans need government to actually help, instead of just breaking promises?

I doubt it. They seem to think that giving more to the rich will help all Americans. It won't, as we have seen. That has been tried for decades now, and it has been a miserable failure.

The truth is that ordinary Americans have little to no voice in their government anymore. We have a government of the rich and for the rich -- a plutocracy. Kiss democracy goodbye, because it's fading fast.

Plutocracy Is Here - Trump Has Richest Cabinet In History

(Cartoon image is by Steve Sack in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.)

Many people (including me) have warned that we are losing our democracy. It is becoming a plutocracy (rule by the wealthy class). The current Congress has a median wealth of more than a million dollars, and a majority of members of Congress are millionaires -- and I expect the incoming Congress will not change that.

In addition, we will soon have our first billionaire president -- and he is filling his cabinet with billionaires and millionaires. He had promised to drain the Washington swamp, but he's just filling that swamp with bigger monsters -- rich people who lick their chops at the prospect of making themselves (and their peers) even richer at the expense of all other Americans.

The following article, written by Jim Tankersley and Ana Swanson for The Washington Post, discusses how Trump is in the process of appointing the richest presidential cabinet in the history of this country.

When George W. Bush assembled his first Cabinet in 2001, news reports dubbed them a team of millionaires, and government watchdogs questioned whether they were out of touch with most Americans’ problems. Combined, that group had an inflation-adjusted net worth of about $250 million — which is roughly one-tenth the wealth of Donald Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary alone.

Trump is putting together what will be the wealthiest administration in modern American history. His announced nominees for top positions include several multimillionaires, an heir to a family mega-fortune and two Forbes-certified billionaires, one of whose family is worth as much as industrial tycoon Andrew Mellon was when he served as treasury secretary nearly a century ago. Rumored candidates for other positions suggest Trump could add more ultra-rich appointees soon.

Many of the Trump appointees were born wealthy, attended elite schools and went on to amass even larger fortunes as adults. As a group, they have much more experience funding political candidates than they do running government agencies.

Their collective wealth in many ways defies Trump’s populist campaign promises. Their business ties, particularly to Wall Street, have drawn rebukes from Democrats. . . .

“It fits into Trump’s message that he’s trying to do business in an unusual way, by bringing in these outsiders,” said Nicole Hemmer, an assistant professor in presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. But Trump and his team, she added, won’t be able to draw on the same sort of life struggles that President Obama did, in crafting policy to lift poor and middle-class Americans.

“They’re just not going to have any access to that” life experience, she said. “I guess it will be a test — does empathy actually matter? If you’re able to echo back what people are telling you, is that enough?”

Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary is industrialist Wilbur Ross, who has amassed a fortune of $2.5 billion through decades at the helm of Rothschild’s bankruptcy practice and his own investment firm, according to Forbes.

Ross’ would-be deputy at the Commerce Department, Todd Ricketts, is the son of a billionaire and the co-owner of the Chicago Cubs. Steven Mnuchin, who Trump named to head the Treasury Department, is a former Goldman Sachs executive, hedge fund executive and Hollywood financier.

Betsy DeVos, a Michigan billionaire who was named as Trump’s education secretary, is the daughter-in-law of Richard DeVos, the co-founder of Amway. Her family has a net worth of $5.1 billion, according to Forbes. Elaine Chao, the choice for transportation secretary, is the daughter of a shipping magnate.

It is a group that has long spent big to influence politics. Mnuchin, Ross and DeVos each made hundreds of thousands of dollars of political contributions within the last two years, according to OpenSecrets.org. . . .

The question now is whether public officials who come from such privileged backgrounds will favor policies that benefit the rich.

“This isn’t a criticism or a conspiracy . . . but it’s important to recognize that everyone’s perspective and policy and government is shaped by the kind of life you’ve lived,” said Nicholas Carnes, a political scientist at Duke University. “The research really says that when you put a bunch of millionaires in charge, you can expect public policy that helps millionaires at the expense of everybody else.”

Future appointments could further increase the wealth of Trump’s cabinet. Harold Hamm — a self-made oil industry executive who ranks 30th on the Forbes 400, a list of the wealthiest Americans, with a net worth of $16.7 billion, — is on Trump’s shortlist for secretary of energy. Andrew Puzder, a restaurant industry executive, has been floated for labor secretary.

Has Our Democracy Already Become A Plutocracy ?

The figure above is true, and it is very troubling. Actually, the figure for Congress is slightly higher. For the first time in our history, the Congress (the 113th Congress) had a majority of its members (51%) that had at least a million dollars in individual wealth. And every single member makes about four times the median income of American workers in salary. That means even the poorest member of Congress makes four times more money than half of all Americans.

Is it any wonder that they don't understand how hard it is for most Americans in this economy? Is this why they don't understand how hard it is for a person to live on the minimum wage (about $15,080 a year for a full-time worker) -- let alone try to support a family on that tiny income? Could this be why they don't see the damage they are doing by shipping good jobs to low-wage countries and replacing them with low-wage and low-benefit jobs in this country -- thus shrinking the size of the middle class?

The truth is that most in Congress don't really care about poor, working class, or middle class Americans. What they do care about is lowering their own taxes and those of their rich friends. And they are perfectly willing to throw most other Americans under the bus to accomplish that -- especially the Republicans, who now control both houses of Congress.

In a democracy, all of the people have a say. In a plutocracy, everything is decided by the wealthy class. Looking at the image above, it seems that we may already be living in the beginnings of a plutocracy -- or at least well on our way toward that.

We need to change this, but the prospect of that happening is remote -- thanks to a loosening of campaign finance laws by the Supreme Court in several misguided decisions. In the last election, about 4.75 million small donors (donors giving $200 or less) contributed about $356 million to political campaigns. That was almost matched by only 100 rich donors, who gave $323 million.

That would be bad enough, but the rich then gave another $219 million in dark money -- money spent on political campaigns that doesn't have to be reported to the Federal Elections Commission. That means a few rich people (mostly Republicans) gave $186 million more than nearly 5 million small donors (mostly Democrats) -- and the rich are expected to spend even more in the 2016 election.

Welcome to the plutocracy!

(This cartoon image is by Matt Wuerker at politico.com.)

The Stealth Oligarchy

On his own blog, Texas progressive Jim Hightower has written one of the best commentaries on the 2014 election that I have read. I bring you his commentary because I think it should be read by as many people as possible (so we can hopefully make the changes necessary to save our representative democracy). He says:

A stunning surprise coming out of this year’s elections is that the most dominant contenders were not glad-handing braggarts, but the least likely of participants: Shy people. 

That’s strange, since running for office these days is assumed to be an ego game, attracting the loudest of self-promoters. But the big winners on Tuesday were a group that actually campaigned anonymously, not even whispering their names to the voters.

Indeed, these were not the candidates listed on your ballot, but shadow candidates that are not even people. They are corporations that have been empowered by the Frankenstein-majority on our Supreme Court to exercise the political rights of us real human-type persons. Only they’ve been endowed with far more political power than you and me, for the Court decreed that these corporate “persons” can spend unlimited amounts of their shareholders’ money on TV ads and other campaign tools to elect or defeat whomever they choose – without disclosing their names to voters.

What we have here is the rise of a stealth oligarchy in America. These politically shy corporations are pumping untold millions of dollars out of their practically bottomless corporate treasuries to elect Congress-critters, governors, and ultimately presidents who will serve their narrow special interests at the expense of the public interest. You would know these cagey corporate campaigners, for they are major brand names from Big Oil, Big Food, Big Pharma, etc. Normally, they’re not at all timid about promoting themselves, but – shhhh – they don’t want us to have any inkling that they’re running surreptitious, multimillion-dollar campaigns that have become a deciding factor in who holds public office in America.

One reason they hide their names is that they run overwhelmingly negative campaigns, degrading our so-called political discourse with the most disgusting, mendacious, and vitriolic smears against the opponents of the corporate-friendly candidates they hope to elect. They would never want such slime attached to their corporate brands, for it would anger and repel their customers, employees, and shareholders. That's why their lawyers pushed the Supreme Court so hard to let them do their repugnant politicking, yet not have to be accountable for it.

Another reason that corporations want to "vote" in our elections without showing their identities is that honest disclosure would tarnish their favored candidates as shameless corporate toadies. If ExxonMobil had to reveal that it put up $50,000 or $100,000 or more to elect Bob Bogus from Bogullusa to Congress, voters would surely suspect that Bob was going to back Exxon's plan to frack their community. With the legalization of secrete campaigns, however, Exxon can hitch Bob to its wagon without voters even knowing.

We're about to see this formula of secret money = election = bad policy in action. Just in terms of campaign donations it disclosed, Wall Street put more money than ever into this year's elections, and a bigger portion of that than ever went to Republicans. We don't know how much dark money the banksters donated to the GOP because, obviously, the donors can keep that their little secret. But we do know that the new Republican Congress has gleefully declared Wall Street deform one of its top priorities.

Following the greed-fueled financial meltdown of 2008, reformers passed the Dodd-Frank bill, imposing modest restrictions on Wall Street's reckless speculation and setting up a new consumer watchdog to protect people from predatory financial greed. Even though both reforms have proven beneficial, and even no GOP candidate dared to promise voters that "I'll kill those protections and unleash the arrogant greedmeisters on your again" – that's exactly what the Republican majority will now vote to do.

The message of this election is that money matters – it matters more than what We The People want lawmakers to do, or not do. At the very least, shouldn't we be told the truth about who's buying what with their massive, self-serving political spending?

How ironic that cynical lawmakers demand that us commoners show our picture on an official "voter ID" card in order to be allowed to cast a ballot, yet they allow enormously rich corporations to buy our elections (and, therefore, our public policies) without showing a "Donor ID" card. If you're wondering who's in charge, there it is.

To battle oligarchic rule-by-money, connect with Public Citizen: www.citizen.org.

The Right-Wing War On Democracy In The U.S.

(This caricature of economist Paul Krugman is by DonkeyHotey.)

Republicans like to mouth concerns about our democracy, but that is just to hoodwink American voters. For a long time now they have been actively fighting against our representative democracy. They think political power should rest with a special class of people -- rich white people (preferably men). They believe the poor, the working class, minorities, and women are not capable of ruling, and they have instituted economic and electoral policies that favor the rich. In short, they want to replace our representative democracy with a plutocracy (rule by a wealthy class).

Here is how economist Paul Krugman puts it in his column for the New York Times:

. . . the political right has always been uncomfortable with democracy. No matter how well conservatives do in elections, no matter how thoroughly free-market ideology dominates discourse, there is always an undercurrent of fear that the great unwashed will vote in left-wingers who will tax the rich, hand out largess to the poor, and destroy the economy.

In fact, the very success of the conservative agenda only intensifies this fear. Many on the right — and I’m not just talking about people listening to Rush Limbaugh; I’m talking about members of the political elite — live, at least part of the time, in an alternative universe in which America has spent the past few decades marching rapidly down the road to serfdom. Never mind the new Gilded Age that tax cuts and financial deregulation have created; they’re reading books with titles like “A Nation of Takers: America’s Entitlement Epidemic,” asserting that the big problem we have is runaway redistribution.

This is a fantasy. Still, is there anything to fears that economic populism will lead to economic disaster? Not really. Lower-income voters are much more supportive than the wealthy toward policies that benefit people like them, and they generally support higher taxes at the top. But if you worry that low-income voters will run wild, that they’ll greedily grab everything and tax job creators into oblivion, history says that you’re wrong. All advanced nations have had substantial welfare states since the 1940s — welfare states that, inevitably, have stronger support among their poorer citizens. But you don’t, in fact, see countries descending into tax-and-spend death spirals — and no, that’s not what ails Europe.

Still, while the “kind of politics and policies” that responds to the bottom half of the income distribution won’t destroy the economy, it does tend to crimp the incomes and wealth of the 1 percent, at least a bit; the top 0.1 percent is paying quite a lot more in taxes right now than it would have if Mr. Romney had won. So what’s a plutocrat to do?

One answer is propaganda: tell voters, often and loudly, that taxing the rich and helping the poor will cause economic disaster, while cutting taxes on “job creators” will create prosperity for all. There’s a reason conservative faith in the magic of tax cuts persists no matter how many times such prophecies fail (as is happening right now in Kansas): There’s a lavishly funded industry of think tanks and media organizations dedicated to promoting and preserving that faith.

Another answer, with a long tradition in the United States, is to make the most of racial and ethnic divisions — government aid just goes to Those People, don’t you know. And besides, liberals are snooty elitists who hate America.

A third answer is to make sure government programs fail, or never come into existence, so that voters never learn that things could be different.

But these strategies for protecting plutocrats from the mob are indirect and imperfect. The obvious answer is . . . Don’t let the bottom half, or maybe even the bottom 90 percent, vote.

And now you understand why there’s so much furor on the right over the alleged but actually almost nonexistent problem of voter fraud, and so much support for voter ID laws that make it hard for the poor and even the working class to cast ballots. American politicians don’t dare say outright that only the wealthy should have political rights — at least not yet. But if you follow the currents of thought now prevalent on the political right to their logical conclusion, that’s where you end up.

The truth is that a lot of what’s going on in American politics is, at root, a fight between democracy and plutocracy. And it’s by no means clear which side will win.

Public Has An Amazing Level Of Ignorance About Politics

Thomas Jefferson said, "No one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in its effect toward supporting free and good government." In other words, he believed an educated population was necessary for the survival of a democratic government such as the one our Founding Fathers established.

Unfortunately, I think Jefferson's confidence would be shattered if he knew just how ignorant the American public is about politics, and the political system they live under.

I wrote a post a little over a week ago that showed a significant portion of the American people couldn't even tell you which political party controls the U.S. Senate and House. Now I've learned of a survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center (done between July 8th and 14th of a random national sample of 1,416 adults, with a margin of error of 3.06 points) may well have been too generous regarding the knowledge of Americans about their government.

The Annenberg survey showed that only 38% of the public knows that Republicans control the House of Representatives and Democrats control the Senate. That would be amazing enough, but its only the tip of the ignorance iceberg. It turns out that only 36% of the public could name all three branches of government, only 27% knew it takes a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate to override a presidential veto, and less than half (47%) knew that a 5 to 4 vote in the Supreme Court was binding as law.

Frankly, I'm shocked. It doesn't take a college graduate, or even a high school graduate, to know those things. They are taught in junior high. It does help explain why so many of these people vote Republican though -- and stand by while those Republicans destroy our representative democracy, turning it into a corporate-controlled plutocracy (rule by a wealthy class).

(Note -- The image above was found at cafepress.com.)

Half Believe Elections Are Rigged To Favor Incumbents

This is an interesting statistic. It seems that nearly half of all Americans (48%) believe the congressional elections are not fair -- that they are rigged to favor the incumbents. Only 39% see the elections as fair.

I think that 48% are correct. But it's not necessarily because of any nefarious political machinations. It's because of the way our elections are financed. Our elections for Congress have become so expensive that only the rich can run (or someone who has already sold out to monied interests for large donations) -- and the minute they get elected, they start getting money for lobbyists to support special interests with their votes (money they need to get re-elected if they are not filthy rich).

And while the incumbents are getting all that special interest money, their opponents in the next election are begging for money just to fund a meager campaign effort. This means every incumbent, regardless of political party, starts a new election campaign far ahead of his/her opponent in funding.

This illustrates the need to change how we run our elections in the United States. Personally, I think the best way to do that is to publicly fund all elections. Give all candidates who can demonstrate a minimum level of support (say 5% or so) the same amount of money, and make it illegal to spend any more than the amount they have received. Of course, this will only work if all spending by outside groups (like PACs) is outlawed. But that should be done anyway, whether we go to a system of publicly financing campaigns or not.

I also think the media should be mandated once again to provide equal time to all candidates (at least all candidates showing enough support to be publicly funded). I don't understand why we stopped the equal time provisions for elections. Are fair elections such a terrible thing? Do we really want to be ruled by candidates who have been bought by the rich and special interests (or who are rich enough to buy their own election)?

The public is right. Our elections are rigged to favor incumbents, and that is allowing the rich and corporate interests to buy our elections. And this buying of elections is killing our democracy -- and replacing it with a plutocracy that rules for the benefit of the wealthy only.

The figures above are from a new Rasmussen Poll, done on July 9th and 10th of 1,000 likely voters nationwide (with a 3 point margin of error).

Oligarchy Errand Boys

The Mad Dash Toward Oligarchy

A few days ago, Bill Moyers (pictured) had Paul Krugman as a guest on his show. They discussed the book "Capita; in the Twenty-First Century", and how it applies to what is happening to the economy of the United States (which is becoming more unequal all the time). It was an excellent discussion, and I recommend you either read or listen to the whole thing. Here is Moyers' epilogue to the conversation:

The evidence keeps mounting. Just this past Tuesday, the 15th of April, Tax Day, the AFL-CIO reported that last year the chief executive officers of 350 top American corporations were paid 331 times more money than the average US worker. Those executives made an average of $11.7 million compared to the average worker who earned $35,239.

As that analysis circulated on Tax Day, the economist Robert Reich reminded us that in addition to getting the largest percent of total national income in nearly a century, many in the one percent are paying a lower federal tax rate than a lot of people in the middle-class. You will, no doubt, remember that an obliging Congress, of both parties, allows high rollers of finance the privilege of carried interest, a tax rate below that of their secretaries and clerks. And at state and local levels, while the poorest 20 percent of Americans pay an average tax rate of over 11 percent, the richest one percent of the country pays half that rate. Now, neither nature nor nature’s God drew up our tax codes. That’s the work of legislators, politicians, and it’s one way they have, as Chief Justice John Roberts might put it, of expressing gratitude to their donors. Oh, Mr. Adelson, we so appreciate your generosity that we cut your estate taxes so you can give $8 billion as a tax-free payment to your heirs, even though down the road the public will have to put up $2.8 billion to compensate for the loss in tax revenues.

All of which makes truly repugnant the argument, heard so often from courtiers of the rich, that inequality doesn’t matter. Of course it matters. Inequality is what has turned Washington into a protection racket for the one percent. It buys all those goodies from government: tax breaks, tax havens, allowing corporations and the rich to park their money in a no-tax zone, loopholes, favors like carried interest, and on, and on, and on.

Listen, there’s a big study coming out in the fall from Martin Gilens at Princeton and Benjamin Page at Northwestern, based on data collected between 1981 and 2002. Their conclusion, quote, “… America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened … the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

Sad, that it’s come to this. The drift toward oligarchy that Thomas Piketty describes in his formidable book has become a mad dash, and it will overrun us, and overwhelm us, unless we stop it.

Record Amount Of Outside Money Flowing Into The Election

The chart above (from PBS Newshour) shows the shocking results from recent Supreme Court decisions (particularly Citizens United vs. FEC, which ruled that outside groups can spend unlimited amount of money to influence elections in the United States).

2010 was the first off-year election to see a significant amount of outside money being spent. About $23 million was spent in the first quarter of that election year. That pales however to the amount that was spent in the first quarter of 2014 by outside groups -- about $56 million (more than twice as much as was spent in 2010). And this is well before most primaries have been held and the general election season has started. Some are predicting that over $500 million will be spent by outside groups in this election.

As the chart below shows, so far most of that outside money (about $32 million) has been spent in just six states -- North Carolina, Arkansas, Alaska, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Georgia. And twice as much has been spent to support Republicans as was spent to support Democrats.

I believe this is one of the biggest dangers facing our democracy, and it is quickly turning the democrat into a plutocracy (rule by the rich). We need to fix this -- even if it takes a constitutional amendment to do it.

Welcome To The Plutocracy

Hit The Koch Brothers Where It Hurts - In The Pocketbook

(This caricature of the right-wing extremist Koch brothers is by DonkeyHotey.)

David and Charles Koch are multi-billionaires, and they think they can use that money to buy a government that will tilt the economic playing field even more in their favor. Toward that end, these extremist right-wingers spent hundreds of millions of dollars in 2012 to get teabagger GOP politicians elected -- and it is expected they will spend just as much (or more) in 2014 and 2016.

It is time for ordinary American citizens to fight back, and show the Koch brothers that we want a democracy -- not a plutocracy with them giving all the orders. We can do this in a couple of ways. First, and most important, go to the polls and vote this November -- and vote against the right-wing Republicans being funded by the Koch brothers. If enough people show up at the polls, it won't matter how much money the Koch's spend.

Second, we can hit them in the pocketbook. Simply don't buy any products made by companies owned or controlled by the Koch brothers. If they are going to spend some of their profits trying to turn America into a fascist plutocracy, then make sure they don't make any of that profit off of you. Personally, I think this is something all moderates and progressives should be doing.  Here is a list of Koch brothers companies and products (from The Fifth Column).

Koch Industry Gasoline:

Chevron
Union
Union 76
Conoco

Koch Industry/Georgia-Pacific Products:

Angel Soft toilet paper
Brawny paper towels
Dixie plates, bowls, napkins and cups
Mardi Gras napkins and towels
Quilted Northern toilet paper
Soft ‘n Gentle toilet paper
Sparkle napkins
Vanity fair napkins
Zee napkins

Koch Industry/Invista Products:

COMFOREL® fiberfill
COOLMAX® fabric
CORDURA® fabric
DACRON® fiber
POLYSHIELD® resin
SOLARMAX® fabric
SOMERELLE® bedding products
STAINMASTER® carpet
SUPPLEX® fabric
TACTEL® fiber
TACTESSE® carpet fiber
TERATE® polyols
TERATHANE® polyether glycol
THERMOLITE® fabric
PHENREZ® resin
POLARGUARD® fiber and
LYCRA® fiber

Georgia Pacific Building products

Dense Armor Drywall and Decking
ToughArmor Gypsum board
Georgia pacific Plytanium Plywood
Flexrock
Densglass sheathing
G/P Industrial plasters (some products used by a lot of crafters)-
Agricultural Plaster
Arts & Crafts Plaster
Dental Plaster
General Purpose Plaster
Glass-reinforced Gypsum (GRG)
Industrial Tooling Plaster
Investment Casting Plaster
Medical Plaster
Metal Casting Plaster
Pottery Plaster
FibreStrong Rim board
G/P Lam board
Blue Ribbon OSB Rated Sheathing
Blue Ribbon Sub-floor
DryGuard Enhanced OSB
Nautilus Wall Sheathing
Thermostat OSB Radiant Barrier Sheathing
Broadspan Engineered Wood Products
XJ 85 I-Joists
FireDefender Banded Cores
FireDefender FS
FireDefender Mineral Core
Hardboard and Thin MDF including Auto Hardboard,
Perforated Hardboard and Thin MDF
Wood Fiberboard -
Commercial Roof Fiberboard
Hushboard Sound Deadening Board
Regular Fiberboard Sheathing
Structural Fiberboard Sheathing

Bernie Asks -- Democracy Or Oligarchy ?

This article by Senator Bernie Sanders appeared in The Huffington Post on March 31st. In it, he lays out the difference between what progressives want and what the extreme right wants. It boils down to a choice between democracy or oligarchy (plutocracy) -- a government of the people or a government by the wealthy few. Bernie says:

In his 1943 painting "Freedom of Speech," Norman Rockwell illustrated American democracy in action by depicting a man speaking up at a town meeting. A framed poster of Rockwell's painting hangs proudly on a wall in my Senate office in Burlington, Vt.

Since 1990, when I was first elected to Congress, I have held hundreds of town meetings in almost every community in Vermont. Just this past Sunday I held a town meeting in Middlebury, Vt., with a video connection to meetings in three other towns. At these town meetings I listen to what my constituents have to say, answer questions and give a rundown of what I'm working on and what's going on in Washington.

This process -- an elected official meeting with ordinary citizens -- is called "democracy."

Ironically, at the same time as I was holding town meetings in Vermont, a handful of prospective 2016 Republican presidential candidates (Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Chris Christie and Scott Walker) trekked to Las Vegas to audition for the support of Sheldon Adelson, the multibillionaire casino tycoon who spent at least $93 million underwriting conservative candidates in the last election cycle. Those candidates were in Las Vegas for the sole purpose of attempting to win hundreds of millions from him for their presidential campaigns.

The disastrous 2010 Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United threw out campaign funding laws that limited what wealthy individuals and corporations could spend on elections. Since that ruling, campaign spending by Adelson, the Koch brothers and a handful of other billionaire families has fundamentally undermined American democracy. If present trends continue, elections will not be decided by one-person, one-vote, but by a small number of very wealthy families who spend huge amounts of money supporting right-wing candidates who protect their interests.

This process -- a handful of the wealthiest people in our country controlling the political process -- is called "oligarchy."

The great political struggle we now face is whether the United States retains its democratic heritage or whether we move toward an oligarchic form of society where the real political power rests with a handful of billionaires, not ordinary Americans.

Clearly, if we are to retain the fundamentals of American democracy, we need to overturn the Supreme Court decision. The fact that more than 500 communities and 16 states have expressed support for overturning Citizens United is a good step forward, but much more needs to be done.

Overturning Citizens United, however, is not enough. If we are serious about elections being fought over ideas, we must move toward public funding of elections.