Coming in January!

La Politica New Mexico on KTAL LP Radio Las Cruces

THROW THE BASTARDS OUT

The national government, as everyone knows, is a disaster, a staggering drunk belching out shameful legislation that even its sponsors won't defend with a straight face.  Tax policy, as powerful an indicator of fairness in government as it gets, was written in secret by highly partisan agents and donors, and rushed into law without revealing its provisions, which turned out unsurprisingly to be a wish list for the super-rich and the pocketbooks of key Republican senators.  How it was written and what was in it were both grossly unfair, and its advocates, lying, called it a tax cut for the middle class.  

Because trust in Congress, for good reasons, is so low, our finest career bureaucrats were asked, by overwhelming bipartisan consent, to step up as honest brokers of an election scandal that puts into serious question the legitimacy of the current presidency.  But as the facts emerge confirming already strong circumstantial evidence of serious crimes, a chorus of partisan legislators and a potential co-conspirator, the President, demand an end to the inquiry altogether, asserting the President is not beholden to the law.  As a momentous crisis of government looms, news media outlets, using public air waves, gleefully unwrap the dirty linen of celebrities and politicians, while talking heads smilingly debate the tactical intricacies of the latest tweet, their faces full of smug superiority.

The vast majority of Americans have been more outraged by these events than Establishment Washington.   Most GOP voters (who form only 25% of the electorate), while strongly supporting Trump, believe the Republican Party is leading the country in the wrong direction.  Only one Democrat out of twenty, and three of ten Independent voters, approve of Trump’s performance, and seven out of ten Independents, who now form 42% of the electorate, say they are angry at both parties.  Trump’s approval rating at the one-year mark is lower than any president in recent history going back at least to 1953.  Yet Washington continues to act as though everything, including a daily barrage of official lies and shameful actions, is normal.  Something is deeply wrong.  

What is missing in our government is a positive relationship between what Americans want—accessible and affordable health care, a fair shot at upward mobility, a decent safety net, and public institutions that do their job—and what government has been handing them—unwanted wars, reduced upward mobility, bungled health care, cuts to the safety nets, and dysfunctional government.  What meaning does the word democracy have when government output no longer reflects the public will on fundamental issues?

The defining change in America over the past forty years has been the economic stagnation of the vast majority working families despite a tripling (in real dollars) in the size of the economic pie.  This stagnation has taken place with little honest discussion or negotiation.  Large portions of our economy are now dominated by monopolies and oligarchies, accompanied as always by price gouging, poor service, and severely limited competition.  Corporate profits as a share of the economy have risen dramatically since 1952 from 5.5 to 8.5 percent (and recently to more than 10%), while corporate tax revenues as a share of the economy have plummeted from 5.9% to only 1.9 percent.  But who got the recent tax breaks?

None of this could have happened without our politicians enabling it.  In Congress, clause by clause in bipartisan lockstep, regulations meant to keep markets competitive and honest were dismantled, with little or no public debate.  One consequence was the crash of 2008, caused in great part by criminal but unpunished action within our most powerful banking institutions.  In the news media industry bipartisan agreements allowed the concentration of news production into very few hands, some of them eager to sculpt the truth in their owners’ image with little regard for basic standards of veracity.   Our loathing for the breathless , vapid, and ultimately loaded way national issues are covered on our television air waves is such that when Trump expresses his contempt for the media, a sliver of satisfaction passes through us even as we cringe at the boorishness and shady motives underlying his attack.

Do not count on current politicians in either party to rescue us from the one-sided rigging of our economy policy, the deceptive public discourse on much of television, or the current assaults on our democracy.  Congress, political parties, and important sectors of the media have long been heavily subsidized, often secretly, by powerful private interests.  These subsidies are not granted for patriotic reasons and the bills come due behind closed doors. For decades our politicians have worked for their donors, for personal power, for ideologies, and for future cushy jobs on K Street.  But not for you.  Our democratic roots have been decomposing in dark unhealthy corners for many years. As Thomas Jefferson put it, “When in course”…the people must step in.  Time to throw the bastards out, tie a short leash on their replacements, and nurse ourselves back to health.