By John W. Whitehead
“The
shaping of the will of Congress and the choosing of the American
president has become a privilege reserved to the country’s equestrian
classes, a.k.a. the 20% of the population that holds 93% of the wealth,
the happy few who run the corporations and the banks, own and operate
the news and entertainment media, compose the laws and govern the
universities, control the philanthropic foundations,
the policy institutes, the casinos, and the sports arenas.” –
Journalist Lewis Lapham
~
The
pomp and circumstance of the presidential inauguration has died down.
Members of Congress have taken their seats on Capitol Hill,
and Barack Obama has reclaimed his seat in the White House. The circus
of the presidential election has become a faint memory. The long months
of debates, rallies, and political advertisements have slipped from our
consciousness. Now we are left with the feeling
that nothing has really changed, nor will it.
This
is not by accident. The media circus leading up to the elections, the
name calling in the halls of Congress, the vitriol and barbs
traded back and forth among people who are supposed to be working
together to improve the country, are all components of the game set up
by those who run the show. The movers and shakers behind these engaging,
but ultimately trite, political exercises are
the elite, the so-called upper class, who benefit from the status quo.
This status quo is marked by an economic crisis with no end in sight, by
the slow but steady growth of a police state aimed at the lowest rungs
of society, and a political circus which
keeps us enraptured long enough that we don’t question what’s really
going on.
Meanwhile,
this elite, composed of corporations profiting off of our ignorance,
avoid being brought to task for their destruction of democratic
governance and the economy. These are the corporations who sent our
economy into a tail spin and were then rewarded with taxpayer money.
These are the corporations who write laws which eliminate real
competition in the market in order to secure their profits
through lucrative government contracts. These are the corporations who
avoid criminal prosecution, and are instead slapped with meager fines
which do nothing to halt their felonious activities.
We
now live in a two-tiered system of justice and governance. There are
two sets of laws: one set for the government and the corporations,
and another set for you and me.
The
laws which apply to the majority of the population allow the government
to do things like rectally probe you during a roadside stop,
or listen in on your phone calls and read all of your email messages,
or indefinitely detain you in a military holding cell. These are the
laws which are executed every single day against a population which has
up until now been blissfully ignorant of the
radical shift taking place in American government.
Then
there are the laws constructed for the elite, which allow bankers who
crash the economy to walk free. They’re the laws which allow
police officers to avoid prosecution when they strip search non-violent
criminals, or taser pregnant women on the side of the road, or pepper
spray peaceful protestors. These are the laws of the new age we are
entering, an age of neo-feudalism, in which corporate-state
rulers dominate the rest of us, where the elite create the laws which
can result in a person being jailed for possessing marijuana while
bankers that launder money for drug cartels walk free.
Unfortunately,
this two-tiered system of justice has been a long time coming. The
march toward an imperial presidency, to congressional
intransigence and impotence, to a corporate takeover of the mechanisms
of government, and the division of America into haves and have nots has
been building for years.
Journalist
Chris Hedges, one of the few voices to speak against the
corporate-state, who has put himself on the line by making a legal
challenge to the President’s authority to indefinitely detain American
citizens, summarizes the situation at hand:
“Our
passivity has resulted… in much more than imperial adventurism and a
permanent underclass. A slow-motion coup by a corporate state
has cemented into place a neofeudalism in which there are only masters
and serfs. And the process is one that cannot be reversed through the
traditional mechanisms of electoral politics.”
Indeed,
electoral politics are off the table as a means of reforming the
system. They are so thoroughly corrupted by corporate money that
there is no chance, even for a well-meaning person, to affect any real
change through Congress.
Just
consider the last election cycle. Both parties spent $1 billion each
attempting to get their candidate elected to the presidency.
This money came from rich donors and corporate sponsors, intent on
getting their candidate in office. This massive spending was mirrored at
the congressional level, where business lobbying soared in the last
three months of the year. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce
alone spent over $125 million attempting to influence members of
Congress, an 88 percent increase from 2011.
Indeed,
lobbyists are the source of much corruption and exchanging of money in
Washington, and their attempts to woo Congressmen only
exacerbate the problems inherent to the institution. Jack Abramoff
should know. Jailed for bribing public officials, the former lobbyist
insists that the system is every bit as corrupt now as it was when he
was convicted. From job offers for staffers and Congressmen
after they leave Capitol Hill, to taking representatives to sporting
events and fancy restaurants, there is no shortage of methods of
influencing public officials to enact the policies of special interests.
According to Abramoff, these tactics are still in
use today, and “the system hasn’t been cleaned up at all.”
Once
their foot is in the door, these lobbyists then offer up language for
legislation that is “so obscure, so confusing, so uninformative,
but so precise” as to make passage as easy as possible. This
legislation cements the privilege of the corporations to do as they
please, making all of their dubious activities “legal.”
This
lobbying is buoyed by a congressional lifestyle which demands that our
representatives spend the majority of their time fund raising
for campaigns, rather than responding to the needs of their
constituents. In November 2012, the Democratic House leadership offered a
model daily schedule to newly elected Democrats which suggests a
ten-hour day, five hours of which are dominated by “call
time” and “strategic outreach,” including fund raisers and
correspondence with potential donors. Three or four hours are for
actually doing the job they were elected to do, such as attending
committee meetings, voting on legislation, and interacting with
constituents.
When
half of one’s time is devoted to asking for money from rich individuals
and special interests, there is no way that he can respond
to the problems which pervade the country. And yet, even Congressmen in
safe seats are expected to fundraise constantly so as to support their
colleagues in competitive districts. As Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) put
it, “…this is the mother’s milk of what [Congressmen]
need to do to try to sustain their campaigns, and it’s the only system
they have to work with.”
Thus,
even well-meaning Congressmen face a Catch-22 where they are pushed to
fundraise to secure their seats, but then once in office,
it is basically impossible for them to do their jobs. The full
ramifications of this are laid out by Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC):
“Any
member who follows that schedule will be completely controlled by their
staff, handed statements that their staff prepared, speaking
from talking points they get emailed from leadership... It really does
affect how members of Congress behave if the most important thing they
think about is fundraising. You end up being nice to people that
probably somebody needs to be questioning skeptically…
You won’t ask tough questions in hearings that might displease
potential contributors, won’t support amendments that might anger them,
will tend to vote the way contributors want you to vote.”
The
influence of corporate money on Congress is exacerbated by how out of
touch Congressmen are with the daily struggles of most Americans.
In February 2012, the median net worth of Congressmen was $913,000 as
compared to $100,000 for the rest of the population. Aside from being
immediately wealthy, Congressmen also weathered the tribulations of the
financial crisis much better than the average
American. An analysis of Congressional finances by the Washington Post
in October 2012 revealed that the wealthiest one-third of Congress was
largely shielded from the effects of the Great Recession.
While the median household net worth of the average American dropped by
39 percent between 2007 and 2010, the median wealth of Congressmen rose
5 percent. It rose 14 percent for the wealthiest one-third.
At
a time when most people in the country are suffering, Congressmen are
profiting. This alone should demonstrate how out of touch our
elected leaders have become. Members of Congress, entrusted to
represent the best interests of the average American, instead play out a
stilted, ineffective soap opera on our TV screens, complete with phony
discussions of fiscal cliffs and debt ceilings which
take the place of real proposals for meaningful change in the country.
There
is no voice for the working American in the halls of Congress, the
American who was promised a life beyond taxes, debt, and unemployment.
There is no voice for the peace loving American, the American who
understands that America’s military might is meant for defense of the
homeland, not looking for trouble in faraway lands. There is no voice
for the American who expects his representatives to
abide by the Constitution, who laments the way Congress, the President,
and the Supreme Court work together to take away our rights piece by
piece.
