The Double Standard

If you want the most fundamental issue that Americans have with whoever may be the incumbent party in charge, it’s the fact that squeaky wheels with media access, well-funded special interests and wealthy constituents (individual and corporate) get one set of rules and privileges, and the rest of us remain fundamentally underrepresented by our elected representatives. A piece of legislation may start with the best of intentions, but by the time it is processed in our nation’s capital or our many state capitals, the people consistently lose, and the special interests consistently win. Just look at the past few months of abortive legislation under the Obama administration, as fractious Democrats and doctrinaire “purity” Republicans dealt with major issues facing this country:

Banking: We stimulated and reduced Federal Reserve interest rates to get America rolling again, to get the credit markets restarted and to slow if not stop an economic collapse. Result: credit markets further contracted for small and middle-level businesses, corporations were incented to lay people off thus increasing the unemployment rate under pressure from Wall Street to cut, and most of that Fed money the financial institutions borrowed was used to fund their trading activities… making them rich while the rest of the country suffered. Home prices continued to tumble as buyers could not get financing and as laid-off workers defaulted on their mortgages. And rewriting the regulatory schema of this country to prevent a repeat of the Wall Street-induced economic calamity? Fo’getaboutit! Whatever watered-down version of any new regulations we get are hardly going to restrain a loop-hole-infested-I’ll-pay-mega-bonuses-no-matter-what financial sector that seems to have Washington bought and paid for and tied up with be big red ribbon. And as Democrats escalate the rhetoric against unbridled financial power, Wall Street is making sure that the politicians know where their campaign contributions are going next: “Republicans are rushing to capitalize on what they call Wall Street’s ‘buyer’s remorse’ with the Democrats. And industry executives and lobbyists are warning Democrats that if Mr. Obama keeps attacking Wall Street ‘fat cats,’ they may fight back by withholding their cash… ‘If the president wanted to turn every Democrat on Wall Street into a Republican,’ one industry lobbyist said, ‘he is doing everything right.’” Feb. 8^th NY Times.

Healthcare: Every significant cost-savings element of the proposed Senate plan (now dead in the water, where it should be but for the wrong reason) was eviscerated as business lobbies created false explanations in the media of what the plan really represented (“death panels,” “taking away our free choice,” “destroying American competition,” etc.), and Congressmen and women, who run for office all the time and need special interest funding to get elected, were battered with well funded lobbies from their biggest contributors to kill off “cost-savings,” because they would no longer be able to gouge the American public. What really happened? We lost the public option, which would have created competitive pressure on the lower-end of the insurance market, and we lost importing prescription drugs from vastly-less-expensive Europe or Canada (for the same drugs) under the incredibly stupid premise that we couldn’t police drug standards on imports. The Senate bill was among the worst pieces of legislation ever created… even exempting an entire state – Nebraska – from Medicaid contributions in exchange for a vote. Instead of cost-controlling an out-of-control medical industry – what the average American would like to see – the proposals would have created a massive new federal expenditures without addressing personal needs of those folks in the middle.

Education: With public and private primary and secondary schools laying off teachers, and with the cost of a college or vocational education sliding past the affordability index for most Americans – financial aid is becoming a distant memory – the simplest attempts to help average Americans afford to give their children a decent education (and America a future) are met with special interest stone walls. The February 4^th New York Times: “Four months ago, it appeared all but certain that the White House and Democrats in Congress would succeed in overhauling the student loan business and ending government subsidies to private lenders… President Obama called the idea a ‘no-brainer’ last fall, predicting it would take billions of dollars from the profits of private lenders and give it directly to students, and many colleges were already moving to get loans directly from the federal government in anticipation of the next move by Congress….But an aggressive lobbying campaign by the nation’s biggest student lenders has now put one of the White House’s signature plans in peril, with lenders using sit-downs with lawmakers, town-hall-style meetings and petition drives to plead their case and stay in business...The fierce attacks from the lending industry… have … damaged the chances for the student loan measure, said the aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.” These are our children people… and the only possible way for us to pay back our massive deficits with a powerful, value-added work force… and that value comes from education! Education Secretary Arne Duncan on February 9^th: “Working Americans pay while bankers get rich… Sallie Mae executives have paid themselves hundreds of millions of dollars in the last decade while teachers, nurses, and scientists -- the backbone of the new economy -- face crushing debt because of runaway college tuition costs.”

As the dollar sinks slowly (not so slowly, actually) in the West, as the Supreme Court has empowered the mega-wealthy special interests to buy mass media without restriction to favor their candidates, and special interests require lockstep “purity” tests (eliminating the fact that our elected representatives are supposed to exercise their individual best judgment on issues), it seems that this double standard is being reinforced with concrete and steel. For anyone who has spent time reading about the history of civilizations and what ultimately brings down even the most powerful that ever existed on this earth… it’s time to take a good look at ourselves, a society poised for a period of precipitous decline. Ruling almost exclusively for a particular elite is fatal to a nation’s survival. It’s time to be afraid, very afraid.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we still can fight back!