Where Have All the Americans Gone?

Balancing individual versus majority interests is what America has, at least until recently, been all about. Our very Constitution protects individual rights – free speech and assembly, due process, etc. – even when the majority would not agree. We honor private property and encourage entrepreneurship, but we protect unpopular minority causes from the “tyranny of the majority.” But what happens in a world where elections are long and very expensive processes, where having access to vast pools of cash is the difference between winning and losing, regardless of the underlying message. What happens when only a tyrannical minority can afford to support the money-sucking needs of politicians running for office?

It is precisely the cost of maximizing the reach of the message that has foisted this costly (more social than monetary, if you will) burden on the American constituency. In days where telecommunications were not even remote concepts, public debates and stories in local papers were more than enough. Throw in a few posters nailed to trees, and it was pretty clear that the message was the value proposition, not the cost of getting the message to the voters.

But today, media campaigns turn over millions of dollars. Rich candidates – the Michael Bloomberg, Arnold Schwarzenegger and John Kerry candidacies are good examples – and well-financed persons seeking elective office (just about everybody who won their race) clearly have the advantage. Money buys access regardless of the message, but bad messages can’t triumph even with Scrooge McDuck millions thrown at the constituency.

In the end, we are a nation of special interests. Nebraska Senator (Democrat) Ben Nelson extracted a $100 million to pay the full cost of a Medicaid expansion in Nebraska in exchange for his vote supporting the Senate healthcare reform bill. And no one in their right mind can tell you that the failure to include in that proposed legislation the right to buy pharmaceuticals from safe sources in Canada or Europe was really about purity or safety (hey, if you are worried, buy stuff here) – do you really think Canadians are swallowing poisonous versions of expensive medical drugs? The Democrats couldn’t get enough support in the Senate version of the bill to pass this amendment… within their own party. But with 30 million more customers coming on line, able to afford better medicines, guess who wins completely?! Drug companies! Costs will continue to skyrocket for the rest of us, but good old anti-competitive pharmaceutical companies can ply their monopolies within our borders with continued disdain for the public.

Likewise the “fat cats” (the President’s descriptive epithet for the greedy on Wall Street). So what if they caused the borrowing frenzy that took down our economy? So what if they got big federal TARP checks and almost free fed funds to invest… when ordinary folks couldn’t even access ordinary business credit. They obviously are more tuned in to what gets folks elected, and they win at the expense of the majority of the rest of us. They get the bonuses, and we get prolonged unemployment and impaired credit.

Look at the proliferation of street gangs among the disenfranchised minorities of this nation. Most are vicious street thugs of no redeeming quality, but the existence of these pernicious organizations is clearly a reaction to a feeling of hopeless isolation from the sources of power in this country. And as gangs grow, eating away at American cities and, increasingly, smaller communities, as fat cats get fatter and government programs intended to benefit the majority get hijacked and become vehicles for greater consumer costs and an increasingly unwieldy healthcare system… where are those who are really looking out for the greater good for the American body politic? Playing favorites, denying justice, and raging polarizing fractionalization… Where are those fighting for a better America ?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.