We, the People, call Pulitzer Prize winner David C. Johnston to testify on “how the wealthiest Americans enrich themselves at government expense and stick you with the bill.
Note: the following comes from Johnston’s “Free Lunch,” the second of three books detailing how the rich and corporations have used government, and anything else they could, to enrich themselves; in the process deliberately dismantling the middle class golden age of 1947-73.
Johnston: “Since 1980 it has become official policy to ensure..the rich receive benefits of government…Evidence that the elites have captured government and are milking it for their own benefit is so overwhelming that..you can find it as an unstated assumption in everyday news reports.”
Johnston: “The gross numbers and averages about economic growth obscure one overwhelming truth: The benefits of this bonanza flowed overwhelmingly to those at the apex of the economic pyramid.”..
”For the bottom 90% of Americans..annual income has been on a long, mostly downhill slide for more than three decades. the vast majority’s average income peaked at $33,000 way back in 1973. By 2005 it had fallen to a bit more than $29,000..$75 less each week..tax return data show.”
Johnston: “Of each dollar people earned in 2005, the top 10% got 48.5 cents..the top tenth’s greatest share of the income pie since 1929, just before thr Roaring Twenties collapsed into thre Great Depression.”…
”..keep in mind this one astonishing fact..from official government tax data: in 2005, the 300,000 men, women, and children who comprised the top tenth of 1% had nearly as much income as all 150 million Americans who make up the economic lower half of our population. Add the income the rich are not required to report and those 300,000 made more than the 150 million”
Johnston: “This growing concentration of income at the top is nothing like the distribution of income America experienced in the first three decades following World War II. Nor is it like that found in Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. Instead it resembles the distribution of income found in..Brazil, Mexico, and Russia…all four countries have a middle class that is under increasing stress.”
Johnston: “..distribution of income does not take place in a vacuum. It is also the product of government rules..written by people, not handed down from some immutable power.
”Rewriting the economic rules..in the past few decades has been done under the banner of “deregulation” and its promise..less government means more economic growth. the term itself is a misnomer. No society is free of regulation.
”In the past quarter century or so our government..enacted new rulwes that..created not only free markets, but rigged ones. These rules..weakened and even destroyed consumer protections while increasing the power of the already powerful..”
Johnston: ”The richest Americans and the corporations they control shaped and often wrote these new rules and regulations..The rich and their lobbyists have taken firm control of the levers of power in Washington and..state capitals while remaking the rules in their own interests. They..imbued private organizations with the power to make rules that few outside..the process understand, but that influence the distribution of income. These same people..just happen to be the primary source of..campaign donations..Politicians, as lawmakers, enact the rules. As presidents and governors they appoint..administrators who decide when to enforce the rules and many..judges who interpret them.”
Johnston: ”In America..the long expansion of who plays a role in deciding the rules has ended. the base of influence has begun to contract. In part..because of the campaign finance system, which transfers power to those who donate and who steer donations. In part..because advances in human knowledge have made the economy so much more complex that fewer people understand, or have time to learn about, the issues.”
Johnston: ”Beginning with the New Deal..and especially, with bipartisan consensus after World War II, our elected leaders worked to build and strengthen the middle class.”…
”But in the last quarter century or so, we..turned away from these policies…our government has been adopting rules that tilt the playing field in favor of the rich, the powerful, and the politically connected. These rules accomplish this by taking from the uninformed, handcuffing law enforcement, squelching whistleblowers, and making it ever harder for those..wronged to get redress. The new rules have taken special aim at those supposed economic criminals, the regulators.”
Johnston: “One of the new rules has been to make sure..there are far too few cops on the beat on Wall Street..”..
”Steve Jobs..was awarded millions in stock options at a board of directors meeting that never took place.”..
“Jobs was hardly alone in the stock option scandals..Many executives took money from shareholders through deliberate, calculated actions..They differ from bandits only in that they wielded pens..instead of pointing pistols..Their techniques were subtle..but for society they are worse than street robbery, for their actions undermine the legitimacy of society’s rules in ways that bandits cannot..”..
Johnston: “In this era of rules for the rich we act as if poverty is a free good..not scarce but readily available..Coping with the foul effects of poverty costs us half a trillion dollars a year..[more]..than what we spend on Social Security benefits. Poverty wastes minds and spirits, robbing all of us of opportunity. When poverty fosters crime it costs us more than ..harm done to our wallets and..safety..It makes us less trusting, less willing to see ourselves as one people..”..
Johnston: ”Under what theory of morality do we grant to those already in a superior economic or legal position ever more power, especially when that power derives from rules in fine print that defy normal human understanding?”
Johnston: ”Usury laws that protected consumers against rapacious lenders existed until 1978. Now they are gone because of a Supreme Court decision. In that case the high court warned Congress it needed to enact new laws to protect borrowers. That warning was ignored…our government has set forth onerous new rules that reward those who prey upon the poor.”
[Note: this is only a BEGINNING of crimes Johnston discusses. He names some perps – YOU know them well – their names are, have been, in the news. The :Preamble of the Constitution says the purpose of American government is to “..promote the general Welfare..” YOU will notice that, most especially since 1980 – concern for promoting “..the general Welfare..” has been dropped in favor of promoting the Welfare of the rich and their corporations. Besides empty talk, what are. YOU. going to do about it??????? Are. YOU. an INFORMED voter??? – Informed, not mislead. Johnston has provided YOU with a small sample of the truth – the rest is up to YOU. ]
With Justice For All 