The problems of the United States are numerous and it is not easy to see the common connection between stagnant wages, childhood poverty, record low tax revenues and record high levels of public debt, a withering infrastructure, excessive health care cost and an ever increasing level of wealth and income disparity. And yet, they are all results of a thoroughly disoriented legislative body whose ineffectiveness was and is brought about by legalized corruption. A development that had its beginning in the mid 1970s.
It was in the mid 70s that Political Action Committees started to proliferate, that the Supreme Court equated money with speech and awarded corporations first amendment rights. Politicians learned quickly how to tap the newly available resources of the business community and the policy focus shifted away from the American public’s best interests towards those of Corporate America.
The legislative preference towards the monied interests showed results. Taxes were cut and loopholes benefiting the business community were added to the tax code, unions were busted, a broad set of deregulations introduced. Wages started to stagnate, an increasing amount of the nation’s income went to the richest Americans, inequality deepened and the deregulations set the stage for the Savings and Loan Crisis – the first of three major financial crisis we experienced to date.
After the political dependency on outside funding was institutionalized the trend of governing on behalf of the interests that funded both parties got increasingly more severe. Business saw the success of buying political influence. As a consequence it paid for further loopholes to be introduced and a vicious cycle of loosened campaign finance laws and an ever increasing stream of money was poured into the political process.
Today’s America is the result of 30 years of misguided public policy. In consequence the governance of business and the rich brought about a perverse situation that sees the country’s wealth so thoroughly redistributed to the top that more than 15% (46.5 million) of adults and more than 20% of children live in poverty while company’s like Apple have cash reserves of over 150 billion Dollars. The government gives away billions to vastly profitable companies like Exxon and Chevron while the lack of funding makes public education increasingly unaffordable.
The richest Americans are practically exempt from criminal prosecution while the very same system puts over 2 million regular Americans behind bars. At this point no major legislation impeding on corporate profits or personal wealth can be passed in the United States of today. Government contracts are given away uncompeted, drug prices to pharmaceutical companies are paid unnegotiated. In order to make a business out of even the most basic needs and misery of its citizens the thoroughly corrupted Washington allowed for the private prison industry and for-profit colleges to arise and allows for obscene margins in the health care industry which bankrupts citizens as it bankrupts the country as a whole.
Governing the United States on behalf of those who can pay for it has shown to be to the detriment of the vast majority of the American citizens, the country’s financial stability and its moral integrity. A congress obedient and numb is not able to react to the most pressing needs of its citizenry, not able to pass meaningful reforms and not able to bring justice to those who committed the most egregious financial crimes of a century. None of this will change until the United States manages to pull the needle pumping unlimited amounts of anonymous cash into the political system from its government’s arm.
The current system of campaign finance, the legalized corruption of the US government, must be stopped. It touches every issue, every US citizen’s life, the country and its standing in the world. Campaign finance reform is absolutely mandatory. As long as congress is dedicated alone to the profit motive of Corporate America and the wealth accumulation of the richest Americans there will be increasing inequality, a two-tier justice system, exploitation of the poor and the United States will become a fatality of the greed and shortsightedness of its ruling class.