I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF composing a long and convoluted post about the interconnected theme running through the current events in
- Wisconsin,
- Egypt,
- murderous attacks on doctors providing perfectly legal care for women,
- the pretend "deficit crisis" in Washington,
- the Citizen's United case,
- etc., etc., etc...
...when I was brought up short by two facts—one that has been public knowledge forever, and a second which is not surprising, but which was new to me, at least.
I'll start with the second one.
The New York Times reported yesterday that Koch industries was one of the biggest contributors to Governor Scott Walker's election campaign in Wisconsin.
Americans for Prosperity, an organization created and heavily funded by the Koch brothers, has been actively pushing for the anti-union legislation which has sparked the current confrontation.
The billionaire Koch brothers have used inherited wealth and secretive manipulations to back the growth of the tea party movement, Americans for Prosperity, and other causes which promote the interests of the super wealthy over the interests of the middle class.
Walker won that election by only five points, backed with almost twice the campaign contributions his opponent had, supplemented by money he didn't have to report which was contributed to other organizations which used it to attack his opponent.
You may be surprised to hear that I don't think the Koch brothers, or any of their super wealthy co-conspirators, are the real problem.
The problem is the fundamental incompatibility between freedom, democracy, and justice on the one hand and concentrated power on the other.
Two hundred years ago, the founders of this nation lived in a world where the only kind of seriously concentrated power was the power of governments—which, for the most part, meant the power of kings.
They created a form of government designed to make it impossible to wield that kind of power—to put governmental power under the control of the people—and for the most part it has succeeded.
The chances of America coming under the rule of an old-fashioned monarch are rather slim.
But they left for us the larger problem—how to protect a democratic republic from other forms of concentrated power.
Elections mean nothing if the bullhorn at one end of the public square is able to drown out the message of the candidate standing at the other end, among the citizens.
And money, particularly massive quantities of money, may not even have to win an election to influence the direction a "democratic" republic takes.
Money is power.
Concentrated money is concentrated power.
Elections mean nothing if they become merely one more way for the powerful to control the Republic.
Which brings us back to the first of the two facts which I mentioned at the beginning—the real danger to our Republic.
Mother Jones has published a set of charts which explain quite clearly where we have been headed, as a country, in the last few decades.
It's not a pretty picture.
In terms of wealth—how much people own—1% of the country, the cream of the super-wealthy, control over a third of the net worth in the country.
The next 9% control way over another third of the wealth.
That leaves 90%, the rest of us, to make do with the just over 25% that's left.
Or you can look at it in terms of income—which gives you a sense of the direction we're headed in.
The average family income for 90% percent of the country was about $31,000 in 2008.
The same average, for those in the next highest 9%, was about $165,000—over five times as much.
The top 1% averaged over a million per year, six times as much as the top 10% and over 30 times as much as 90% of the country.
But it doesn't stop there.
Next: The Problem of Power
