Losing Our Democracy to Plutocracy

By Robert Reich

February 26, 2011 –- The following are excerpts from Robert Reich's article in The New Haven Register. He is the former U.S. Secretary of Labor.

It’s a perfect storm. I’m not talking about the dangers facing Democrats. I’m talking about the dangers facing our democracy.

First, income in America is now more concentrated in fewer hands than it’s been in 80 years. Almost a quarter of total income generated in the United States is going to the richest 1 percent of Americans.

The richest one-tenth of 1 percent of Americans now take home as much as the bottom 120 million of us.

This gets us to the second part of the perfect storm. A relatively few Americans are purchasing our democracy as never before. And, they’re doing it completely in secret.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are pouring into advertisements for and against candidates — without a trace of where the cash is coming from. It is laundered through a handful of groups.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission made this possible.

The Federal Election Commission says only 32 percent of groups paying for election ads are disclosing the names of their donors. By comparison, in the 2006 midterm election, 97 percent disclosed; in 2008, almost half disclosed.

We’re back to the late 19th century, when the lackeys of robber barons deposited sacks of cash, literally, on the desks of friendly legislators. The public never knew who was bribing whom.

Here’s the third part of the perfect storm. Most Americans are in trouble. Their jobs, incomes, savings and even homes are on the line. They need a government that’s working for them, not for the privileged and the powerful.

Yet, their state and local taxes are rising, while their services are being cut. Firefighters and teachers are being laid off. The roads and bridges Americans count on are crumbling, pipelines are leaking, schools are dilapidated and public libraries are being shut.

Washington decrees that nothing can be done — there’s no money left.

There’s plenty of money to help stranded Americans, just not the political will to raise it. And, at the rate secret money is flooding our political system, there will be even less political will in the future.

The perfect storm: an unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the top; a record amount of secret money flooding our democracy; and a public becoming increasingly angry and cynical about a government that’s raising its taxes, reducing its services and unable to get it back to work.

We’re losing our democracy to a different system. It’s called plutocracy.

Robert Reich, former U.S. secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley.

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Obama Heckled Over Manning Treatment

At a $5,000-a-seat fundraiser, even the heckling is well-mannered: After twenty-one activists from the Bradley Manning Support Network interrupted a speech by President Obama at a $5,000-a-seat fundraising event at the St. Regis hotel in San Francisco, they stuck around and spoke with the president about their concerns.

Some donned shirts that read "Free Bradley Manning" and broke into a song protesting Manning's treatment, singing, "Alone in a 6x12 cell sits Bradley / 23 hours a day is night / The 5th and 8th Amendments say this kind of thing ain't right / We paid our dues, where's our change?"

Several protesters were asked to leave, but others remained. Obama later spoke with them and defended the government's handling of the case, saying the release of the documents damaged diplomatic sources.

Manning, who awaits trial for the leaking of the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables, was recently moved to the prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Critics say Manning was subject to cruel and unusual punishment when he was held in solitary confinement and forced to sleep naked while being held at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va.

What happened to the Constitution? What happened to a fair and speedy trial? Are the Brown Shirts coming? Are they already here? Where is Eric Prinz and his private army? Are they coming or are they already here, too?

Toto, this doesn’t sound like America anymore!