During the last 40 years the baby Boomer voting class has been strangely absent in so many areas - while they have been trying to have a jolly good time themselves.
During these years the Democratic Party was taken over by urban elitists and, as a result, they decided to abandon all the hick rural areas and voters across America. As a res…
During the last 40 years the baby Boomer voting class has been strangely absent in so many areas - while they have been trying to have a jolly good time themselves.
During these years the Democratic Party was taken over by urban elitists and, as a result, they decided to abandon all the hick rural areas and voters across America. As a result, our election system raised the Electoral College system's value to being the only way rural voters and smaller population states were able to have any influence. The Republican party was quite happy to get these voters.
The democratic party and urban voters stuck to their outlook on life and politics, and supported an increasingly left-leaning set of policies, with accompanying comments and stories illustrating their contempt for the hick rural voters.
The result is exactly what Mr. Hartman has so eloquently described; and the fact that America's middle class is even, numerically, rated at 49% shows that not everyone has lost. However, the unwritten, unfolding story is still adding to the bankruptcy status of all our young people with student loans, and the increasing number of health bankruptcies by older people with medical issues not covered by any insurance.
Recently the EU failed to agree to a minimum 15% corporate tax, and the US aggregate debt, along with the mountain of derivatives since the 2008 financial collapse is beyond comprehension.
We are, by all measures, facing a 1929 reset of the US and the global economy.
Unless, of course, US urban and rural voters agree to be polite to one another and find a basis of agreements that can re-balance America, for all of us. And set a floor for corporate behavior and taxation levels.
In the meantime, never voting for any senators and representatives will quickly introduce new people to serve us, instead of themselves.
Mr. Hartman citation:
Congress passed strict regulations on political campaign fundraising and spending with the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971. Following the Agnew and Nixon bribery scandals (that led to Vice President Agnew’s resignation to avoid prison), Congress doubled-down by strengthening that law in 1974 and creating the Federal Elections Commission (FEC).
This outraged then-Senator James Buckley, the elder brother of the late William F. Buckley and now the Senior Judge for the DC Circuit Court. Most Republicans opposed those laws and agencies but he and his side in the Senate had lost the vote, so they became law and the FEC was created.
Like a sore loser, he sued, essentially saying that the “free speech” right of wealthy people like himself and his friends to buy off politicians was inhibited by such clean-campaign legislation.
The result, legalizing political bribery, was a first for America and the developed world. The Supreme Court ruled with and for Buckley, striking down nearly a century of campaign finance legislation going all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt’s Tillman Act.
Two years later, in the First National Bank v Bellotti case, Powell himself authored the decision that gave corporations that same legal right to bribe politicians or insert themselves into campaigns for ballot initiatives (among other things).
Prior to this, from the end of the Republican Great Depression right up until the Reagan Revolution — from 1933 to 1981 — the American middle class had a half-century of uninterrupted political and economic progress. About two-thirds of Americans were in the middle class when Reagan was elected in 1980.
Before Reagan, we’d passed the right to unionize, which built America’s first middle class. We passed unemployment insurance and workplace safety rules to protect workers. Social Security largely ended poverty among the elderly, and Medicare provided them with health security.
A top personal income tax rate between 74% and 91% throughout that period kept wages strong for working people and prevented the corrosive wealth inequality we see today. We didn’t get our first billionaire until after the Reagan revolution.
America built colleges that were free or affordable; gleaming new nonprofit hospitals; the world’s finest system of public schools; and new roads, bridges, rail, and airports from coast to coast.
We cleaned up the environment with the Environmental Protection Agency, cleaned up politics with the Federal Elections Commission, cleaned up corporate backroom deals with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We outlawed banks from gambling with our deposits via the Glass-Steagall law.
Then the Supreme Court legalized political bribery with the Buckley and Bellotti decisions (and tripled-down on them both with Citizens United in 2010).
Reagan was the first modern American president to jump through this newly opened door to giving government favors to corporations and wealthy individuals who threw their money at his political party.
During the last 40 years the baby Boomer voting class has been strangely absent in so many areas - while they have been trying to have a jolly good time themselves.
During these years the Democratic Party was taken over by urban elitists and, as a result, they decided to abandon all the hick rural areas and voters across America. As a result, our election system raised the Electoral College system's value to being the only way rural voters and smaller population states were able to have any influence. The Republican party was quite happy to get these voters.
The democratic party and urban voters stuck to their outlook on life and politics, and supported an increasingly left-leaning set of policies, with accompanying comments and stories illustrating their contempt for the hick rural voters.
The result is exactly what Mr. Hartman has so eloquently described; and the fact that America's middle class is even, numerically, rated at 49% shows that not everyone has lost. However, the unwritten, unfolding story is still adding to the bankruptcy status of all our young people with student loans, and the increasing number of health bankruptcies by older people with medical issues not covered by any insurance.
Recently the EU failed to agree to a minimum 15% corporate tax, and the US aggregate debt, along with the mountain of derivatives since the 2008 financial collapse is beyond comprehension.
We are, by all measures, facing a 1929 reset of the US and the global economy.
Unless, of course, US urban and rural voters agree to be polite to one another and find a basis of agreements that can re-balance America, for all of us. And set a floor for corporate behavior and taxation levels.
In the meantime, never voting for any senators and representatives will quickly introduce new people to serve us, instead of themselves.
Mr. Hartman citation:
Congress passed strict regulations on political campaign fundraising and spending with the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971. Following the Agnew and Nixon bribery scandals (that led to Vice President Agnew’s resignation to avoid prison), Congress doubled-down by strengthening that law in 1974 and creating the Federal Elections Commission (FEC).
This outraged then-Senator James Buckley, the elder brother of the late William F. Buckley and now the Senior Judge for the DC Circuit Court. Most Republicans opposed those laws and agencies but he and his side in the Senate had lost the vote, so they became law and the FEC was created.
Like a sore loser, he sued, essentially saying that the “free speech” right of wealthy people like himself and his friends to buy off politicians was inhibited by such clean-campaign legislation.
The result, legalizing political bribery, was a first for America and the developed world. The Supreme Court ruled with and for Buckley, striking down nearly a century of campaign finance legislation going all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt’s Tillman Act.
Two years later, in the First National Bank v Bellotti case, Powell himself authored the decision that gave corporations that same legal right to bribe politicians or insert themselves into campaigns for ballot initiatives (among other things).
Prior to this, from the end of the Republican Great Depression right up until the Reagan Revolution — from 1933 to 1981 — the American middle class had a half-century of uninterrupted political and economic progress. About two-thirds of Americans were in the middle class when Reagan was elected in 1980.
Before Reagan, we’d passed the right to unionize, which built America’s first middle class. We passed unemployment insurance and workplace safety rules to protect workers. Social Security largely ended poverty among the elderly, and Medicare provided them with health security.
A top personal income tax rate between 74% and 91% throughout that period kept wages strong for working people and prevented the corrosive wealth inequality we see today. We didn’t get our first billionaire until after the Reagan revolution.
America built colleges that were free or affordable; gleaming new nonprofit hospitals; the world’s finest system of public schools; and new roads, bridges, rail, and airports from coast to coast.
We cleaned up the environment with the Environmental Protection Agency, cleaned up politics with the Federal Elections Commission, cleaned up corporate backroom deals with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We outlawed banks from gambling with our deposits via the Glass-Steagall law.
Then the Supreme Court legalized political bribery with the Buckley and Bellotti decisions (and tripled-down on them both with Citizens United in 2010).
Reagan was the first modern American president to jump through this newly opened door to giving government favors to corporations and wealthy individuals who threw their money at his political party.