Lobbyists-The Political Mafia

What our economy needs is a friendlier environment to the kind of entrepreneurial risk-taking that has always been America’s trump card over all other countries; which means getting the Mafia of modern politics–lobbyists and their corrupting big money–out of Washington. Monopolies bring power…

By Harvey Gold
What our economy needs is a friendlier environment to the kind of entrepreneurial risk-taking that has always been America’s trump card over all other countries; which means getting the Mafia of modern politics–lobbyists and their corrupting big money–out of Washington.

Monopolies bring power and money. It happened during prohibition, it happened before the Great Depression, it’ happened with marijuana. It also resulted in “Too big to Fail”, which, by the way, is even worse now–much worse.

And considering the gridlock and corruption that Republicans are causing in order to prevent our government from implementing well planned, effective ways to promote economic growth–growth and demand being the real answers to our economic quagmire–it doesn’t look good going forward. That is, unless the public gets past their their lazy nature in the face of the GOP propaganda machine and the network “news” obsessed with selling ads rather than reporting the truth.

Why Has the U.S. Become Like Everyone Else?

For whatever reason—I think it’s obvious that I personally place a good part of the blame on the Entertainment companies that have taken over the News divisions of all television “news”– Democrats’ proof that substantial increases in public investment will deliver robust growth, as it has in the past, just can’t seem to break through the clutter of political noise. Even with bridges crumbling and highways disintegrating, Republicans insist on blaming the poor and elderly for all of the country’s problems.

Republicans, of course, emphasize that reductions in marginal tax rates will spur growth by increasing the incentives to work and invest; an approach that has failed miserably in the UK and Eurozone. It’s called austerity, and it’s never, ever worked when implemented in a recovering but fragile economy. How blind must we be to ignore the ever-increasing unemployment rates in the Eurozone, which also stubbornly clings to the same deficit-reduction obsession of “conservatives” that has produced 11.8% unemployment across 17 countries -with an astounding 25% in Spain, the world’s 12th largest economy?

And that’s the Republican cure for our economy? It doesn’t take a genius to see that the monopolies have benefited the most from the deregulation craze of Reagan and the Bush Presidencies–which is why lobbyists support doing more of the same by supporting Republicans with millions in campaign contributions (can you say Koch brothers?) who continue to deliberately destroy our economy by blaming the poor and elderly who have no way to fight back except with their votes…which they also seek daily to obstruct.