The Bankruptcy of both Parties

Didn’t we honestly suspect this all along? It is so easy to point the finger at the previous administration and the currently seated House and Senate Republicans as the culprits in the current financial and economic meltdown. But now we see behind-the-scenes action by Chris Dodd and the Obama administration to protect the obscene bonuses of the Wall Street insiders at AIG and other large financial institutions. Have you noticed that even with us, the taxpayers, owning an 80% interest in AIG and having “invested” more than the total market value of the entire stock portfolio in Citigroup that top management (who presided over this meltdown) has not been fired—even though there are thousands of Wall Street executives out of work and begging for a job?

Remember the Glass-Steagall Act that prohibited banks from offering investment, commercial banking and insurance services? It was repealed during the previous Democratic administration. And ‘off-the-books’ accounting slight of hand for banks was promulgated during that same administration. And when the Commodity Futures Trading Commission tried to exert some regulatory control over financial derivatives, that was quashed by Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan—again before the disastrous Bush reign. Oh, and don’t forget the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000. Although orchestrated by Republican Phil Gramm, it was signed into law by President Clinton.

I won’t enumerate the sins of the Bush reign—they are far too numerous—because I want to emphasize that between 1998 and 2008 the financial sector spent 5 billion dollars on U.S. federal campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures. And those campaign contributions were evenly spread among Republican AND Democratic candidates. Equal opportunity bribery. And the American taxpayer gets screwed.

Both parties are now bought and paid for by the bankers, the insurance companies, and the pharmaceutical industry. Is it any wonder that we can’t have a real debate about burying zombie banks, single-payer health care, or even letting Medicare negotiate lower prices for drugs?

On a recent visit one of my brother-in-laws who is much more conservative than Mr. Attanas even (he would not call himself a MODERATE Republican) said, unsolicited I want to emphasize, that he now thinks we need to have public financing of all elections. The corrupting influence of big money is now so blatantly obvious that, hopefully, we have the impetus to make important structural changes in our electoral system. But have you noticed? Electoral reform is not even on a BACK burner!

Public financing is only one step. We have to remove the stranglehold that both major parties have on the electoral process, through prohibitive ballot access laws, heavily gerrymandered electoral districts, and by excluding third party candidates from debates and forums. Now that both major parties have shown themselves to be devoid of any concern for struggling Americans, we need viable choices outside the box of ‘Democrat’ and ‘Republican’.

Jonathan Fluck