The Dictatorship
of Bullet and Buck
In the past year, I have focused mostly on all the crookery and buffoonery of Donald
J. Trump and his crew. Today let’s look at a Democratic example briefly to
prove a few of my regular points.
____________________
“We
expect a return on our investment.”
Sec. of Education Betsy Devos,
explaining why she donated to politicians and
political causes
____________________
A)
Where money and politics meet, money too often
trumps morality.
B)
The superrich don’t need more tax cuts. They’ve
already created a system in which they win at every turn.
C)
Concentrating too much power (and today financial
power often replaces police state power) in too few hands is always dangerous
to freedom and democracy.
D)
The free press isn’t the “enemy of the people.”
The free press, if it’s doing its job, holds the powerful to account.
Reporters digging into documents in New Jersey turn up evidence that a
powerful Democratic politician managed to slip $300 million in tax breaks for
just four companies into legislation, with the help of a sharp lawyer, who he
allowed to edit the bills before they went up for a vote.
These alterations were made despite the fact there was no
public disclosure, and despite the fact the “benefits” to the state were
paltry, indeed.
Roughly $155,000.
*
THE SIMPLE TRUTH is money power can be as dangerous to the
rest of us who lack it as military power in dictator’s hands. The only
difference: the money power guys don’t shoot you in the head.
For example, Business
Insider notes that Amway had to pay a $56 million class-action judgment in
2010.
So: How does money power threaten us all? A shot to the back
of your head is too messy; and your family wouldn’t stand for it. The money
power has learned in modern times to be more subtle.
Amway, is the company founded by the family of Education
Secretary Betsy DeVos who prepared, famously, to lead the Dept. of Education,
which oversees America’s public schools, by going to an elite private school
her entire life. Then she sent her children to elite private schools. Now, she
and her husband are worth $1.3 billion. “Her father reportedly helped found The
Family Research Council, which The Southern Poverty Law Center considers a hate
group because of its support of the notion that ‘the LGBT community is a threat
to American society.’”
Her mother Elsa Prince donated $450,000 to Proposition 8, to ban same-sex
marriage in California.
Her husband, Richard DeVos Jr. is part-heir to his father’s
$5.1 billion fortune; and she and Richard Jr. own 12 planes and four
helicopters. To Secretary DeVos’ credit, I suppose, she did say she wanted to
work for a salary of $1 while in government. On the other hand, she’s made
herself so unpopular her security detail has cost taxpayers $6.54 million, as
of February 2018.
Back in 1997, DeVos published a
piece in the newspaper Roll Call
defending her family’s massive contributions to the GOP and conservative
causes. “I have decided to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are
buying influence,” she wrote. “Now I simply concede the point.”
“We do expect something in
return,” DeVos wrote. “We expect to foster a conservative governing philosophy
consisting of limited government and respect for traditional American virtues.
We expect a return on our investment.”
That would include a fat tax cut.
To say that Sec. DeVos has a very limited understanding of
how public schools operate would be an understatement.
Again Business Insider
lays out the goods:
When Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and
first lady Melania Trump visited Excel Academy Public Charter School last
spring, DeVos praised the school as a “shining example of
a school meeting the needs of its students, parents and community.” Melania
Trump called the charter school “an exceptional example of
a school preparing young women both academically and personally so that they
may succeed in a global community.”
Unfortunately,
we now know that the praise the school garnered during its brief time in
existence did not match its poor performance.
On Jan. 11, the DC Public Charter School
Board voted unanimously, 6-0, to shut down the
Pre-K-8, all-girls school at the end of the current school year. The board
action wasn’t because of some sudden turn of events…Instead, records show,
it was because the “trend for student performance over the past several years
has been negative, despite any benefits that may have occurred from learning in
an all-girl setting.”
Excel Academy charter school now joins
the 200 to 300 charter schools that are shut down each
year across the nation due to poor performance, financial shortcomings and low
enrollments.
So: How does money power threaten us all? A shot to the back
of your head is too messy; and your family wouldn’t stand for it, anyway. The money
power has learned in modern times to be more subtle.
Off the top of my head, let me list a few ways the money
power works in the shadows. Rip-off charter schools, as I just said. Crooked
for-profit colleges for older students. Trump University, of course. Sky high
drug prices. Fat contributions to politicians to keep them that way. Gun
companies backing the NRA with wads of cash. And the NRA drumming up fear of government
taking away all the guns, so that millions more are sold ever year. Pushing
opioids as safe (and tobacco in the past). Companies shipping American jobs to Sri
Lanka, Bangladesh and even China – short-sighted capitalism selling out to
communism, to be blunt. Exploding airbags, toxic chemicals dumped in rivers, paying
off scientists to discount climate change, buying more politicians so that lawmakers
don’t raise the minimum wage. Republican politicians in Texas howling about the
need for a border wall; and then Texas companies donating to those politicians,
while they turn around and hire undocumented workers by the tens of thousands (see: 1/22-23/18). Union busting new laws. Amway – essentially a pyramid-scheme type scam. NFL
teams leveraging cities to demand free new stadiums. Citizens United, a Supreme
Court decision (decided by five conservative judges), allowing companies to
spend more on campaigns, to buy politicians up wholesale. Fox News, run by
billionaires, with hosts paid millions, to tell the average American worker
that tax cuts for the top 1% are a must.
I’m sorry. I could go on. And on.
And on.
