oligarchy broken

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1/18/2016 An oligarchy has broken our democracy. It must be dislodged | Mike Lofgren | Opinion | The Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/17/oligarchy-broken-our-democracy-must-be-dislodged-election-2016

An oligarchy has broken our democracy. It

must be dislodgedMike LofgrenPro forma elections have camouflaged the true state of our political system. Will that change this yea

Sunday 17 January 2016 12.30 GMT

E

ach new election year promises change. We will choose a new president and newrepresentatives in Congress; fresh faces will make their appearances in Washington

DC, while old ones disappear. But what about the people who stay in power, oneelection after another, less exposed to the public eye?

The concept of a Deep State has been around for a while, but rarely to describe the UnitedStates.The term, used in Kemalist Turkey by the political class, referred to an informalgrouping of oligarchs, senior military and intelligence operatives and organized crime, whoran the state along anti-democratic lines regardless of who was formally in power.

I define the American Deep State as a hybrid association of elements of government andtop-level finance and industry that is able, through campaign financing of elected officials,

influence networks and co-option via the promise of lucrative post-government careers, togovern the United States in spite of elections and without reference to the consent of thegoverned.

These operatives use their proximity to power and ability to offer high-paying jobs togovernment officials to achieve outcomes foreclosed to ordinary citizens. As professorMartin Gilens of Princeton, who studied the correlation between American popular opiniopolls and public policy outcomes, concluded: [T]he preferences of economic elites havefar more independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average citizensdo ... ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in theUnited States.

Americas growing income disparity is not the inevitable result of impersonal forces likeglobalization or automation. It is the outcome of hundreds of trade, tax and regulatorymeasures that achieved the preferred outcome enrichment of economic elites whocontribute to politicians.

Since the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision, big money dominance of politicshas gone into overdrive. Over half the money given to presidential candidates in the 2016campaign comes from just 158 families.
http://www.theguardian.com/profile/mike-lofgrenhttp://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/11/us/politics/2016-presidential-election-super-pac-donors.html?_r=2http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/princeton-scholar-demise-of-democracy-america-tpm-interviewhttp://www.theguardian.com/profile/mike-lofgren


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The result is thatmiddle class incomes have continued tostagnate even as America saw itsfirst hundred-billionaire family. Income inequality has reached crisis proportions. Today,hedge fund managers often pay a lower federal tax rate than public school teachers orfiremen.

Greed is the prerogative of American elites. Their behavior was described by politicalscientist Harold Lasswell, who said a societys leadership class consists of those whose

private motives are displaced onto public objects and rationalized in terms of publicinterest.

Consider that in 1992, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney privatized much of our militaryslogistics. A decade later, Halliburton, a company he headed from 1995 to 2000, received$39.5bn in logistics contracts to support operations in Iraq, while Cheney, having beenelected to the vice presidency, was receiving deferred compensation from his old firm.

A tell-tale sign of the Deep States involvement in policy isthe use of fear to make Congrescompliant. In 2008, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke helped panic Congress into

approving a virtual no-strings bailout of Wall Street by claiming that if it didnt approve themeasure immediately, there would be no economy left. Since he left the Fed, Bernanke hasmade a profitable career giving speeches, mainly to financial services firms, at around$200,000 a talk.

Likewise, when there are economic incentives for war, fear becomes the Deep Statesweapon of choice. In 2002, the Bush administration (and well-paid operatives in themilitary-industrial complex) hinted at nuclear mushroom clouds to stampede Congressinto authorizing an invasion of Iraq in search of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.During the last 15 years, elites have tried to keep us on the edge of hysteria about terrorism

But lately it looks as if they did their job a little too well. People are now so conditioned byfear of threats that many support a political candidate who ignores the euphemisms of thepolitical class and openly appeals to xenophobic fascism rather than a status quo ofoligarchy camouflaged by pro forma elections.

The calculus of the Deep State has been upset by Donald Trump, a narcissistic pseudo-populist billionaire, who, ironically, is a symptom of all the pathologies within the DeepState. His followers may be misguided, and Trump is all too ready to offer them scapegoats

but they instinctively sense that there is something deeply wrong with the status quo.

At the other end of the political spectrum, Bernie Sanders has overthrown the currentmodel of elite financing of candidates. Tens of thousands of his energetic followers Sanderss average contribution is under $30 actively seek a return to the New Deal andthe Great Society.

The Deep State may yet reassert itself through money and fear, but the 2016 election looksto be the first ballot of a longer-term national referendum on what it has made of oursociety.
http://www.ibtimes.com/winner-most-iraq-war-contracts-kbr-395-billion-decade-1135905http://www.vice.com/read/how-to-make-millions-by-selling-war-917http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/05/20/after-fed-bernanke-offers-his-wisdom-for-a-big-fee/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meltdown/etc/script.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/28/us/a-closer-look-at-cheney-and-halliburton.html?_r=0http://www.ibtimes.com/winner-most-iraq-war-contracts-kbr-395-billion-decade-1135905http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2000/08/cheneys-multi-million-dollar-revolving-doorhttp://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/06/taxation_of_carried_interest_the_loophole_for_hedge_fund_managers_could.htmlhttp://www.forbes.com/families/list/


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