Bill Moyers/Michael Winship: Meet the Shameless Plutocrats Choking What's Left of Our Democracy

BillMoyers.com / By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

Moyers: Meet the Shameless Plutocrats Choking What's Left of Our Democracy
The race for the White House may cost more than two billion dollars. What’s getting trampled into dust are the voices of people who aren't rich.

February 14, 2012 |


Watching what’s happening to our democracy is like watching the cruise ship Costa Concordia founder and sink slowly into the sea off the coast of Italy, as the passengers, shorn of life vests, scramble for safety as best they can, while the captain trips and falls conveniently into a waiting life boat.

We are drowning here, with gaping holes torn into the hull of the ship of state from charges detonated by the owners and manipulators of capital. Their wealth has become a demonic force in politics. Nothing can stop them. Not the law, which has been written to accommodate them. Not scrutiny -- they have no shame. Not a decent respect for the welfare of others -- the people without means, their safety net shredded, left helpless before events beyond their control.

The obstacles facing the millennial generation didn’t just happen. Take an economy skewed to the top, low wages and missing jobs, predatory interest rates on college loans: these are politically engineered consequences of government of, by, and for the one percent. So, too, is our tax code the product of money and politics, influence and favoritism, lobbyists and the laws they draft for rented politicians to enact.

Here’s what we’re up against. Read it and weep: “America’s Plutocrats Play the Political Ponies.” That’s a headline in “Too Much,” an Internet publication from the Institute for Policy Studies that describes itself as “an online weekly on excess and inequality.” ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/economy/154137/moyers%3A_meet_the_shameless_plutocrats_choking_what%27s_left_of_our_democracy/