Sheep Get Slaughtered

Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 7/6/09 @ 11:35 am - Filed Under Local Politics, National Politics

Robert Johnson, from the Roosevelt Initiative, had an insight into our modern political system that I thought I should share. He’s referring to the sad state of national politics but I think it rings true for local politics as well. Enjoy:

What we are witnessing, as I have written elsewhere, is a perverse form of insurance pay off. Let’s call it political insurance. Ordinarily when insurance is offered, a premium is paid and, over time, the provider of insurance sets the rate on the premium so that they make a bit of money despite periodic payouts for accidents. What we have here is different. The financial sector, and other large patronage donors, spend billions of dollars on lobbyists and campaign contributions. Politicians then run their expensive election marketing campaigns with the proceeds. And finally, the contributors buy downside loss protection from the politicians and their appointees.

Who provides that downside protection? You and me. The taxpayer. The body politic. We get used by this refracted process, and our system is mislabeled as a representative democracy. And, to add insult to injury, we are forced to endure the the horror of the awful marketing campaigns of politicians using the their payoff money to protect donors with our the tax base. The media is on the take, too, collecting advertising revenue from financial companies and from political campaigns. Far be it for them to step outside this circular flow of funds that impedes our political system from incorporating feedback from evidence of its own dysfunction.

We are amidst a crisis of political legitimacy. The leaders of our complex financial firms have failed. They have failed as stewards of our nation’s future. They have failed as protectors of our public Treasury.

Comments

2 Responses to “Sheep Get Slaughtered”

gadfly on July 6th, 2009 9:06 pm

There is great irony here. Robert Johnson of the Roosevelt Institute, writing on a website entitled “New Deal 2.0″ has his panties in a knot about a “political system that lets Goldman Sachs and others run roughshod over society.”

Anyone remember the Great Depression? It lasted 15 years thanks to FDR and his New Deal government which took control of the American economy (as we say in West “by God” Virginia) lock, stock and barrel.

From a review of Jim Powell’s book, FDR’s Folly comes this insight:

Tragically, a common and fatal historical misconception is that FDR’s New Deal rescued the United States from the Great Depression. This is often cited as motivation for great government involvement on Wall Street today.The numerous programs the FDR administration brought about, including the following:

* Programs that inundated private businesses with unprecedented waves of regulations, such as the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, the National Recovery Act and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

* Programs that redistributed wealth from producers to consumers, such as the Federal Emergency Relief Act and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

* Programs that nationalized industries, centrally planned infrastructure or created makework projects to increase employment such as the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Public Works Administration and the Tennessee Valley Authority. …[T]hese programs typically led to poorly planned infrastructure that was more expensive than what could have been acquired in a free market.

Sound familiar? Outrage about Goldman Sachs will not divert this avalanche. Only the immediate actions by the party-in-control to stop spending and get out of the economy by reversing its rules and legislation will permit capitalism to fix the broken economy.
River Citizen on July 9th, 2009 1:45 pm

Jeff is right. Would that The Founders could come back to straighten out this mess; unless, as I fear, we are already too far gone. The whole system needs redone, as, as Jeff points out, all the self-serving “powers that be” reinforce each others’ corrupt and vile positions. They need the status to remain quo. I blame the media perhaps most.
What I would add is the complicity of the now federally-regulated education system, the organized dumbing-down of the whole population. Evidence of this is as close as the Michael Jackson debacle. Maybe a Michael Jackson federal holiday will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and we will rise up and cry “ENOUGH!” I hope so. Good insight, Jeff.