The United States of Money

It is Christmas time and undoubtedly we will hear about the War on Christmas. This makes me sad, because the reality is that the war on Christmas was lost a long time ago to money and capitalism. Rather than celebrate the birth of the Savior, the meaning of Christmas has become consumer consumption, Santa Claus, trees, reindeer and snowmen. The meaning of the holiday has been lost.

But the sad fact is that Christmas is just one of the many casualties of how money dominates and pollutes all sectors of American life. To be honest, it wasn’t always this bad, but as time goes on, each year gets worse and worse.

Sports in general and college sports in particular are polluted by money. It is indeed a sad fact that the dean of the university makes about 1/4th of what the coach of the football team makes. On the professional level, the dirty secret is that the most successful and hence highest paid athletes are doing drugs to ply their trade. Alex Rodriguez and Lance Armstrong are just the tip of the iceberg.

The American health care system exists to make money for the large pharmaceuticals and insurance companies. All other pieces of the health care system such as doctors, hospitals and so on, only exist to serve these masters. Lost in the entire equation is the health of the patient, and the only goal is for the doctor to sell more pharmaceuticals and to assuage any concerns about side effects of these bizarre drugs.

When we look at the Iraqi war, one must ask the question. Who has benefited? Certainly not the Iraqi people. Not the average American. And certainly not our soldiers that have come home dead, mangled or emotionally traumatized. There appears to be one and only one constituent that has won and that is the American military industry complex headed up by publicly traded companies such as Haliburton and Black Rock. These wars are not about terrorism or American security but padding the bottom line of these corporations. The military industry complex tries to hide behind the flag and patriotism to justify their activities but they are really nothing more than high priced mercenaries.

The incredible merger mania hitting corporate America is driven by money. The result of these mergers is to 1) increase consumer prices in a monopolistic way and 2) reduce jobs by laying off workers. None of these benefit the average American, but our SEC is so in the pocket of Wall Street that they turn a blind eye to the very people that are supposed to server and whose tax dollars pay their salaries.

Our government is now run by money and the companies and people that control the money. Both the Republican and Democratic parties are controlled by money. The president and all members of the Senate and the House of Representatives spend all their time raising money to get reelected in the next election cycle. Lost are the needs of the citizens that they supposedly are there to represent. Of course, once they are reelected they only serve their masters that donated to their campaign coffers. The entire election process is a charade to make us feel like we have a democracy when in reality we have an oligarchy that ignores the needs of the voters in favor of the rich moneyed interest.

Our entire food system is now contaminated by money. Have you ever wondered why you can only purchase drinks in almost any restaurant that contain high glucose corn syrup? Did you know that Monsanto now has a patent on soy bean seeds and suing farmers that violate its patent?

The problem with the United States is that it is no longer united. In fact, the money is so strong in both the Republican and Democrat party that we allow these artificial wedge issues to divide us. I believe that the fact that money runs the country and is ruining it will be the one ultimate issue that will unite us all against ALL the special interest that pollute our lives and our government.

Divided We Fall

In my lifetime, I have never seen the United States as divided as it is right now. And also in my lifetime, the country has never been in as bad a shape as right now. The two are related, correlated and even causal. I believe that the more divide the country, the less prosperous the country we will be. We as a country must focus on the issues that unite us and run away from the special interests and lobbyists that attempt to divide us.

America is the greatest nation in the history of the world. American ingenuity ushered many of the most important developments of mankind including the television, the car, the airplane, the radio, the computer and the internet. There are many others as well, but suffice it to say that many of these innovations greatly increased the productivity of the world creating enormous economic profits to one nation. Behind all of this are two key tenants of America. Capitalism and Democracy.

The problem in the United States and we are watching it fade right before our eyes, is that we no longer have Capitalism nor Democracy. It is sad to see capitalism fade in the United States. It has transformed itself into what is called crony capitalism. Success is not defined by how hard you work nor the quality of your innovations, but access to the right people in our federal government. This is defined by plowing money into the myriad of lobby organizations that pollute Washington DC. To be successful in American society today is to run a company that has a lobby organization in Washington DC. So American business is dominated by telecomunications, pharmaceuticals, banking, and the military industrial complex. Perhaps the most egregious of all is our banking system. The government as well all know is highly in debt and growing larger and more in debt every year. But there is nothing to be done because all of the moneyed interest want a large yet weak government that is afraid to regulate the very industries it must control.

Worse yet, the United States is no longer a true democracy on the federal level. Both parties Republican and Democrat have been seduced by all the money. Elections have become a high priced show where the outcome is irrelevant. Perhaps the largest hypocrisy was the election of Barack Obama who ran on a platform of Hope and Change. The sad reality is that Obama has done almost nothing to change the trajectory of our country. In fact, most would agree, he has accelerated the downfall.

We must unite behind the principles of free markets and democracy. We must restore these two fundamentals of our great country. The government must play an active role in promoted free markets but right now they are doing the opposite. The government picks the winners in back rooms rather than letting the market decide. Worse yet, the government allows large companies to merge without regard to we the people whom they represent. We must restore democracy so that the federal government represents the joint desires of the people who elect them and not the money that filled their campaign coffers.

The federal government must be reinvented under the original principles that made it great in the first place.