By:
Dave Kingsley
Democracy is becoming weaker in the United States and the economic system is becoming increasingly corrupt and inefficient.
The primary hallmarks of a well-functioning capitalistic system are competitive free-markets, disruption of stagnant companies and industries by innovative startup companies, widespread opportunities for entrepreneurship, and a government with the political will to regulate the economy and business on behalf of the people and the general welfare. These characteristics have been alternatively strengthened and weakened in the United States over the past 200+ years.
Currently, the super-rich, and major corporations representing a burgeoning oligarchy have plied their increasing share of the wealth to government capture. Consequently, the U.S. government and a large proportion of the corporate world have settled into a destructive, money-driven, relationship. Over the past few decades, the amount government largess channeled into corporations, their shareholders, and executives has accelerated. It is important to recognize this as one major underlying cause of what may be the twilight of American democracy and a free enterprise system.
We Cannot Overlook the Role of Religion in the Rise of Anti-Democratic Corruption
I believe that a major cause of deteriorating democratic systems in this country is the money washing over elections and office holders. Our seriously corrupted political system is due in large part to dominance of the Supreme Court by a Christian-theistic-fascistic movement which has a propensity to throw its weight behind a strongman leader and a conservative, wealthy, white, elite. For instance, Citizens United is merely a convoluted decision handed down for the purpose of legitimating the purchase of legislators by oligarchs and entire industries.
Recent world history has taught us that major elements of modern Christianity are prone to collaboration with fascist autocrats. Examples of Christian leadership’s deference to and support of strongmen abound. The most recent example of course is the Christian white nationalist movement’s strong backing of the vile Donald J. Trump. The Catholic Church has a well-known history of providing comfort and aide to fascists throughout Latin America.
During the fascist-Nazi movement of the 1930s, the Catholic church was all too often willing to place its imprimatur on German, Italian, Spanish, (European) Nazism, and fascism. Following the Holocaust, ratlines set up by Catholic priests helped shuttle war criminals such a Mengele and Eichmann to Latin America.
Most Christians and Christian leaders in the United States are opposed to the vicious, vile politics of Donald Trump and today’s Republican Party. Unfortunately, they are far too passive, unorganized, and quiet. I say to them: “Please do not underestimate the organization, money, passion and commitment of the proto-fascist Christian white nationalists promoting Trump and Republican candidates.”
The Wasteful, Corrupt, U.S. Healthcare System is a Symptom of a Sick Political System
There is a reason Americans pay two to three times per capita for healthcare than peer countries in the advanced, industrialized sphere of the global economy: corruption. How many ways can we document the claim that corruption is at the root of the wasteful, inefficient, U.S. healthcare system? In so many ways that they are too numerous to mention in one blog post. I will discuss some in this post and many more in future posts, but I first want to say as a capitalist that privatization and healthcare are not compatible. Medical care cannot be reduced to an industrialized, free market model and at the same time optimize the health and wellbeing of the U.S. population.
As dark money as well as money right out in the open began to flood into the political system, the American people were conditioned to believe that traditional government programs on behalf of the general welfare were necessarily wasteful and inefficient. We were sold the myth that private enterprise is more competent than government bureaucracy.
Actual practice – for instance in the case of the military, infrastructure, Social Security and Medicare – belie this deceit. Nevertheless, practically every facet of the public domain supported by taxpayers has been handed over to private corporations. That includes the publicly funded healthcare system. The mind-boggling amount of capital that has flowed from the pockets of ordinary, non-wealthy, Americans into the holdings of the 1% is so excessive that it will be difficult for those hardworking, every day, Americans to grasp.
Officially, healthcare accounts for $5 trillion or 20% of the U.S. economy. I think it is more than that due to the generous tax reductions gifted to corporations, boards of directors and executives in the healthcare industry. In my view, practically all revenue streaming into corporations providing medical services is coming from government sources – taxpayers – such as Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, and Obamacare. At the same time, lobbying and campaign contributions keep costs spiraling up while care deteriorates and shareholders, boards, and executives pocket immense amounts of dividends, stock-growth, and compensation.
The Finance-Insurance-Real Estate (FIRE) lobby, Big Pharma, device manufacturers, physician associations, the nursing home industry, and other powerful representatives of industries benefitting from corruption and excessive payouts can see the limitless government largesse available to them and have their representatives crawling all over our Nation’s capitol and the legislatures of the 50 states. Legislators of both major political parties have become dependent on campaign contributions from the medical-industrial complex.
In future blog posts, we will be documenting the inordinate corruption overtaking the government funded U.S. healthcare system. See the coming post regarding 1Health Healthcare and the Centene Corporation. Two of a very large number of scandalous and yet typical cases of healthcare rip offs at the expense of “we the people.”