(but, instead, to big companies)

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There has always been Big Money in U.S. politics. It is just that, now, it is Huge Money.

You do not have to consider the needs and desires of working people if your power base is Huge Money. Especially if that worker base is composed largely of one-issue voters you can keep in the fold by spouting code words every now and then: guns, abortion, immigration, etc. Besides, the poor will just spend federal largesse on groceries, rents and mortgages, car payments, church tithes, etc. Few, if any, are giving money to political causes. And you can still tout Free Speech, even if you do not countenance it, because those one-issue voters are mostly concerned with free speech in their own lanes, those particular, narrow issues. (But do not forget, if you ever knew it, you one-issue revolutionaries: over time most revolutions tend to eat their own.)

A ton of the money given to large business for Covid-19 relief will end up in the coffers of the Republican Party as donations and funding for PACs. Why not dole out those dollars if some eventually comes back to assist your campaign? The decision is eazy-peazy, no?

A comparison one could use of the change from an individuals-based outlook to a grifting, corporatized one is the example of the National Rifle Association. The NRA was once powered by individual gun owners sending in their membership monies. Throw in the manufacturers and you had a tidy sum to use for lobbying. Now the NRA has morphed, essentially, into an extension of the manufacturers’ lobby, it’s just based in northern Virginia instead of on ‘K’ Street in DC. The NRA Board has been pliable enough that in 2018 CEO Wayne LaPierre (2015 compensation $5,110,985 and $2.15 million in 2018) was said to be involved with the NRA’s ad agency, Ackerman McQueen (they have since separated acrimoniously) in the non-profit, tax-exempt NRA (501(c)(4)) being asked to buy him and his wife a $6 million gated-community, lakefront mansion near Dallas, Texas because… if you can believe it, LaPierre – with little expressed concern over school shootings, was reportedly worried about his own security after the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida! The request was not fulfilled, perhaps because then-president Oliver North and LaPierre had a tiff combined with the fact that the home-buying scheme came to light and that in 2018 the organization ended the year with a $2.7 million shortfall, a $17.8 million shortfall in 2017 and a $45.8 million one in 2016. None of this stopped LaPierre from reportedly spending $500,000 on ‘luxury clothes and travel’. This style of executive compensation when companies are running deficits or performing poorly is not a rare one these days.

Another example. People have complained about U.S. Foreign Aid but the reason it persists is because the money sent out always stipulates the work be performed by American companies with American products, the food from American farmers, the transport on America transport (even if ‘flagged’ under another nation) and so on. A whopping amount of those government dollars – or, rather, our tax dollars, ends up back in American pockets. Deep pockets. Illegal immigration is similar. Big industries like building, service (lodging and food) and manufacturing have enormous labor needs – and cheap labor, at that. Who you gonna call? Are you, dear reader, hiring low-wage, relatively ‘unskilled’ Mexicans? Where do all these folks crossing the border look for work? Are they knocking on the doors of our homes?

These examples of self-dealing are visible to anyone with an eighth grade education who will take a moment to read newspapers and think critically about their lives, the lives of their fellows and their country. Such comprehension is one, maybe, THE, essential element of a functioning democracy (along with exercising one’s franchise.) Apparently, the numbers of such citizens are getting fewer and fewer. It’s easier to get our ‘important’ news via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other Internet-only sources and to shrug off voting as ‘not making a difference”.

I think a big reason McConnell and bedfellows don’t want an extension of the $600 per week is that he and his cronies realize the only way, today, to force people to work in dicey, dangerous, unhealthy workplaces is to cut off federal support money so that many people are forced to return to work, ignoring safety issues because, oddly enough, most of us have a priority of putting food on the table.

Forcing people to work in unhealthy, dangerous jobs has always been a problem for rulers. Slavery is the obvious example. But, others have found superbly ingenious ways to make people work. Great Britain’s colonial administration in East Africa used a tax on salt. When native workers would earn enough money for their immediate needs they simply stopped showing up until they needed money again. How to force them to continue coming to work? Ah…. levy a burdensome tax on salt, a necessary ingredient for a healthy life in a climate where one sweats it out and needs to daily replenish. (Salt tax earned early Chinese civilization half its tax revenue and remember it was the righteous purpose of The Salt March that made Mohandas Gandhi famous outside his immediate circle.)

Obviously, people working is what keeps a country’s economy bumping along and accounts for whatever level of financial prosperity a nation enjoys. But, must we force people, before the proper time, to return to jobs that are very likely going to be nurseries for Covid-19?? When is the proper time?

Personal prejudice is a powerful guide to action – or inaction. We have all heard or read phrases that come from nebulous, unsubstantiated beliefs: ‘the undeserving poor’, ‘the idle rich’, etc.

When Jeffrey Epstein was arrested his story was covered extensively locally because he owned a large property here. One interesting tidbit I saw was an incident that took place at a symposium on his private island in the Caribbean. Epstein told one attendee he was voting Harvard professor Steven Pinker ‘off the island’ because Pinker openly disagreed (using fact-based science) with a comment Epstein had made. At a round-table Epstein had said he would never fund projects for the alleviation of poverty because the poor would just go out and breed, making more children. Pinker spoke up, differing with this assessment, saying this belief has been shown to be untrue: the more solid people become in their personal economies, the fewer children they have.

We all need to do our research, think creatively and not cast aside an open mind and the scientific method when acting on ‘facts’. Following a ‘party line’ is one of the surest roads toward a poverty of imagination and the narrowing of choices.

The rule of money or the rule of democracy? Like a garden, Democracy must be tended and nurtured, its soil must be tilled and overturned to keep it alive, active and strong. It is not a given that it will always prevail after only a couple hundred years of existence.

Keep the Faith

And

Act on it!