The Party's Over

I heard a man named Mike Lofgren being interviewed on Bill Moyers' PBS TV program, Moyers & Company.

Lofgren held a position in government. He had been a Republican but has switched parties to become a Democrat.

He has recently published a book entitled The Party Is Over: How the Republicans Went Crazy, The Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted. As you might guess from the book's title, both the Republican and the Democratic parties come in for criticism from him.

He talks about how very wealthy individuals (as well as corporations) have been contributing very heavily to the Republican party. I have written about this. Both individuals and corporations are currently able to contribute unlimited amounts and remain anonymous at the same time. When PACs and foundations and other groups have complex and interlocking structures, it is frequently difficult to trace the ultimate source of much of this money.

I can add—this is not a number from Mr. Lofgren—that 89% of corporate contributions go to the Republican Party and only 11% to the Democratic Party.

Wealthy individuals hope to "buy" lower taxes on themselves. Corporations and Wall Street hope to influence government regulations such that regulations will fail to be enacted, or will be weak or otherwise favorable to these business entities.

As I have theorized in previous blog postings, Republicans and other right-wing interests have managed to gain support from many people who are not among the "one percent" by taking conservative stances on social issues; for example, they know they can win the support of the Religious Right, evangelicals, and other social conservatives by having right (in both senses) stances on issues such as same-sex marriage. Lofgren called these issues or the appeal to these voters "rube bait." But this is how a definite non-majority—the very wealthy--has been gaining wider support.

Lofgren explains how people, when they define issues as being a matter of good or evil (for example, according to or against their religious notions), will see any compromise as giving in to evil. This is why our government has been deadlocked on many of the vital issues before Congress. This can have effects such as when, in the stalemate over debt-limit-extension legislation a year ago, the delay necessitated a lot of shuffling of the books which in turn cost our country $1.3 billion.

Lofgren says that much of what has been going on on our political scene has been the result of one over-riding goal on the part of Mitch McConnell (the Senate Minority Leader): to make Obama a one-term president; but that most likely has been apparent to many people.

Mr. Lofgren also blames Democrats who, he says, have also become "corporatized." Bill Clinton greatly contributed to the economic crisis of 2008 by repealing the Glass-Steagall Act, which had been enacted during the Depression to separate investment banking from consumer banking; and deregulating derivatives. Obama, by giving in to the interests of the pharmaceutical industry, has made the Health Care Reform Act ("Obamacare") considerably more expensive than it needed to be.

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