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If there is one thing that unites voters — Republicans and Democrats — it is the feeling they have lost control of their lives. People blame different institutions for this (Republicans tend to blame big government while Democrats often see big business), but in some ways, both are right.
If you’re like me, your parents told you many times that when you grew up, you would have a better life than them. Today, that trust in a better future is all but gone. Polls indicate about 80 percent of Americans now believe their children will be worse off than them. I graduated from Temple University in 1960 free from debt. Tuition was approximately $500 a year and my bill for textbooks was about $40. My daughter graduated college some 25 years ago and was paying off college loans a decade later. Today, studies show the average college student graduates with a $27,000 loan hung around his or her neck like an unforgiving albatross. They’re lucky if they can buy one textbook for $40. They’re incredibly lucky if there is any kind of a job waiting for them.
Today, our once strongly held beliefs in the future seem naive — even foolish. The middle class, once the backbone of America, is disappearing before our eyes. Millions of middle-class Americans have lost their homes in a blitzkrieg of foreclosures. Their retirement savings have shrunk or were wiped out. While their lives were falling into a deep, dark hole, they watched the executives on Wall Street get big bonuses, and big banks get bailed out.
The rules were rigged against them. They worked hard all of their lives and were betrayed. There was no bailout for the middle class. Meanwhile the financial sharpies thrived at their expense. How did we let this happen to America? It seems to me two events — one in 1993 and the other in 2010 — pushed us over cliff and into the mess in which we find ourselves with both parties to blame.
FDR ostensibly saved capitalism in 1933 with the Glass-Steagall Act. Remember when your teachers told you America had refined and softened the dog-eat-dog jungle of pure capitalism? The sweatshops had disappeared with the implementation of child labor laws. Unions were strong enough to protect workers. One of my teachers called it “capitalism with a heart.”
The act was part of a vision to protect ordinary Americans from losing their savings. It created the FDIC that, in effect, provides us with deposit insurance. Just as importantly, the act kept banking and securities separate to prevent us from fraud and conflicts of interest.
Flash forward to 1999: President Bill Clinton and the Republicans squabbled over many things, but one thing on which they agreed was that too many regulations hurt American business from being globally competitive. Republicans had always believed in deregulation as one of their many articles of faith. What was new was the Democrats of that era were stumbling over themselves to also prove they were pro-business. The Glass-Steagall was repealed enthusiastically — only eight senators voted against repeal — and our financial nightmare began. Today, President Barack Obama has surrounded himself with many of the same advisors who persuaded Clinton to make this misjudgment, one that led to the irresponsible actions of the big banks that, in turn, led to their being bailed out. “Too big to fail,” is what these same “experts” said.
When most folks, Tea Party Republican and liberal Democrats alike, talk about their government not listening to them, the main reason is big political contributors are drowning out their voices. An army of lobbyists invade the offices of Congress to fix legislation that benefits their private interests and not those of the average American voter. The 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United did not cause all of these problems, but it was the rock that helped to cause the landslide. The 5-4 decision (all the conservatives on the Court ruled in its favor), for the first time conveyed free speech to corporations, associations and unions. Since the corporations have most of the money, they flooded our political system with billions of dollars and made most of our political representatives of both parties beholden to big business. As Bob Dylan once wrote, “money doesn’t talk, it swears.”
I am not one to demonize corporations, which are designed to make a profit for shareholders. I don’t expect them to operate in anything but their own self-interest. I do expect them to obey the law. That is why we need to return to a time when regulations and oversight restricted their actions for the well-being of all Americans. That can only happen if we change the balance of the Supreme Court and overturn the disastrous ruling in Citizens United. When the flow of corporate money is stopped, the voices of our citizens will be heard. Only then will we begin to get our government and lives back.
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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