Saving Democracy from Plutocracy: "The Nation" shows the way

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Saving Democracy from Plutocracy: "The Nation" shows the way (+)
by: Karita Hummer

Cross-posted from EENR Blog
http://www.eenrblog.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2019


Sat Jul 12, 2008 at 21:19:32 PM EDT
[edit diary]

Merriam-Webster defines PLutocracy as:

" government by the wealthy" http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plutocracy

The June 11th edition of the Nation gives us a 12 step map for saving our Democracy from Plutocracy, and the article by Sarah Anderson and Sam Pizzigati describes just how much our current government has come to embody that term.http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080630/anderson_pizzigati If anyone would ever want to know why we don't have enough to go around for universal health care, ending poverty, fighting global warming and rebuilding our infrastructure and what we can do about it, this is must reading.

Emphasizing our addiction to the state of plutocracy and our denial about it, these two very clever writers and thinkers from the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington,DC, Sarah Anderson and Sam Pizzigati, appropriately recommend a 'twelve step" cure for our current condition.

The twelve steps these authors encourage are these:

Step 1: Admit we are powerless unless we learn more about how concentrated our nation's wealth has become.

Step 2: Trust in a power greater than CEOs and their buddies.

Step 3: Don't let the tax code enable executive excess.

Step 4: Insist on a searching IRS inventory of super-wealthy wallets.

Step 5: Clamp down on hedge-fund kingpins.

Step 6: Make amends to those who truly earn their income.

Step 7: Treat outsized pay as a defect of corporate character.

Step 8: Awake to the simplicity of tax surcharges.

Step 9: Seek a more progressive reckoning with the dearly departed.

Step 10: Restore sanity to the taxation of wealth.

Step 11: Leverage the power of the public purse.

Step 12: Admit to ourselves that maybe Ike had it right.

Sarah Anderson & Sam Pizzigati, "Ending Plutocracy: A 12-Step Program", The Nation, June 11, 2008
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080630/anderson_pizzigati

While there may be room for refining some of these steps, who could argue against the state of inequality that we are in. The John Edwards agenda as he so boldly outlined it during his campaign for One America had many shades of what has been described in this article. He rightly claimed that it would be the fight of his life, and that he was ready for it. Are we still willing to fight that fight?

If plutocracy is to end in America, we must commit to the fight. We can do that by keeping JRE's vision for One America in site. Replacing "their" corporate apologists with "ours" won't do the trick.

Karita Hummer
Edwards Democrat