What's Wrong with America?

RE: Anxiety in the Empire (by Froma Harrop) in the St. Petersburg Times, July 11th, 2007

Finally, someone said it. Froma Harrop's column on what's wrong with America has been eating many of us up inside. Ms. Harrop's clear and eloquent list includes leadership that doesn't care about the communal big picture, noisy religiosity and fear distractions, the powerful grabbing the loot while millions of the working-class slip into poverty, rising debt, a disregard of science, politicians lining corporate coffers, and waging an unnecessary war on the cheap.

I would add that the key underlying factor behind many of these ills is lobbying. Corporations contribute millions to politicians if politicians do whatever the corporations say. As a result, corporations have created laws that can allow CEO’s to retire after one year with stock options vesting at upwards of $20-million while their employees work longer hours at reduced pay with no health insurance.

Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin are turning over in their graves at their democracy that is no longer “one man, one vote,“ but rather, one corporate lobbyist contribution, one more bunch of rich old white guys robbing us blind. Corporate lobbying has hi-jacked our democracy; it is ours no longer.


http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/07/anxiety_in_the_empire.html