The Wrongologist

What’s Wrong Today:

In his last post, the Wrongologist said he
would offer solutions to the “Best
Government Money Can Buy” problem described over the last two posts. We
will do that today, but first, Lee Fang at Republic Report published a story
of wretched excess in corporatism
that you have to read to believe:

In 2011, after Republicans took the
majority in the House of Representatives, the House Armed Services Committee,
which oversees the military, gained a new chairman, Rep Buck McKeon(R-CA). As with
most leadership changes, McKeon and his committee hired new professional staff.

Thomas
MacKenzie, a vice president at Northrop Grumman, was hired to work for the
committee beginning in March, 2011.

But darn the luck, in order to do move to
the Hill, you’re going to have to take a serious pay cut. Hard to do the people’s
business without a big pay cut.

How do you keep your standard of living while working for the public good? How
about a two-year bonus from your ex-employer — say, $250,000 per year — to tide
you over? (Remember, two years is a congressman’s term of office.) Would a half
million dollars keep your mind on your once-and-future job?

So, What’s Wrong?

As a congressional staffer, MacKenzie now
makes about $120,000 a year, taking a
$400k pay cut to work for us. However, not to worry: in MacKenzie’s case,
Northrop Grumman made sure he had extra cash before he went to work writing
policy on the defense budget. They paid MacKenzie a $498,334 bonus in 2011, just before he went to work under McKeon
as a committee staffer.

Coincidence?
Follow the bread crumbs: Representative McKeon, by far the biggest recipient of Northrop
Grumman campaign contributions in Congress. He has defended billions of
dollars in projects for MacKenzie’s former employer.

McKeon fought
to prevent the retirement of the Northrop’s RQ-4 Global Hawk, a drone the
Pentagon said it could save $2.5 billion by cutting. He’s
pressed to secure funding for a range of different aircraft developed by
Northrop Grumman, from a new nuclear-capable long-range bomber to the F-35, which
is slated to be the most expensive weapon ever developed. Earlier this year,
McKeon visited a Northrop plant and rallied employees to help him stave off
nearly $500 billion in sequestration
cuts to the defense budget as part of the deficit-reduction deal.

Luckily for Northrop Grumman, which made $2.12 billion in profits last
year, the firm now has a man on the inside of Congress with wide sway over how
the government spends money on national defense.

If you have no conscience about how you earn
your keep (since you are clearly kept) you can say: “I’ll watch out for
you, Boss”.

This
is simply today’s example of the corporatism at work.

So, What’s to be
Done?

We have to act now to avoid the disintegration of our great
republic into a corporatist
haven controlled by
bankers, mega-corporations and the
mega rich. We have to reform both our political
process and key elements of our economic system.

To
break the unholy alliance between bankers, corporate interests and politicians,
let’s start by trying these:

Political Process

• Scrap the current election process. Replace it with publicly
  financed elections. No money from
  corporations, unions, or individuals would be allowed. A fixed amount
  of TV time would be free to candidates, financed by taxpayers. The domination
  by money in our political process must be broken.

• Establish term limits of 12 years for both Congressmen and Senators.
  Serving in Congress has a learning curve, but it can’t be a career. The purpose
  of Congress is to represent the existing generations of citizens and ensure
  that future generations have a better country than the one we occupy.

• Since
  politicians cannot be trusted to exhibit courage or intelligence when it comes
  to public policy, an independent lobbying
  oversight mechanism must be established to ensure that the pernicious
  impact of corporate dollars do not have a backdoor way to in effect, bribe our
  politicians.

• Despite
  the Roberts Court opinion in Citizens
  United, corporations are not people. Extreme wealth does not give
  someone the right to buy elections. Rich oligarchs operating in the shadows and
  spending billions on negative advertising is not how a republic should elect
  their representatives. Money from
  special interest corporations and PACs
  must be eliminated from the political process.

• Put every proposed bill in Congress
  online.
  The constituents of every Representative and Senator would be allowed to voice
  their opinion in a poll by district, online. We would then have an idea of who
  does or does not vote their conscience. We have the technical ability to
  provide secure logons for citizens.
  

• A suggested funding mechanism must
  accompany each bill
  proposed by a Congress critter. Include a vote on the funding in the online
  poll.

• Commit no American troops to “war” in a foreign country without a vote of
  Congress as required by the U.S. Constitution

Economic System
 
Reinstitute the Glass-Stegall
Act. The Wrongologist
worked under it successfully, so must the current crop of bankers, since Wall
Street cannot manage risk properly. This
would separate commercial banking activities from the risks of “House Money” gambling
that brought the economic system to its knees in 2008. Privatizing the profits
and socializing the losses must be forever unacceptable.

• The economic system must be purged of
  zombie bad debt.
  The Federal Accounting Standards Board (FASB) must make all banks and financial services corporations mark their assets
  to market (true market value) on a quarterly basis. This would reveal
  many Wall Street banks to be very short of capital, with some being technically
  insolvent. Bondholders and stockholders should be forced to realize their
  losses on bad investment decisions.

• Downsize the US Military budget from $1
  trillion to $500 billion annually.
   Withdraw troops from Afghanistan, Iraq,
  Germany, Japan and other bases throughout the world. Policing the world will
  bankrupt us. Reinvest a portion of the savings in education and infrastructure.

• Eliminate all corporate and farm subsidies. While we are at it, federal health
  benefits and pension benefits would be set at usual and customary private
  industry levels.

• Overhaul Social Security. Increase the age for collecting
  Social Security to 70 over the next 15 years. Eliminate the wage cap for the Social
  Security tax. 
  

• The Medicare system is unsustainable. Health care costs for the elderly
  must be controlled by any means necessary. This should not include denying
  coverage, so we need to mandate deep cuts in the costs of health care delivery.
  Make insurance companies compete for business in all states. Double (or more if
  necessary) the budget that The GAO has to audit Medicare fraud & Medicaid
  fraud and prosecute the criminals.

• States should force doctors to post
  their costs for services.
  Tort reform should be implemented to fix the size of permissible awards against
  individual doctors, but no caps should be in place for hospitals, drug
  companies and other corporate actors.

• Stabilize the housing market. 
  As part of the FASB suggestion above, the FED and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac
  should force banks to reduce the mortgage balances of underwater homeowners in
  exchange for an equity interest in any property appreciation. The homeowner
  would have to pay off the mortgage and the equity gain out of any future sale
  of the home. The homeowner would be prohibited from taking out any home equity
  loans or executing any “cash out” refinancing until the equity interest claim was
  satisfied.

Spread the
word. Grab your pitchforks and torches, it’s gonna be a long night.