Author David Cay Johnston in “Free Lunch” goes on to say: “Since 1980 it has become official policy to ensure that the rich receive the benefits of government. This is a shift from government policy in the years after World War II to grow the middle class, remaking America into a land of better-educated and healthier people, a land of suburbs and single-family homes where opportunity was based less on status and wealth than on hard work and merit.”…
Later he notes: “There is a reason that 35,000 people are registered as lobbyists in Washington, double the number of lobbyists employed there in 2000. They are there to seek favors, from outright gifts of your tax dollars to subtle changes in rules that funnel money to their clients, thwart competition, hold you back, and buoy others. Among the ironies is that many of the most damaging policies have been created in the name of Adams Smith, the original modern economist.”
The book was published in 2007, just prior to the economic melt down. We have been paying the price ever since for the shift from “social democracy” to predatory practices, although the “fast buck boys” on Wall Street and their patrons are once agtain doing just fine again.
Hopefully the pubic will keep all of this in mind come election day in November.
Watchdog, since you’re concerned about the negative influence lobbyists have on governance, and think we should keep this in mind when voting in November, you may want to read this recent article from Bloomberg.com: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-30/democrats-take-lobbyist-cash-as-obama-knocks-special-interests.html .
Regarding the shift to predatory practices and the “fast buck boys” on Wall Street, I assume some of your criticism is directed at Timothy Geithner, who “as New York Federal Reserve president, the chief regulator of Wall Street, he gave a free pass to just about every single kind of reckless behavior that has brought this nation to its financial knees.” (source: http://nymag.com/news/businessfinance/bottomline/54304/ ) Geither held that position from 2003 until he became President Obama’s Treasury Secretary in 2009 (source: http://www.ustreas.gov/organization/bios/geithner-e.shtml ), so he deserves a good deal of credit for the 2007 economic meltdown.