The Owls' Nest

 Here's Robert Reich, back before the 2020 elections (and I've transcribed it below):




Trump is the consequence rather than the cause of the anti-democratic surge. Here's how the Supreme Court's infamous Citizens United decision — delivered 14 years ago today — brought us to our current moment. pic.twitter.com/r4axhJs3JZ

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) January 21, 2024

We're coming to the end of what might be called the anti-democracy decade. It began January 21, 2010, with the Supreme Court's shameful decision in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, opening the floodgates to big money and politics with the absurd claim that the 1st Amendment protects corporate speech. It ends with Donald Trump in the White House, filling his administration with corporate shills and inviting foreign powers to interfere in American elections.

Trump is the consequence, rather than the cause, of the anti-democratic surge. By the 2016 election, the richest 1/100th of Americans, 24,949 extremely wealthy people, accounted for a record-breaking 40% of all campaign contributions. That same year, corporations flooded the presidential, Senate, and House elections with $3.4 billion of donations. Labor unions no longer provided any countervailing power, contributing only $213 million. That's 16 corporate dollars for every $1 from labor unions. Big corporations and the super wealthy lavished their donations on the Republican party because Republicans promised them a giant tax cut if they won. As Lindsey Graham warned his Republican colleagues: "Financial contributions will stop" if the GOP didn't come through.

The political investments paid off big. For instance, groups supported by Charles and the late David Koch and their Koch Industries spent over $20 million promoting Trump's tax cuts, which will save them and their heirs between $1 billion and $1.4 billion every year. And courtesy of the tax cut, the number of companies paying $0 in federal taxes doubled in 2018. corporate profits are now at an all-time high, but almost nothing has trickled down. Companies have spent most of their extra cash on stock buy-backs and dividends. Stock buy-backs alone hit a record-breaking $1.1 trillion in 2018. This has given the stock market a sugar high but left little for workers. Not even a sizzling economy could match these returns.

The anti-democracy decade has been hard on American workers. Despite the longest economic expansion in modern history, real wages have barely risen. The share of corporate profits going to workers still isn't back to where it was before the 2008 financial crisis. Never in the history of economic data have corporate profits outgrown employee compensation so clearly and for so long. The so-called free market has been taken over by crony capitalism, corporate bailouts, and corporate welfare. No wonder confidence in political institutions has plummeted. in 1964, just 29% of voters believed the government was run by a few big interests looking out for themselves; but by 2013, 79% of Americans believed it.

Enter Donald Trump: "Big business, elite media, and major donors are lining up behind the campaign of my opponent because they know she will keep our rigged system in place."

That was what Trump proclaimed in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention in 2016, and then he rode the rigging all the way into the Oval Office.

It doesn't have to be this way. Even if Citizens United isn't reversed by the Supreme Court or defanged by constitutional amendment, a principled Congress and decent president could still rescue our democracy. House Democrats have already begun with their "For the People Act," the first legislation introduced when they gained a majority. It expands voting rights, stops partisan gerrymandering, strengthens ethics rules, and limits the influence of private donor money, by providing $6 of public financing for every $1 of small donations, up to $200, raised by participating candidates.

A new Senate and a new president could make these reforms law. On the other hand, a second Trump term could make the anti-democracy decade a mere prelude to the wholesale destruction of American democracy.

Trump himself couldn't care less. As he said in 2016: "I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them: they are there for me. That's a broken system."

These might have been the most honest words ever to come out of his mouth.

In 2020, the choice is clear. Continue America's move toward oligarchy or kick-start a new era of people-powered democracy.