Are both political parties bought by special interests?  The Congress of the United States will vote depending on the amount of money given to them by special interests.  Politicians really do not care whether it is oil or gas, insurance or pharmaceutical, defensive or offensive weapons, Wall Street or Main Street, Medicare or No Care.  “Show us the money and we’ll show you the legislation you want.”  In fact, special interests say, “We’ll even write it for you, Mr. or Ms. Senate and Mr. or Ms. House of Representatives.  You do not even have to read it.  Our contributions will come rolling in.”  The people not represented, of course, are the lower socioeconomic, middle class, and poor in America.  If these groups “showed them the money,” they would be taken care of just like the big money interests.  The Congress of the United States is not pro insurance, pro oil, pro defense, pro pharmaceutical, anti white, anti black, anti Latino, anti poor—they are just pro money and do not care about those who do not cough up.

How can any decent country be against helping the poor and have-nots, medical care for everyone, ending gang violence and poverty, quality education for all, a better standard of living, a peaceful and secure world, elimination of nuclear weapons, a government that responds to a catastrophe, a country that does not back dictators, monarchies and despots for only profit, global climate change, pollution, and many other issues?

Big corporations, then, control the government of the United States.  I wonder how many people know which oil companies own part or all of the oil in many foreign countries, how many realize the exorbitant profits made at the expense of the average person paying four dollars plus per gallon of gasoline.  Wouldn’t you like to be at their board meetings when they announce extra billions of dollars of profit—they toast themselves.  The same advantage is taken of most of the other major controlling interests in the United States.

By definition America, then, is no longer a democracy.  America has become an oligopoly, which means the power of the government is controlled by the very rich corporations and not the people.

By way of control as a local example, by the late 1940s and early 1950s the electric Red Car Trolley Rapid Transit System in Los Angeles transported over 600,000 people a day.  The power of the very rich decided there would be no trains, subways, or rapid transit in Southern California.  This was to be the largest market in the world for automobiles and the oil industry.  GM bought the Red Car Trolley Rapid Transit System, probably with the oil companies, in the early 1950s.  They vthen bankrupted the company, putting it out of business.  The traffic catastrophe in Southern California was all planned by the big boys.

In the last several years it has become even more apparent that the powers that be control America:  conducting three wars at one time; the veterans fighting these wars for profit are now on the streets (many with loss of limbs, no homes, jobs, or even proper medical care); allocating hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus packages to friends on Wall Street while providing virtually no aid to foreclosed homeowners.  Isn’t it interesting that the only lawsuits filed against the powers on Wall Street have been civil and not criminal?  What happened in the last four years in this country?  Where has the loss of so much to so many gone?   You can bet any litigation will not involve the major players who drove America into the greatest economic disaster since the Great Depression.  The real tragedy is that it could get worse and that we are not being told the truth.  The actual unemployment rate in America, counting the underemployed, the unemployed not reporting, and those who have maximized their unemployment, is actually around twenty plus percent.

We can be sure of one thing, the next stimulus by the government will again protect their cronies—Wall Street, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Insurance, and last but not least, the Military Industrial Complex.

What has happened to the America that now believes in very little except tax cuts for the rich?  The budget deficit in the United States is massive and unsustainable.  One in eight Americans depends on food stamps to eat.  The poor are squeezed by reducing social programs through cuts in budgets and a weak job market.  The budget system in America supports the top of the income distribution through the accumulation of huge amounts of wealth.  According to a recent article, “The richest one percent of American households now has a higher net worth than the bottom ninety percent.”  The annual income of the richest twelve thousand households is greater than the poorest twenty four million households.  So what we have going on is not cutting endless and useless spending on wars but by reducing health, education, and other benefits for the working people, the poor and the needy.  The amount of political corruption in America is unbelievable.  Bill Moyers last October said that “We must halt our country’s slide to becoming the United Corporations of America.”