I have been reading a number of books trying to understand
the real underlying forces that are driving the current contentious, and highly
destructive, split between the political left and the political right in this
country. Certainly the obvious and public disdain and contempt the left holds
for people on the political right, especially the religious right, is one of
the key factors. But there are others – this is a complicated issue.
I am beginning to think I see one of those other forces that
feeds the distrust of the right for big government.
In colonial India the British colonial administration had a
saying, a wise saying, that “justice not only must be done, it must be SEEN to
be done.” I think that applies in today's’
America just as much as it did in Colonial India.
In 2016 a Navy machinist, Kristian Saucier, received a one
year prison sentence for taking six selfies of himself for his personal use in
the classified portion of a nuclear submarine. In 2014 Stephen Kim began serving 13 months in
prison for leaking a classified report on North Korea to Fox News. In 2016 Jeffrey
Sterling was sentenced to 3½ years in prison
for leaking a CIA report on Iran to a journalist. And there were others who also
served prison sentences for mishandling classified information – seven cases in
all during the Obama administration. Yet Hillary Clinton, whose personal unsecured
mail server was found to hold over 100 classified emails, 22 of them “top
secret”, received absolutely no punishment at all, not even removal of her
security clearance.
Or take the 2008 financial crisis, which inflicted massive
pain on most of the country and required a huge federal bailout to keep banks
solvent. But nine of the financial firms that were among the largest recipients
of federal bailout money paid about 5,000 of their traders and bankers bonuses
of more than $1 million apiece for 2008, using bailout (ie-taxpayer) money. And
to date not a single executive in the banking industry has even been charged,
let alone convicted, for their part in this crisis. Nor have any of the government
regulators or bureaucrats who were supposed to be overseeing the banks been disciplined
or fired.
Or consider taxes, which all of us not in the 1% have to pay
in full. Yet big well-connected corporations
like Apple and Google and GE and Coca-Cola pay very little in taxes. In fact PG&E, the California-based utility
company, has paid zero net taxes since 2007. In fact, it has paid
negative taxes, receiving tax breaks more valuable than its tax payments. And
hedge fund managers, who have enough pull to get favorable legislation, manage
to pay no tax at all on millions, sometimes even billions, in annual earnings
using the carried interest tax deduction.
Even ex-president Obama, whom the left marketed as one of
the “ordinary people” doesn’t look so “ordinary” now that he is cashing in with
$400,000 speeches to Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald and getting a reported
$65 million advance on his book, far more than the publisher expects to
actually recoup in sales.
Do you see a pattern here? Government is supposed to be for
all the people, but in fact too often it is really for the rich people and the big
corporations, who can afford to hire clever lawyers to protect their interests
and can afford to buy legislators with big campaign donations. The Koch
brothers (on the right) and George Soros (on the left) are the face of big
money in politics and government, and it is all too clear that they have
outsized influence on elections and government.
Too often in our government justice can be plainly seen NOT
to be done, and that, I think, is one of the factors driving the right’s distrust
of government. I suppose any organization
as big as the federal government, handling as much money as it does and with as
much power as it has, is bound to foster abuses. But it amazes me, for example,
that cozy federal civil service regulations made it impossible to fire or even
discipline the VA managers who were found to have falsified patient waiting
time reports so as to keep their bonuses. It was even impossible to take back
the bonuses. No wonder lots of average people distrust the federal government.
I don’t blame them.
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