Common Sense 2009

The American government -- which we once called our government -- has been taken over by Wall Street, the mega-corporations and the super-rich. They are the ones who decide our fate. It is this group of powerful elites, the people President Franklin D. Roosevelt called "economic royalists," who choose our elected officials -- indeed, our very form of government. Both Democrats and Republicans dance to the tune of their corporate masters. In America, corporations do not control the government. In America, corporations are the government.

This was never more obvious than with the Wall Street bailout, whereby the very corporations that caused the collapse of our economy were rewarded with taxpayer dollars. So arrogant, so smug were they that, without a moment's hesitation, they took our money -- yours and mine -- to pay their executives multimillion-dollar bonuses, something they continue doing to this very day. They have no shame. They don't care what you and I think about them. Henry Kissinger refers to us as "useless eaters."

But, you say, we have elected a candidate of change. To which I respond: Do these words of President Obama sound like change?

"A culture of irresponsibility took root, from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street."
There it is. Right there. We are Main Street. We must, according to our president, share the blame. He went on to say: "And a regulatory regime basically crafted in the wake of a 20th-century economic crisis -- the Great Depression -- was overwhelmed by the speed, scope and sophistication of a 21st-century global economy."

This is nonsense.

The reason Wall Street was able to game the system the way it did -- knowing that they would become rich at the expense of the American people (oh, yes, they most certainly knew that) -- was because the financial elite had bribed our legislators to roll back the protections enacted after the Stock Market Crash of 1929.

Congress gutted the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial lending banks from investment banks, and passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which allowed for self-regulation with no oversight. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently revised its rules to allow for even less oversight -- and we've all seen how well that worked out. To date, no serious legislation has been offered by the Obama administration to correct these problems.

Instead, Obama wants to increase the oversight power of the Federal Reserve. Never mind that it already had significant oversight power before our most recent economic meltdown, yet failed to take action. Never mind that the Fed is not a government agency but a cartel of private bankers that cannot be held accountable by Washington. Whatever the Fed does with these supposed new oversight powers will be behind closed doors.

Obama's failure to act sends one message loud and clear: He cannot stand up to the powerful Wall Street interests that supplied the bulk of his campaign money for the 2008 election. Nor, for that matter, can Congress, for much the same reason.

Consider what multibillionaire banker David Rockefeller wrote in his 2002 memoirs:

"Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure -- one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."

Read Rockefeller's words again. He actually admits to working against the "best interests of the United States."

Need more? Here's what Rockefeller said in 1994 at a U.N. dinner: "We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis, and the nations will accept the New World Order." They're gaming us. Our country has been stolen from us.

Journalist Matt Taibbi, writing in Rolling Stone, notes that esteemed economist John Kenneth Galbraith laid the 1929 crash at the feet of banking giant Goldman Sachs. Taibbi goes on to say that Goldman Sachs has been behind every other economic downturn as well, including the most recent one. As if that wasn't enough, Goldman Sachs even had a hand in pushing gas prices up to $4 a gallon.

The problem with bankers is longstanding. Here's what one of our Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, had to say about them:

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation, and then by deflation, the banks and the corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their father's conquered."

We all know that the first American Revolution officially began in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. Less well known is that the single strongest motivating factor for revolution was the colonists' attempt to free themselves from the Bank of England. But how many of you know about the second revolution, referred to by historians as Shays' Rebellion? It took place in 1786-87, and once again the banks were the cause. This time they were putting the screws to America's farmers.

Daniel Shays was a farmer in western Massachusetts. Like many other farmers of the day, he was being driven into bankruptcy by the banks' predatory lending practices. (Sound familiar?) Rallying other farmers to his side, Shays led his rebels in an attack on the courts and the local armory. The rebellion itself failed, but a message had been sent: The bankers (and the politicians who supported them) ultimately backed off. As Thomas Jefferson famously quipped in regard to the insurrection: "A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Perhaps it's time to consider that option once again.

I'm calling for a national strike, one designed to close the country down for a day. The intent? Real campaign-finance reform and strong restrictions on lobbying. Because nothing will change until we take corporate money out of politics. Nothing will improve until our politicians are once again answerable to their constituents, not the rich and powerful.

Let's set a date. No one goes to work. No one buys anything. And if that isn't effective -- if the politicians ignore us -- we do it again. And again. And again.

The real war is not between the left and the right. It is between the average American and the ruling class. If we come together on this single issue, everything else will resolve itself. It's time we took back our government from those who would make us their slaves.

Comments

[John Denton]

it would have to get very bad to keep Americans from stifling their impulses to acquire things they don't need.

[dorothyann]

Wel, I did my boycott for the day, on 9/11/09. I plan to do the same on various other dates. Anyone else do, or not do anything??? Or is everyone else waiting for ome leader to go first?

[Bryce Davis]

OK, if people really want to have an impact we must do a few things hopefully with the help of Huffington Post. We must agree what we want to change perhaps one of those things where folks can vote on this web site would work. I think it has been shown time after time a one day boycott is ineffective however think of how Appartide was ended, we need a target corporation or industry and we need to get as many to boycott that and only after we have cost them enough $ will this be effective. I think these 3 are a good start, the insurance industry, pharmaceuticals or the AMA, the 3 biggies involved in derailing health care reform. I for one do not want it if there is no public option that wont fix anything! This one day thing is little more than cute. They know everyone will just do more the day before or after, they are not dumb they are greedy and narsastic but not dumb!

[RomansOne20]

I'm FLABBERGASTED at the sleepy-headed IGNORANCE of those who mock "conspirac­y-theorist­s"; a misnomer, because conspiracy, esp. in high places, is NOT a theory: Its the "natural-warp" of human nature. If you uninformed "critics" knew anything about actual history (something not taught at the "academy"), you would see it recurring again NOW. "Larry Flynt is a kook," you say? Did you actually READ his insightful commentary? On that, what do you suppose Woodrow Wilson was talking about in his book "The New Freedom" after he signed the Federal Reserve Act into "illegal law"? Was he a "kook" too? Yes, this "conspiracy" goes back even farther than that, and now "they" are about to yank the First Amendment from beneath you (& several others too). Well, all I can say is when it happens, YOU DESERVE IT. Had this present-day crop of New Age ninnies been around before the American Revolution, we would have succumbed to a Central Banking System (Bank of England) IMMEDIATELY, and America would have never happened. I don't know why I bother. Perhaps I'm beginning to enjoy the pain of skull against granite.

[Truelee]

Give us a date!!

[karen1p]

SET THE DATE ALREADY!!! WHEN?

WE ALL WILL FOLLOW

[timbonotes]

Well, Mr. Flynt you are well on your way to redemption with articles like this. Maybe all of those years of paralysis and related suffering have given you a second chance at being a true human being. If you need volunteers I will be there because as a senior citizen I refuse to go into that good night gently.
Screw these pigs where it hurts!

[ECJLA]

Larry:

Your last line hits the nail on the head. The majority of Americans are gradually being reduced to vasselage tantamount to enslavement. (See my recent HuffPost comments using the Profile feature.) Deluded, dimwitted Democratic leaders deny it, but today's hyper-extreme inequality is to the 21st century what slavery was to the 19th century. We are in a political moment akin to the whithering away of the Whig party in the 1850s. The Republicans first presidential candidate, John Fremont, ran in the 1856 presidential election. Barack Obama will almost certainly be the last Democrat ever to be elected to the presidency.

To succeed in your goals, you must yoke the idea for a general strike to the founding of a new pro-equality political party. E.g. a majority of Americans will rally around the idea that no American's net worth should exceed another's by more than a certain ratio (1,000 to 1, 10,000 to 1, 1,000,000 to 1, whatever).

Legalized extreme inequality and the perverse incentives it establishes, are responsible for most if not all of the problems in the country and the world. Conversely, mandated leveling (within wide but not extreme limits) alone would solve most if not all of the nation's and world's problems within a few generations.

Upon the founding of a new equality-driven party, a new Lincoln will eventually emerge. If not in 2012 then in 2016 or beyond. This must needs be.

Eric C. Jacobson
Public Interest Lawyer
Culver City, California

[Pablo Manriquez - Huffpost Blogger]

re: "Obama's failure to act sends one message loud and clear: He cannot stand up to the powerful Wall Street interests that supplied the bulk of his campaign money for the 2008 election. Nor, for that matter, can Congress, for much the same reason."

Could be, and not to defend Geithner's appalling bailout plan, but regarding some of the other reforms -- health care and the like -- Obama's failure to act could be because of a Democratic Congress' continued shameless whore-mongering.

[itproinct]

Larry - You said it perfectly. I am none to glad to say it, but the only way to take back our government and our country is to seek out the oligarchs one by one, and bring the pain any way we citizens can. One by one, day after day, until the oligarch's proposition of screwing over American citizens becomes so unappealing and ultimately deterred, that things finally do change for the citizens.

Fact is, until recently we have become a bloated, ill informed, politically lazy population (myself included) that is way too willing to take the crumbs our corporate masters (and the corporate master's bought and paid for government) feed us...

We are in the information age, and as American citizens we need to leverage that information ability to the maximum. By this, I mean we citizens need to use the information available to us to know thine enemy(s), and take action by any means necessary to deter the oligarchs.

Until some cause and effect is put in place to deter the oligarchs self serving agenda, the regular American citizens (98%) will continue on a painful downward spiral...

[dorothyann]

Well, I already canceled my worthless healthinsurance policy. Have you?

If you want to take down the insurance companies, then cancel.

I'm boycotting 9/11/09 for starters.

[yorkriver1]

Nader weighs in on the possibilities in his new book, it turns out. "Only the Super Rich Can Save Us". A fictional account...­...strange echoes of Larry Flynt's instincts.

quote from Amazon's website: This vivid fictional account by three-time presidential candidate and best-selling author Ralph Nader asks: What if several of America's wealthiest individuals decided it was time to work for the collective good?

The story that unfolds returns us to the literature of American social movements-to Edward Bellamy, Upton Sinclair, John Steinbeck, and Stephen Crane. And "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!" is something else too, a reminder that real changes in America always start with the imagination.

[stephenburnett]

Larry,

I'm down with this General Strike idea! In fact, I've been suggesting it to friends and family for a number of years.

Name the date -- I'm in [or out of this rotted economy] for this date and for as long as it takes to bring down the current "dictatorship of the inferior"!!!

Stephen Burnett
"People shouldn't be afraid of their governments; governments should be afraid of their people.."

[karen1p]

I say name the date too. Down with all this BS!

[research]

great article Larry.

Nationalize the FED.

get rid of the 12 DEALER banks privileges to leverage cheap money from the Treasury, and instead, leverage the Treasury money to pay government services. That's way, the people get the benefit of the interest.

[Christopher Millsap]

I tend to agree with what he has to say. The arrogance of Wallstreet is evident in that not a single one of these greed mongers has stepped forward and taken any form of responsibility or offered an apology to the nation. Compare the actions of our so-called CEO's to those in Japan. At least there they show at least a bit of humility in the face of massive incompetence.

[ait]

Instead of 1,000 comments there should be 100,000...people wake up...it's not a conspiracy...

[steppenwolfsayshi]

Good. It is time to get something done. I'm looking forward to your next blog with the details.