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• As It Turns Out, It Was a Lie

.Today, we expect our candidates to be of us now, though for many years it was the nation’s wealthy and academic elite who dominated the reigns of power in Washington.  Though they constituted a small percentage of us, men of wealth with Ivy League, or otherwise prestiged pedigrees from institutions of higher learning, were responsible for many of the moves made on the on behalf of our country on the national and global chessboard.

    Now, more and more of those elected to office come from the same neighborhoods and blocks as the rest of us.  Today, not all the men in the backrooms view matters pertaining to the rest of us as though they were looking down their noses at things which needed to be addressed and just couldn’t be avoided, like having to pick up something disgusting to carry to the trash.  That isn’t to say all wealthy, well educated people are ready to put on the surgical gloves every time they have to shake hands with someone not of a similar background.  Some are quite interested in just being normal, whatever “normal” means in the end.

    For years we have watched wealthy bankers and investment firms get rich from doing what they do.  Most of us barely understood the intricacies of the ins and outs of that world.  For most of us it was an indicator of how strong our economy was.  When the Dow is up, that’s a good sign.  When it’s down – not so good. 

          We also watched them on occasion get caught bilking us for millions, and in some cases more, though we thought it was a rarity.  We knew there was no way things were on the up and up all the time, but many things involving large sums of money and power are not unfortunately.  It doesn’t excuse it, but that’s how it is.

    We remained apart and detached for years looking in, not really understanding what the fish were doing when they were behind the rocks, which is where they seemed to spend most of their time.  We stayed out of it until President George W. Bush announced we would be committing to injecting around $700 billion into the economy to prop it up and keep our banks from collapsing.  That’s when everybody asked, “wait… what have they been doing behind the rocks?”

    From that point a sinking feeling began to germinate growing to fury and anger leading to public confidence in government plummeting and for good reason.  When laws were passed meant to allow more low income families to get mortgages the intent was not for the feeding frenzy on the part of predatory banks which ensued.  People were not meant to be able to get in over their heads, with loans those giving them out knew would soon drown their holders. 

    The loosening of restrictions, allowing credit default swaps, which led to more financial havoc than the initial housing bubble alone wreaked, was not meant to allow foul play.  People were being trusted to police themselves to a certain extent and not run their own cars off the rails.  But the lure of big money cushioned by Federal Government intervention turned out to be too great.  Yet, they were bailed out.  If as many low or middle income people had simultaneously committed check fraud or credit card fraud, would we be set free, and bailed out to boot, as long as we said, “I didn’t know?”

          Wealthy corporations took advantage of us coming and going.  A pair of brothers saw that anger and knew they had the potential makings of the kind of movement they had been waiting for decades.  Charles and David Koch quietly poured money into the Tea Party movement and turned it into what it is today.  This movement of the people was actually not directed, shaped, orchestrated or planned out by the people at all, but people who had worked for the Koch brothers for years.  Peggy Venable, Matt Kibbe, Dick Armey and more all had longtime ties going way back to the pair and helped orchestrate and carefully manicure what we see today.

          But the movement so many of us believed was one of us middle income to low income Americans was actually of a pair of brothers born into wealth educated at prep schools and who received degrees from MIT.  They were always shielded from the real sweat, the real blood and the true dirt.  Regarding the Tea Party a Republican campaign consultant, who worked with the Koch brothers said, “They’re smart. This right-wing, redneck stuff works for them. They see this as a way to get things done without getting dirty themselves.” (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=2)

           Regarding their own views on their money, morality and how their lives and upbringings connect to the rest of us, a hint can be gleaned from a quote from a speech David Koch gave.  He let it slip when, “David Koch joked about his good fortune in a 2003 speech to alumni at Deerfield, where, after pledging twenty-five million dollars, he was made the school’s sole ‘lifetime trustee.’ He said, ‘You might ask: How does David Koch happen to have the wealth to be so generous? Well, let me tell you a story. It all started when I was a little boy. One day, my father gave me an apple. I soon sold it for five dollars and bought two apples and sold them for ten. Then I bought four apples and sold them for twenty. Well, this went on day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, until my father died and left me three hundred million dollars!’” (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=1)

          It’s too late now, but Americans have been hornswoggled.  We thought this was about a movement for the people.  It was really about two brothers, who have received $100 million in tax payer dollars of government contracts since 2000, trying to gain a stronger foothold in American politics.  This was never about frustration over government money going to private corporations, for them.  It was about more money and power, and how we could best be touched to fulfill their aims, unbenounced to us.

    To read about my inspiration for this article go to www.lawsuitagainstuconn.com.