No More Mr. Nice Guy!

Grand Theft Country

A new book, Free Lunch, by investigative reporter David Cay Johnston, gives a chilling insight into the personality of Dick Cheney, and by extension of the Bush kleptocracy. The date is March 2001, shortly after Bush and the Dick-in-Chief took power despite losing the previous year's election. Already, energy deregulation laws written by Enron and bulldozed through state legislators around the country by hard-right corporatists have lead to electricity bills soaring to astronomical levels, along with blackouts and brownouts. There is widespread economic suffering by consumers, small businesses are closing their doors, and large corporations are laying off thousands of workers.

At a bipartisan meeting on Capitol Hill, representatives tell Cheney of the hardship faced by their constituents, and beg for relief. Cheney coldly refuses to take any action; this is the free market at work, and the free market is sacred and inviolate. Then Representative Jay Inslee produces a fax which is the smoking gun showing that this market is anything but free. A utilities expert has found that the fraction of generating capacity in California that is offline at any given time is almost a third, over ten times what it typically was before the new laws took effect. This is clear evidence that the market is being manipulated, and that the scarcity of electricity which is causing so much suffering is being artificially created to enrich energy brokers like Enron. In other words, Cheney has just been presented with prima facie evidence of criminal wrongdoing. How does he respond? He refuses to read the fax, and verbally shoots Inslee in the face with a sneer: "You just don't understand economics."

This is just one of many horrifying stories in Free Lunch which lays bare the rotten, corrupt reality at the heart of the rethugs' lofty rhetoric about free markets. What we have is a fixed market, rigged to enrich the already obscenely wealthy at the expense of the vast majority who have to work for a living. Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars are taken from taxpayers and shovelled into the coffers of sports team owners, big box store owners, golf course owners, hedge fund managers, you name it. What was once government by the people, of the people and for the people, is now government whose sole raison d'être is to take from the many and give to the very wealthy few.

Right-wingers claim that a rising tide raises all boats. In reality, we have a tidal wave of sleaze, greed and corruption that is lifting the luxury giga-yachts of the richest one-tenth of one percent to the stratosphere, while drowning ordinary workers. This process has been going on for decades, but has vastly accelerated under the Junior regime. A tiny handful of well-connected cronies now owns the majority of wealth in the US, while millions of workers are falling into poverty, schools and libraries are closing, bridges and railroad lines are collapsing, and almost everyone is worse off now than when Ronald Reagan asked his famous question.

That's what you get for putting those greed-crazed criminals in power. If you're not a millionaire, the invisible hand is flipping you an all-too-visible finger.