Tales from the swamp

We all know it, but the details are still stomach-churning. American Oligarchy relates how the Ruling Class operates. It is focused mainly on government, where electeds vote themselves perks like free cars, multiple no-obligation airline reservations (first class), and free global junkets for friends and family on 16 planes maintained by the Air Force for their private use. It allows them to hire friends and family on taxpayer money, and earmark cash grants for favored businesses. They spend half their time raising money for their next election, and the rest accepting gifts, dinners and more junkets from lobbyists, while steadfastly maintaining it has no effect on their positions. They live high off the perks, high off the PAC money, high off the lobbies, and eventually become millionaires themselves (Half of them are at any given time). The system is way out of whack.

Formisano says the United States is headed beyond oligarchy to an aristocracy of inherited wealth, as the ruling class joins the business aristocracy in stashing wealth for its progeny. Nepotism is plainly visible right on television, as networks compete to hire the children of the ruling class right out of school.

Our so-called market economy is becoming a market society, where the wealthy can cut in line. A classic example is paying for a high-occupancy-vehicle “permit” even though you always drive alone. America is corrupt, through and through. Americans look at the bribery that goes on elsewhere and shudder. But it is the way of life in American government, and everyone on all sides is there to get rich first and above all. The middle class and the poor only count on election day when they all suddenly become populists.

As Formisano points out, this sort of rot is absolutely typical of a country in its late stages. It is a sign of the end.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In France, the very first thing newly-elected President Emmanuel Macron did was introduce a law banning the hiring of family by electeds, banning earmark slush funds, banning the holding of more than one elected post, and imposing term limits. In the USA, the first thing the new Congress did after the election of Donald Trump was to close down the Ethics Office.

There is a special chapter on Kentucky and its particular flavor of corruption, theft and high living by civil servants and executives among the legions of poor. Formisano is in Kentucky, so this whipping child of a state is personally known to him. It is revolting how NGOs and civil servants constantly seek to monetize their positions out of taxpayer dollars, and it is rampant. And don’t think for a moment this is unique to Kentucky. In The Poverty Industry, Daniel Hatcher points out that New Hampshire fairly brags that 40% of the state budget is taken from Medicaid funds meant for the poor. How much more institutionalized can corruption be?

Formisano’s pace is fast and steady. He is unrelenting. You get the impression he could just as easily have made the book 900 pages. It is very readable, very accessible, and strangely numbing. After a while, you begin thinking this is ingrained, a structural feature of the republic. I think he noticed this, because there is an Afterword where he points to how we have gotten past nodes like this before. From his pen to God’s ear.

David Wineberg