For me this is simple. We have a giant problem in this country. It’s the elephant in the room! We’re a Democracy on the edge. We’re in great danger of transitioning to a plutocracy: a society, economy and polity controlled by the rich.

Image: Donkey Hotey / Flickr

Corporations and rich Americans buy elections, by flooding the air waves with ads that are largely lies or distortions. They buy elections by flooding the coffers of candidates with contributions on the tacit understanding that these contributions will buy them access or even obesiance to the interests of the contributors. They buy the marketplace of ideas by funding think tanks, periodicals, newspapers and TV and cable stations to ensure that the public is bathed in propaganda. They manipulate the vote by buying State legislators and influencing them to pass voter suppression bills disguised as anti-voter fraud laws. They influence politics by running for the highest offices themselves openly promising to legislate policies that will net them additional millions of dollars. They commit control frauds in the banking system and in running big businesses, costing millions of homeowners their homes and their dreams. They manipulate interest rates all over the world costing borrowers hundreds of billions, perhaps trillions of dollars. They protect themselves from punishment and enforcement of the rule of law by using their political connections to prevent investigations, indictments, and convictions. They influence pubic policy to ensure that Federal policies will maintain high unemployment. They influence it to prevent passage of Medicare for All, against the will of the majority of Americans and condemning many, many thousands to dying quickly after they get ill. And finally, when they make errors in their own business affairs they influence the Federal government to practice lemon socialism by bailing them out, all the while insisting that the Government must avoid the moral hazard of bailing out people who work for a living.

This transition from democracy to plutocracy is the broader context of our times and of the current Presidential campaign. Now comes Mitt Romney, a very rich man, who became so rich by engaging in business activities whose ethics are at best questionable, and, at worst, disloyal to the broader interests of almost all American employees of whatever class, and he effectively says to us:

I largely refuse to disclose my tax returns to you, the American public, because I don’t think it would be good for me to give the Press and yourselves a chance to evaluate them and draw your own conclusions about my business and political activities based on what they reveal.

Nevertheless, I still want you to trust me to be a President who will represent you and will act in your interest rather than in the interests of the very, very rich people like me and the large corporations and financial interests I have been so closely connected with for my whole life. That is, I don’t trust you to evaluate me fairly; but I still ask that you trust me to act in your interest and be your President for at least four years, during this critical time of possible transition from a democracy to a plutocracy.

I can be trusted to see to it that we do not complete this transition, and that when my presidency is finished you will still have your democracy, not only more prosperous than it is today; but also more free and more democratic.

Do you believe that Mitt Romney can be trusted to deliver on such a promise or not? I don’t believe it. There are many reasons why I don’t.

A big reason why is that he won’t trust we, the people, to see and evaluate those tax returns. He is already “dissing” us.

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