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OpEdNews Op Eds    H1'ed 3/19/14

Billionaires ... First They Came for the Economy

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That legislation included a 23% across-the-board cut to individual income tax rates.

And in 1986, Reagan again lowered individual income tax rates.

Meanwhile, Reagan also stopped enforcing the Sherman Antitrust Act, a law that has been on the books since 1890.

The Act prevents monopolies from forming, and protects against other unfair business practices.

Unfortunately, without being enforced, corporations were allowed to grow out-of-control under Reagan, as the billionaire oligarchs got even richer.

This all inevitably led to a massive split between the wealthy elite and everybody else in America, a gap in income equality that is getting worse and worse every day.

Next, the billionaires came for our government, and turned it into an oligarchy.

From the halls of Congress to state houses across the country, government is working for the wealthy elite first, and everyone else second.

The ultimate proof of the oligarchs' success in taking over our government came in 2008, when they crashed our economy.

During the Great Recession, total U.S. household wealth fell by about $16.4 trillion, with much of those losses going into the pockets of the oligarchs who caused one of the worst economic collapses in American history.

Not a single billionaire bankster was jailed or even prosecuted for that collapse.

And for even more proof that Washington has turned into an oligarchy, the NRA, a group that is among the oligarchs, is fighting feverishly to block President Obama's nomination of Dr. Vivek Murthy to be Surgeon General.

With help from current Senators, including Democrats, the NRA has launched campaign against Murthy, arguing that his position that gun violence is a significant public health threat means that he is hostile towards the Second Amendment rights of American citizens.

Over the past 40 years, billionaire oligarchs have slowly but surely taken over just about all aspects of life in America.

But enough is enough.

It's time to end America's oligonomy by rolling back the Reagan tax cuts and enforcing the Sherman Anti-Trust act, so that corporations can't grow out-of-control and amass endless piles of money.

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Thom Hartmann is a Project Censored Award-winning New York Times best-selling author, and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk program on the Air America Radio Network, live noon-3 PM ET. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," "We The People," "What Would Jefferson Do?," "Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle (more...)
 

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