1- Corruption of the election process and system-- this runs a long gamut, from unlimited campaign money from within and outside the USA to electronic voting technologies that are unacceptably corruptible, to un-controlled chain of possession of ballots. The US used to be a beacon for other nations. Now we are an excuse for corrupt authoritarian regimes.
2-Corporatization of politics: Most elected officials are more loyal to the lobbyists and corporations who fund their campaign ads. That loyalty comes at the price of betrayal of the middle class, of the 99percent.
3- Privatization of the commons-- Shock Doctrine in America: As corporatization of state and federal, county and municipal governments is consolidated, the mostly Republican but also Democratic corporate stooges are selling off assets that are and should be part of the commons we all own and share. They're privatizing schools, energy, water, prison, highways, city management, even parking (Chicago sold the right to collect parking meter money to a European company. Now people pay $9 for two hours of parking.)
Naomi Klein wrote about the shock doctrine, how it's been used to disorient and overwhelm whole nations, used to take away worker rights and citizen protections and to eliminate corporate regulations. Sometimes corporations do this. Sometimes dictators, sometimes they do it with the help of corporate globalization organizations and treaties, like WTO, WB NAFTA, etc. Obama is trying to pass two more treaties that will be the worst of all.
This also manifests in our justice system-- consider how the DOJ now considers big banks too big to prosecute, how the law is used in different ways to treat the 99% and the elite.
4- Corporate Globalization; currently, almost every politician, except a few, like Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders, believes that globalization is inevitable. Note that I say corporate globalization because the global trade agreements are ALL designed for the good of the biggest multinational corporations-- not for the good of the US middle class, US jobs or US industries. None!! Corporate globalization is an assault on the American culture-- on every culture and community it touches. It flays the economic skin of each nation-- and you know that with living things, if you flay their skin, they die, horribly, if you do it while they are alive. This is what the US is going through. Bill Clinton signed the first trade deal-- NAFTA. Dubya Bush and Obama have also sold out the middle class by signing this abominable agreements. The Democrats and Republicans have both signed off on them.
Then there are other problems, but they, for the most part, are a result of the above four problems.
-huge income and wage inequality
-massive tax evasion by the wealthy and corporations
-violations of our constitutional rights and civil liberties
-failure to prosecute elite criminals.
-Military Espionage Industrial Pharmaceutical Complex out of control
-out of control, inhumane health care system where people tens of thousands die and hundreds of thousands or millions suffer from inadequate diagnosis, treatment and economic disasters.
-spy and police state
-failure to fully investigate past events and history, like election theft in Florida, 911, reports of WMDs in Iraq, war crimes, crony deals between politicians and corporations, flow of foreign money into elections because of Citizens United
-destruction of the environment, eradication of species diversity, massive denial of climate change
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