Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense attorney and co-owner of the newly independent Reader.
Congress has responded in typical fashion by protecting its donors—the investor class—the only people in the country who didn’t need help. By unrecorded voice vote, Congress passed the CARES Act, rushing $1.77 trillion in taxpayer money out the door to help their friends on Wall Street. This bailout also saved the stock market and preserved the wealth of the 10 percent of Americans who own 85 percent of the stocks and bonds.
As was the case in the 2008 bailout, Congress has assured that none of the pain will be borne by its big donors. Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan Chase won’t lose a penny. Their executives will get their bonuses and their investors will get their dividend checks. Once again, big banks have been allowed to collect their profits on risky loans even when those loans go bad. In other words, the big banks’ risk has been socialized—covered by the taxpayers—while their profits remain privatized. This is capitalism in the 21st century.
Tapper reportedly did calm down. But it’s not clear if ordinary Americans will just calm down when their businesses are closed and their families are thrown out into the streets.
Did you ever wonder why Democrats always lose when Republicans try to game the system to silence minority voices? Republicans encounter little resistance when they gerrymander districts to make them safe from minority voters, suppress minority voters at the polls, enact filibuster rules that allow corporate interests to block popular legislation, and preserve the arcane Electoral College. All of these schemes benefit the corporate patrons of both parties by making it less costly to rig the system. Corporations don’t need to own all 535 members of Congress, or even a majority of them, to control the levers of power.
