July 24^th

 Today we’ll talk about the Trump phenomenon. Only in America can money and bombast produce a viable candidate for the Presidency. There are about 500 billionaires in this country, many of them richer that Donald Trump, none of them as wiling to brag about their wealth and none of them, except Trump, running for office. There about 1500 people with a net worth of more than 500 million dollars; they can also be described in the same terms Mr. Trump uses to describe himself, “really, really rich!”

It is the nature of capitalist free-enterprise systems, so the economists tell us, to increase the difference between the ends of the wealth continuum. The average salary for the CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies is about 10 million dollars annually.  My paper this morning advertised a number of jobs paying 18 thousand dollars a year, .0018 of the top CEO’s pay. Once before the country was at the mercy of wealthy individuals, people who controlled various trusts. Then President Theodore Roosevelt began his “trust busting.” Vertically integrated trusts had achieved a stranglehold on the economy and Roosevelt released that stranglehold.

Money now controls our government; there are seventeen registered lobbyists for every legislator. These lobbyists sometimes write the legislation which their employers want enacted. If the legislator behaves himself, cooperates and does what he’s told, he can eventually look forward to his own lucrative career as a lobbyist. The system is set up to perpetuate the system; the result even includes an insistence on a pledge of no new taxes. This pledge is required of new legislators by Grover Norquist, a powerful if unelected factotum. The pledge increases the protection of the wealth of the already wealthy and requires the government to go ever deeper into debt; it guarantees that the wealthy are immune from any debt repayment obligation. Any criticism of the system raises the cry of “class warfare.”

The current spectacle is hardly surprising; the result is that a wealthy real estate mogul, who admits contributing to every politician who might be able to increase his wealth, is now claiming that he will do great things if elected. He has already said that he would build a wall along the border with Mexico…and make Mexico pay for it. When asked how he would make Mexico pay for it he says his questioner must wait and see. He claims that Mexico is “sending” its felons and “some good people” to this country. How Mexico can “send” any of their citizens anywhere he doesn’t say.

He has the trappings of wealth and the bluster of arrogance and that combination has enormous appeal to many on the right…and some on the left. He also takes pains to criticize his Republican opponents as well as his Democratic ones. This also appeals to his audience who rarely hears anyone lashing out indiscriminately at politicians. His wealth allows him ignore the normal rules of political combat. Those in politics are now reaping what they have sown. Heaven help us all!