What’s happened is that Washington now works for those who can hire an army of lobbyists and an army of lawyers. If you’re in the drug business, and you are selling prescriptions to seniors, and you don’t want to have to negotiate over the prices, Washington works beautifully for you. If you want subsidies to drill for oil, Washington is working for you. If you run a hedge fund and want to pay the lowest possible taxes, Washington is working for you. In fact, there was recently a study, just in the last couple of weeks … in which it comes out that thirty of the largest companies in the United States are now spending more on lobbying than they pay in federal taxes. Think about that. I mean that is the investment, and that’s what they see as the future.
— Elizabeth Warren, Democratic candidate for senator of Massachusetts
As the former adviser to President Obama responsible for setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to watchdog predatory brokers, bankers and lenders, Warren has seen enough of Washington to paint its portrait with an elegant and horrible symmetry. And it’s absolutely true.
In the last few weeks, some Democrats have shown their true colors, or the color of the logos of their corporate overlords. The SOPA/PIPA vote was a revelation in how many Democratic Congressmen and senators are in the pockets of the music recording and motion picture industry lobbies. It was sobering, especially in light of how many Republicans, for differing reasons, were voting against SOPA. At least Harry Reid had the presence of mind to pull the vote off the calendar and “re-group” his party before a bucket of worldwide disaster dumped itself on the heads of Democrats during the 2012 election year.
The Republicans are far less conciliatory, let alone apologetic. If the SOPA/PIPA vote was pulling back the wizard’s curtain in Oz, the current republican presidential primaries have been the trip to an alternate universe. There’s the party’s disengagement from their responsibility for the cause of our current fiscal troubles. Then there’s the doubling down on their patent disdain for aid to the continuing unemployed, and everyone else for that matter, who have fallen off the train because of conservative policies.