Thom Hartmann: Are Economic Royalists Leading the US Over a Precipice?

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Are Economic Royalists Leading the US Over a Precipice?

Saturday, 14 December 2013 10:35
By Thom Hartmann, Truthout/Twelve | Book Excerpt


In his just-published book, The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America - and What We Can Do to Stop It, Thom Hartmann lays out a persuasive and sweeping case that Economic Royalists are driving the United States into a cataclysmic financial breakdown. Was the near meltdown of our economy at the end of the Bush Administration just a prelude to a more crushing collapse?

Given the erosion of the checks and balances normally provided by a representative democracy, Hartmann convincingly answers "Yes."

......(snip)......

The following excerpt from The Crash of 2016 is entitled, "The ALEC Shadow Government":

For more than a decade, Marc Pocan (now a member of the US House of Representatives) was regularly elected every two years by his constituents in the Seventy-​Eighth District of Wisconsin to represent their interests in the Wisconsin State Assembly. In fact, he won 93 percent of the vote in his first bid back in 1998.

But, Representative Pocan soon learned, in Royalist America, there’s no place for him, or his constituents, in government anymore. Pocan realized this when he attended the annual convention of the American Legislative Exchange Council, better known as ALEC, down in New Orleans back in August 2011.

Established in 1973, ALEC claims on its website that its mission is "to advance the Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism, and individual liberty, through a nonpartisan public-​private partnership of America’s state legislators, members of the private sector, the federal government, and general public." .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/20624-are-economic-royalists-leading-the-us-over-a-precipice