How Billionaires control the U.S. government

Eric Zuesse

There is a widespread misconception that though the U.S. Government is a ‘flawed’ democracy, it IS a democracy.

Yesterday, I headlined “How America’s Billionaires Rule”, and presented documentation (via links) that the U.S. Government is top-down ruled, and not at all bottom-up. This country has two classes: the super-rich versus everybody else. However, a reader there commented: “Please allow me again to suggest a refinement, the same refinement that I have previously suggested. Large groups of voters, like unions or cohesive groupings, like the NAACP, and large groups of investors, like investment funds, composed of non-billionaires, or large economic enterprises, like general dynamics, and trending social phenomena like a cause célèbre, also have political power.”

To that, I responded with this:

My article had documented (but only regarding America’s international relations / foreign policies / national security issues) that America’s leaders (even the ones who are ‘democratically’ elected) are almost all of them — nearly 100% — pre-selected by billionaires to fund, before having even an opportunity to become voted-on by the public. In this sense, the are selected’ before having even the possibility of becoming elected

Many people refuse to accept the empirical findings on this, and choose instead to believe the myth (which wasn’t entirely a myth until 1945) that the public are the ultimate rulers in America.

The Statue of Liberty is the iconic example of the America that once was, that flawed democracy, which was struggling to overcome its bigotries, its prejudices, but which was making constant progress toward overcoming them.

The country that we Americans live in today is drastically different. It is now a monolithically, and very much bi-partisan, billionaires-controlled country, and not ONLY in its commerce, but in its Government, which no longer adheres to the U.S. Constitution but instead systematically violates it by violating what had been the clear intention of the Founders who wrote it and who wrote (and thereby became or joined America’s Founders) each one of its Amendments, which, at least until 1945, were bringing America’s formal Government, its laws, more and more democratic. It was an improving country, up until that time.

The 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision by the U.S. Supreme Court opened the floodgates to political take-over of the U.S. Government by the billionaires — the people who own virtually unlimited wealth and therefore who possess the means to outbid anyone who opposes all of them — anyone who stands against their taking over he U.S. Government. From that moment on, the corruption at the top that became supercharged in 1945 simply flooded-out whatever democracy still was alive in the U.S.