Follow the money. If you want to uncover the cause of crime, corruption and more times than not, murder, that’s the advice of experts. And if you want to eliminate this source of crime, corruption and murder—remove the money, or at least, the profit motive.
In other words, don’t let crime pay.
That money madness drives MAGA and most Republicans can’t be doubted. It’s not an accident that Trump is a billionaire, nor that the richest man in the world backed him, nor that his cabinet is full of billionaires and that billionaires flocked to his inauguration. But what of that part of the MAGA base which appears to consist of poor, mostly rural white men and women? And how about his religious base among evangelicals and Opus Dei Catholics?
How does the money motive apply to these groups?
Let’s break down the components of who has been driving us toward dictatorship and see who targets these people and how they transform them into followers. And then, how they profit off it. Because profiting off ending our democracy is, and should be, a crime.
First Group: Billionaire Backers of MAGA; Tax them, Replace C-Corp with B-corp
But of course, the crime of profiting off ending democracy is not outlawed when billionaires own the legislature. THAT is what has to change, by eliminating the ability of billionaires to buy whole states—by eliminating billionaires by taxing them to “death”. (As Elizabeth Warren argued to the National Press Club recently.)
But how to persuade everyone else this needs to happen?
First, billionaires, hedge fund managers, tech moguls and Wall Streeters obviously have long suborned Republican politicians into backing tax breaks, deregulation and sweetheart government contracts. These financial folks are the obvious pursuers of profit and providers of funds for propaganda and political campaigns. But don’t ignore the many “investors” who have become convinced that “businessmen” know best how to run the country and how to make “smart money” followers rich. Meme stocks and most of crypto are driven by these followers of the wealthy.
Billionaires are not alone in greed—they attract greedy followers.
This group (including these followers) is larger and more influential than it appears. And they are dominated by people willing to cook the planet if it makes them more money. Ultimately, we have to change the form of incorporation from solely profit seeking entities to specifically B-corporation types which HAVE to stipulate a metric in addition to profit, and report on how they are reaching that metric.
In other words, DEI could be a corporate metric enshrined in law and measured in courts, the reverse of what MAGA is trying to do, which is outlaw it. Ending the standard C-corp structure which supposedly must deliver profit and only profit to owners has to be done. Legally requiring profit plus another metric, chosen by the board and reported on to shareholders would reduce the pathology created by monomaniacal profit seeking.
Second Group: Grifters Must Go; Prosecute Fraud, Outlaw Addictive Algorithms
Second, propagandists, influencers, media moguls, right wing cult groups, wellness influencers and the whole social media network that is funded by attracting eyeballs to screens. We could call these the “snake oil salesmen and saleswomen” of the apocalypse. They use every trick in the book (including selling books) to make a dollar. That extremists attract those willing to pay up, and that comfortable lies sell better than discomforting truth has long been true, and still is. That the billionaires fund some of these (viz Murdoch’s Fox News) is true, but there are enough small time hucksters milking the masses to make this a separate component of the reich wing base.
They are obviously after money.
They promise followers health, wealth and happiness for small donations that add up to large incomes. Or in the case of Fox News, they provide that daily dose of hate and outrage that has literally addicted their viewers, turning them into the equivalent of drug addicts ever searching for their next hit. These purveyors of lies are pied pipers luring the unwary deep into the woods until they are lost to reality.
These con artists are a small group but are followed by many gullible and addicted people. Addictive algorithms should be treated like addictive drugs, with the most addictive being outlawed. And fraud, particularly white collar and political fraudulent fundraising must become a top priority to be pursued and punished.
Third Group: Religious Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing; Enforce the Johnson Rule, Use the IRS
Third, so-called Christian Nationalists, apocalyptic End Timers, Prosperity Gospelites and Opus Dei dupers make up the religious base of MAGA. Prosperity Gospel propagandists like Kenneth Copeland obviously convince the gullible that giving them money and that following their advice is both the way to please God and prosper. The Prosperity Gospel has been a peculiar Americanized version of Calvinism for a very long time.
God shows his favor by bestowing wealth; therefore those who have wealth must have God’s favor. It’s a logic trap.
Christian Nationalists appear to want power to impose their values, much like the Puritans did. Christian Nationalists value wealth because it leads to power, and power in turn leads to wealth. The Opus Dei people are much like the Christian Nationalists—it’s no accident that the Catholic Church is the wealthiest international entity on the planet, and they want to control it.
Wealth and power intersect, and the Opus Dei people know to have power they must control wealth. And if they can convince people they control who controls the keys to the kingdom of God (St. Peter’s heirs, the popes), and that God will look favorably on their “support” of the church via donations of wealth, they have all they want. This has been a Catholic Church scam since Martin Luther denounced it in his 95 Theses. It’s no accident Opus Dei adherents targeted the Supreme Court and that the most extreme of the “justices” are Opus Dei followers if not members.
Opus Dei goes for the strategic weak points; they are assassins of truth and democracy, not mass illusionists like the others. But they need money to buy power.
Take the money and deny them the power. Every legal means to pursue and break up predatory preachers and their profit driven “ministries” should be prioritized.
Fourth Group: Rural Racists; Go after Hate Speech and those who push it
Fourth, the mostly rural white men and women, not necessarily religious, make up a critical component of MAGA. How are they motivated by money? This group admittedly appears to be the least money driven, but it is no accident that Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson described these people well. "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket.”
Their motive is respect; they want to take their God-given white skin and turn that back into the fiscal (physical) advantage it once was. As long as they are better off being white, and as long as whites are on top of the economic totem pole, even if it is a shorter totem pole than it could be, well that’s all right with them. They want somebody under them, even if they are poor and ill educated and by merit deserve no power or wealth due to their own efforts.
They are the White Welfare Queens willing to donate their last dollar to any white supremacist who dog whistles their way. Because white supremacists can make money from these dupes, they do. And X (Twitter/Musk) and the like permit and even encourage such monetization.
Remove hate as a means to get money (and money as a means to fund hate) and you make progress in stifling hate. Make hate unprofitable (as in losing your job, your company, etc) and that would do even more. Musk is going silent because he’s losing so much money with the Tesla boycott. That shows the way forward. Ending Citizens United is not enough, but it is a necessary start.
Dark money can’t only be prohibited to politicians; it must be outlawed and confiscated and dedicated to the public good.
All four groups making up the MAGA coalition oppose egalitarian democracy because they want wealth and power to put them above others. The whole point is money leads to power over others.
So, how do we restore egalitarian democracy?
We remove money from these groups, starting with the most powerful group, billionaires. First off, it’s no accident whatsoever that democracy advanced in the US from the 1940s to the 1970s. Great strides were made toward civil rights and equality during those decades. We went from a legally segregated country to a legally desegregated country. We went from minorities having no enforceable rights to vote in large parts of the country to all minorities having the right to vote. We went from women having no control over their bodies or even their finances to women increasingly gaining equality with men.
Those decades, NOT ACCIDENTALLY, saw the highest levels of income taxes, up to 91% marginal tax during Eisenhower’s presidency. And it is NO ACCIDENT that as wealth has flowed back to the one percent, democracy, civil rights and equality have suffered.
We must target the wealth of the billionaires, or as Franklin D. Roosevelt said of the forces united against his presidency, which he named as business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism and war profiteering: “They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.”
If we defund the billionaires, we defang most of the power base of the whole reich wing.
Second, we go after the most numerous group, Prosperity Gospel and religious nationalists who have transformed churches into your neighborhood ultra right propaganda centers. Make no mistake, the reich wing have long been after what they perceive are the bases of democratic power, unions and universities. They took away union money with “right to work” laws and now they are going after university endowments and grants.
We must do the same. Take their money and you take their power. Mark Sumner nailed this point:
We must enforce IRS rules against religious cover and non-profit non-taxed status being used to fund local propaganda centers for a political party. Kenneth Copeland should not be living in a $700 million dollar mansion that is free from property taxes because it is his parsonage. Any and all right wing “religious” organizations like Opus Dei and so-called nationalist/Christian dominionist preaching churches need to be vigorously investigated for breaking the rules separating church and state, and the Johnson Rule that took away non-profit, non-taxed status from churches used as cover for political parties must be enforced. They are political organizations, and they should be treated as such. No tax deductable donations, no tax breaks because they are not real non-profits dedicated to improving the community.
Going after the money held by these two groups will go a long way into defunding the third group, the propagandists and profiteers selling snake oil cures. Stronger “truth in advertising” laws targeting “wellness” anti vax b.s. and the like could be used to defund sectors of this group. It is no accident that the FDA does not police the whole supplement racket that funds these people. Also, I think fraud laws could be applied to Republican related propagandist fund raising groups like they are trying to use against Act Blue and have used against groups like ACORN.
Turn about, as they say, is fair play.
Treat their propaganda channels as wholly involved in advertising, and go after their licenses and outlets like Trump has gone after CBS and MSNBC and the like. Opening up the gates for government investigations and hearings will help. Also, investigate the companies funding propaganda via their advertising. Investigate these company officials for fraud, insider trading, anything you can think of, until they withdraw funding from propaganda outlets like Fox. Make Facebook and X enforce disclosure of location of posters and rigorously enforce anti-hate speech, anti-child pornography, and ban of bullies and sexual abusers. Break up Facebook’s business oriented sites from personal and social sites using anti-monopoly statutes.
Finally, the White Nationalists. Democrats need to act on immigration and the border to legislate and fund humane but effective enforcement of legal immigration. Yes, they’ve tried this, but now there is more support for action. But climate change is going to disrupt social order around the globe—we are going to face oceans of immigrants fleeing this. We can’t take everyone in, especially with the US being one of the more vulnerable nations to climate change and natural disasters. That means also restoring our international aid programs, and making it crystal clear these are components of addressing the immigration problem and climate change.
We have to admit we cannot host everyone fleeing the global disruptions coming our way, and develop means to as humanely as possible stop the inflows while doing our best to address the causes.
But most importantly, we need to transform American education into being truly integrated, equally funded instead of area funded (via property taxes), and strictly merit driven. We also need to change hiring procedures for businesses generally to impose blind reviews of resumes (no disclosure of race or gender) and blind interviews via AI imposed face and skin shields so that racial discrimination is reduced in hiring decisions. A strong commitment to making education and effort (merit) pay off is the way forward. Equal opportunity for all with no special carve outs except for economic barriers is the way forward.
The poor and underprivileged deserve a leg up.
Historically, noblesse oblige and the like has made the rich helping those less fortunate socially acceptable. Veterans who volunteered and have served the country deserve a leg up. There are few who oppose recognizing that those who serve others at personal cost deserve compensatory measures.
On the other hand, no race and neither gender deserves more than they gain from their own efforts. Yes, there is a long history of oppression based on all kinds of unfair biases such as race, whatever that is, and gender (with all its real variants). Those kinds of exceptions have corroded support for Democrats because these are categories which one cannot change. Yes, there are historical inequities that exist.
But effort and income have to correlate. Even for billionaires. And to drive THAT message home, it has to apply to EVERYONE. Starting now.
Trying to correct historical wrongs such as racial and gender discrimination with no timeframe set to do it in has led to increasing resentments and real backlash. While we can and must teach the real history of oppression in all countries including ours, we cannot try to force compensatory correction based on the same biases (such as race and gender). I’m not saying forget history; I am saying we cannot correct the results of history via methods such as quotas and forced busing and the like. They failed, and created a backlash to boot.
This principle that effort and merit correlate with success also means inherited wealth has to be taxed away like it once was, also. Each generation of whoever and whatever “race” or “gender” has to reach whatever level they do based on their personal effort and merit. That was the intention behind banning titles in the United States—even our very flawed founders recognized the dangers of inherited class status.
Finally, reinstate the Unmerited Wealth Tax at decease
Ending the “death tax” (inheritance tax) is leading to the death of the Republic. Bring it back as the tax on unmerited wealth. The Unmerited Wealth Tax—let MAGA try to defend that, and use the spoiled brats it has created (Trump and his whole clan and Musk and the like, for example) to demonstrate why Unmerited Wealth has to go.
Remove wealth as a means to power, as much as possible, and we remove the motivations to oppose egalitarian democracy. That also means forbidding Congress members and their immediate families from personally stock trading their way to wealth.
Nancy Peolosi is grievously wrong on this point. But folks, Republicans are in charge now, and they haven’t banned it, despite calling for it while campaigning in 2024. Call them out on their hypocrisy—because the Trump “administration” and Republicans now run the most corrupt regime in US history.
Replace the search for finding and taking unfair advantage with colorblind and gender blind merit, as Martin Luther King dreamed, and we revive the American Dream for all.
Follow the money. Then, take it and use it to benefit all of us, like FDR, Truman, Eisenhower and LBJ did. Invest it in overcoming poverty and ignorance and hate, like we did in the heyday of American Democracy.
What has been done can be done again. We defeated the British class system in the Revolution. We defeated the Confederate slave system in the Civil War. We defeated the Jim Crow segregation system with the Civil Rights Movement.
We can defeat MAGA and the Republican system of wealth uber alles.
And we must have that—removing vast, unlimited, unaccountable, unmerited, and inherited wealth, wealth used to buy politicians and deliberately blind the public—as our continuing policy.
NOTE: Apologies for missing last week. After the flu I got a very bad sinus and ear infection. Any members interested in writing a policy proposal? Please send me a message so we can schedule you in.
