America’s Gilded Capital

From PBS's Moyers and Company:

Mark Leibovich covers Washington, D.C., as chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine. In his new book, This Town, he writes about the city’s bipartisan lust for power, cash and notoriety. It’s the story of how Washington became an occupied city; its hold on reality distorted by greed and ambition. Leibovich pulls no punches, names names, and reveals the movers, the shakers and the lucrative deals they make — all in the name of crony capitalism.

Watch the video here.

I'm an enormous Bill Moyers fan, and virtually anything he does I'm going to like.  But this show is particularly good, great even.

I've gone on and on for years about how the mega-corporations and the fabulously wealthy have done an end run around our representative democracy and essentially rule informally, even while we continue to practice the formal rituals of the republic, which are now effectively hollow and meaningless.  I mean, it's obvious to any honest observers, but I still get the sense that most Americans just can't get themselves to accept the awful truth: the United States of America is a sham democracy, and its citizens are have been made into fools and suckers.

Hey conservatives, you really think your guys in the GOP are actually representing your interests and beliefs?  Well, you're wrong.  All your guys are on the take, constantly figuring out what kind of right-wing spin they can use to justify publicly the corporate giveaways they legislate in exchange for favors, high-paying post-government gigs, and campaign cash.  And liberals, in your wildest imagination do you really think that the Democrats, who are just as much on the take as the Republicans, are truly capable of passing any bill Wall Street doesn't like?  You do?  Then you're fools, total fools.

This journalist Moyers interviews, Mark Leibovich of the New York Times, spells it all out in agonizing detail.  It's actually worse than I thought, and I already thought it was pretty f'ing bad.  It's not that Washington is broken.  It's that it's running exactly as the lobbyists want it to run.  Needless to say, these K-Streeters who work directly for the vast concentrations of wealth sometimes called the One Percent, have very different ideas about what should happen in our nation's capitol than average ordinary citizens have, regardless of ideology or party affiliation.  We're in deep shit, and we've been there for a long time.

Go check this video out.  If you can stomach it.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$