Like many people I am very nervous today, November 4, on the eve of the election. I find it cathartic to reflect on all the unsolved problems causing chaos – problems that Trump didn’t create, problems we need to solve to stabilize democracy. Here are a few on my mind. What ones are on yours?
ONE- 20 years ago a report by the Fed board said that the wealth gap in America is ”unsustainable”. But since then the gap has increased every year. We reach new regrettable milestone every year. Now 1% of the population controls more wealth than the bottom 90%. The bottom 50% control only 6% of the wealth. 759 billionaires control 4.48 trillion dollars. Bezos and Musk together have more money than the bottom 160 million people together. If you have a billion in cash under your bed, w/o even investing, you have enough to spend $100,000 a day, every day of the year for 27 years and 4 months. But you still only have a quarter of the money needed to get on the Forbes list of richest 400 Americans. In 1789 the increasing wealth gap in France finally exploded. The people stormed the Bastille where the king’s munitions were stored and started the French Revolution.
TWO- While unimaginable wealth accrues to the few, the work of public defenders has become nearly irrelevant in finding justice for the common man. A 60 Minutes story reported than California public defenders had an average caseload of 300. In a recent
60M report, Derwin Bunson who heads the New Orleans public defenders office said his 52 attorneys were tasked with representing over 22 thousand cases per year. The justice system in America is broken, says Bunson.
THREE- 8 years ago a federal report said that Medicare and Medicaid were defrauded of $80 billion a year by individuals and organized groups – which were tantamount to a mafia. This Fall the number was the same – 80 billion dollars lost to crooks in 2023. Letting the problem go unsolved by not putting more resources into the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Program encourages more fraud and larger, more organized fraud groups.
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FOUR- In 2016 Samuel Quinones, in his book Dreamland, described the opioid addiction and overdose-death scene in America. After 8 years, and after many documentaries about the problem, more people are dying of these drugs than when the book was published. Opioids – 81,000; synthetic opiods (Fentanyl) 107,000 = almost 200,000 per year – that is 518 overdose deaths per DAY. It is not only the sadness of the loved ones that is a problem. The widespread addition creates a decrease of workplace efficacy and a drain on medical resources.
FIVE Disinformation, slander, libel, defamation of character – with all but total impunity.
Role models at the highest levels are modeling dishonesty. Trump stands at a microphone at a national forum and says Hillary Clinton ”lied to the FBI over and over.”
Authority figures exhibiting abject dishonesty open the doors to lying as means to gratifcation for a wide array of goals, especially winning elections. Democracy means a wide number of citizens voting their conscience for the best of the country. But citizens cannot vote intelligently if they are denied a reliable and unhindered flow of information. In the book ‘1984’ the citizens of Oceania believed their country was at war – constant war – to instill fear and a feeling of dependency on the government for protection. Today in the US people are told the country is in terrible shape, the economy is in tatters, crime is high – when they are not. Part of the solution is interdiction, prosecution for lying on a public forum. In other words, putting slanderers in jail, closing the door to gratification from dishonesty.
SIX Cybercrime and ransomware attacks. This growing business is now a billion dollar industry. Not only are companies bilked out of millions of dollars of profit, but
medical and transportation facilities have been targeted. Lives have been endangered, flights cancelled, and shipping delayed.
Together, these and other problems represent a huge burden on our democracy. If we fail to make progress on them, people will attempt use the failure as a road to power by offering solutions alternative to democracy. Phillipines leaders could not beat the entrenched drug problem so they elected violent killer Rodrigo Duterte as their president believing he could kill their way out of the drug war. He failed. The problems must be solved and there are only 2 people who can solve them. Me and you. We need a massive confluence of enthusiasm, patriotism and ideas. What are your thoughts please?
