Famed progressive author, teacher and activist Howard Zinn died suddenly on January 27, 2010. To celebrate Zinn’s life and legacy, Boston University initiatied a new lecture series in his honor. On October 29, 2010, Bill Moyers gave the inaugural lecture of the Howard Zinn Lecture Series at Boston University.<\/a> He spoke for 74 minutes and then took questions for almost another hour. This riveting \u201cmust view,\u201d progressive lecture is available online, at Boston University\u2019s website<\/a>, and the full text can be read at Alternet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Moyers warns that we are in denial about the loss of our democracy, which began with Ronald Reagan and was cemented with the Citizen\u2019s United Supreme Court decision. He calls for ordinary Americans to fight back against the collusion of government and corporations\u2014which he defines as government by oligarchy\u2014by getting involved with progressive political organizations.<\/p>\n

An extended quote from his speech:<\/p>\n

The Gilded Age returned with a vengeance in our time. It slipped in quietly at first, back in the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan began a \u201cmassive decades-long transfer of national wealth to the rich.\u201d As Roger Hodge makes clear, under Bill Clinton the transfer was even more dramatic, as the top 10 percent captured an ever-growing share of national income. The trend continued under George W. Bush \u2013 those huge tax cuts for the rich, remember, which are now about to be extended because both parties have been bought off by the wealthy \u2013 and by 2007 the wealthiest 10% of Americans were taking in 50% of the national income. Today, a fraction of people at the top today earn more than the bottom 120 million Americans.<\/p>\n

You will hear it said, \u201cCome on, this is the way the world works.\u201d No, it\u2019s the way the world is made to work.<\/em> This vast inequality is not the result of Adam Smith\u2019s invisible hand; it did not just happen; it was no accident. As Hodge drives home, it is the result of a long series of policy decisions \u201cabout industry and trade, taxation and military spending, by flesh-and-blood humans sitting in concrete-and-steel buildings.\u201d And those policy decisions were paid for by the less than one percent who participate in our capitalist democracy political contributions. Over the past 30 years, with the complicity of Republicans and Democrats alike, the plutocrats, or plutonomists (choose your own poison) have used their vastly increased wealth to assure that government does their bidding. Remember that grateful Citigroup reference to \u201cmarket-friendly governments\u201d on the side of plutonomy? We had a story down in Texas for that sort of thing; the dealer in a poker game says to the dealer, Now play the cards fairly, Reuben; I know what I dealt you.\u201d (To see just how our system was rigged by the financial, political, and university elites, run, don\u2019t walk, to the theatre nearest you showing Charles Ferguson\u2019s new film, \u201cInside Job.\u201d Take a handkerchief because you\u2019ll weep for the republic.)<\/p>\n

Looking back, it all seems so clear that we wonder how we could have ignored the warning signs at the time. One of the few journalists who did see it coming \u2013 Thomas Edsall of the Washington Post <\/em>\u2013 reported that \u201cbusiness refined its ability to act as a class, submerging competitive instincts in favor of joint, cooperative action in the legislative arena.\u201d Big business political action committees flooded the political arena with a deluge of dollars. They funded think tanks that churned out study after study with results skewed to their ideology and interests. And their political allies in the conservative movement cleverly built alliances with the religious right \u2013 Jerry Falwell\u2019s Moral Majority and Pat Robertson\u2019s Christian Coalition \u2013 who zealously waged a cultural holy war that camouflaged the economic assault on working people and the middle class.<\/p>\n

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan also tried to warn us. He said President Reagan\u2019s real strategy was to force the government to cut domestic social programs by fostering federal deficits of historic dimensions. Senator Moynihan was gone before the financial catastrophe on George W. Bush\u2019s watch that could paradoxically yet fulfill Reagan\u2019s dream. The plutocrats who soaked up all the money now say the deficits require putting Social Security and other public services on the chopping block. You might think that Mr. Bush today would regret having invaded Iraq on false pretences at a cost of more than a trillion dollars and counting, but no, just last week he said that his biggest regret was his failure to privatize Social Security. With over l00 Republicans of the House having signed a pledge to do just that when the new Congress convenes, Mr. Bush\u2019s vision may yet be realized.<\/p>\n

Daniel Altman also saw what was coming. In his book Neoconomy<\/em> he described a place without taxes or a social safety net, where rich and poor live in different financial worlds. \u201cIt\u2019s coming to America,\u201d he wrote. Most likely he would not have been surprised recently when firefighters in rural Tennessee would let a home burn to the ground because the homeowner hadn’t paid a $75 fee. \u2028That\u2019s what is coming to America.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Here we are now, on the verge of the biggest commercial transaction in the history of American elections. Once again the plutocracy is buying off the system. Nearly $4 billion is being spent on the congressional races that will be decided next week, including multi millions coming from independent tax-exempt organizations that can collect unlimited amounts without revealing the sources. The organization Public Citizen reports that just 10 groups are responsible for the bulk of the spending by independent groups: \u201cA tiny number of organizations, relying on a tiny number of corporate and fat cat contributors, are spending most of the money on the vicious attack ads dominating the airwaves\u201d \u2013 those are the words of Public Citizen\u2019s president, Robert Wiessman. The Federal Election Commission says that two years ago 97% of groups paying for election ads disclosed the names of their donors. This year it\u2019s only 32%.<\/p>\n

Socrates again: To remember a thing, you must first name it. We\u2019re talking about slush funds. Donors are laundering their cash through front groups with high-falutin\u2019 names like American Crossroads. That\u2019s one of the two slush funds controlled by Karl Rove in his ambition to revive the era of the robber barons. Promise me you won\u2019t laugh when I tell you that although Rove and the powerful Washington lobbyist who is his accomplice described the first organization as \u201cgrassroots\u201d, 97% of its initial contributions came from four billionaires. Yes: The grass grows mighty high when the roots are fertilized with gold.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Famed progressive author, teacher and activist Howard Zinn died suddenly on January 27, 2010. To celebrate Zinn’s life and legacy, Boston University initiatied a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5729,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[128,16,573],"tags":[750,739,651,984],"yoast_head":"\n