Democracy’s Hostile Takeover

The Elusive Nobel Prize.

One can readily understand the criminal elect and his desperate desire to be awarded a Nobel prize in any category. Since the committee recognized Milton Friedman for an award in economics, one could easily believe they would randomly recognize anyone for anything.

“There is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud”
― Milton Friedman

This so-called "Friedman Doctrine" is a deeply flawed "ivory-tower" view of corporate leadership. Friedman's short-term focus on maximizing profit and shareholder value is intentionally myopic, effectively a diseased branch of a tree that neglects the entire forest.

The King of "Trickle Down Fraud", Milton Friedman

What Friedman either didn't understand or intentionally dismissed is that when a corporation maximized profits "within the rules of the game" and subsequently directed a portion of those profits at political lobbying, they could change the rules of the game. Those rules Friedman whitewashes are important safeguards intended to protect society from the profit motive and ensure fair and free competition.

Profit Over People

One area (of many) where the public interest crashes into profit motive is healthcare. An individual who is sick, injured, or suffers from a condition wants to be treated, cured, and returned to good health as quickly as possible. For profit drug companies (Big Pharma), hospitals, clinics, and large health practices, according to Friedman doctrine, exist to maximize shareholder value.

For example, a Healthcare CEO, knowing that the fiscal quarter close is rapidly approaching, might issue a directive to hospital and clinic staff to shift treatment to a less expensive, less effective treatment to cut expenses to hit Wall Street's financial performance expectations (and then cash their executive bonus check). When uninformed people say they want "government out of healthcare", most often they are unintentionally advocating for health decisions for themselves and their family to be made by insurance company executives and/or Wall Street analysts.

Healthcare is one important example of the conflict that arises when we seek to use the profit motive to solve everything -effectively, a hammer -making everything look like a nail. A simple rule might be that needs are in the public interest -the design intent should be to serve the public interest. Whereas wants can be driven by the profit motive, i.e.- private interests. There are numerous places where the embrace of privatization risks societal harm as the intent to maximize profit conflicts with vital societal services. Healthcare and the pharmaceutical industry, Pre-K care, K-12 education, law enforcement and military, the prison industry, housing, and utility entities (water and power), are all segments that should not be profit-based.

Synergy and Polarization

Sometimes the profit motive may be aligned with societal interest. If several electronics manufacturers are competing to produce the best quality product at the lowest possible price (and adhering to governmental protections), you might be able to pick up the oversized flat screen television for $350.

There are other moments when the public interest and shareholder value reinforce one another. Companies that build safer products, reduce waste, advance renewable technologies, or invest in worker well-being often find their long-term profitability strengthened. Regulations that ensure fair competition protect consumers but also reward firms that innovate rather than manipulate, extract, and exploit. Similarly, transparent accounting, anti-corruption standards, and environmental stewardship can reduce risk and attract investors seeking sustainable, resilient returns. In these cases, what benefits the public—safer systems, cleaner environments, more trustworthy markets—also produces healthier, more durable companies. Nevertheless, the alignment between public and private interests are, most often, accidental. This is because investors want short-term quarterly results whereas societies require long-term sustainability.

Government

Government exists to prevent private power from overriding the common good. At its best, government establishes guardrails that balance the pursuit of profits with social protections: laws that limit environmental harm, oversight that deters fraud and corruption, and institutions that ensure fair treatment rather than exploitation. An ethical government should act as a counterweight to concentrated economic influence, ensuring that no corporation or handful of wealthy individuals can shape policy to their exclusive benefit. In this sense, government should act as a systematic immune system: a set of rules, regulation, and enforcement designed to defend the public realm from the distortions, excesses, and dangers of unchecked or even deranged self-interest. Unfortunately, when the system fails to control an extreme concentration of wealth into the hands of a few, a societal immune system becomes gravely weakened or worse. This leads to oligarchy, plutocracy, and authoritarian tyranny. And it leads to unchecked corruption:

Government Like a Business!

**Trump's incompetence, fraud, and failures used to be confined to his businesses. Now they are America's failures on a global scale. MAGA!**

When you hear of candidates for elected office promising to run government "like a business", they are reinforcing the notion that government is too big, bloated, and vast bureaucracy that would rather protect the rare Rocky Mountain Spotted and Striped dust mite even if it causes an industry to fail and the loss of 20,000 jobs. For a great and recent example of running government "like a business" -presumably a bankrupt casino, a fraudulent university, or equivalent, one need not look deeper into history than the damage left behind by Trump/Vance/Musk "DOGE" -one of many failures driven by the criminal elect and his corrupt regime.

Greed Versus Morality -The Real War for America

The battlefield of today -greed versus morality, organized wealth versus disorganized people. How can we effectively fight when we don't understand the war?

The deeper crisis in America isn’t simply that profit "trumps" morality—it’s that we’ve normalized it. We’ve let greed dress itself up as “efficiency,” as if the market were some objective bystander rather than a system designed to reward extraction, exploitation, and abuse over empathy.

"The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy" -Elon Musk

Morality has slowly slipped from our civic vocabulary, replaced with the language of shareholder value, quarterly returns, and return on investment. We treat the pursuit of profit as an unquestioned good, a uniquely American religion that absolves the insatiable greed of the powerful and rationalizes the suffering of everyone else.

The Corrupt Criminal Elect on his throne.

And in the vacuum where morality should live, greed thrives—quietly, steadily, and without accountability.

"The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism." —Hannah Arendt

What makes this especially corrosive is that Americans view themselves as fundamentally good. We still insist on the myth that good intentions shape our institutions, even as those institutions increasingly prioritize revenue streams over human beings. The public interest becomes an afterthought, something for a greenwashing campaign while extracting and exploiting people who are powerless to defend themselves, their families, and their communities. Greed may not win every contest outright, but it rarely loses—because we’ve built an economy, and increasingly a political system, where morality is optional and profit is mandatory.

**Reagan implemented the wealth concentrating policies which led us to today, a corrupt government led by a corrupt criminal who is also an accused pedophile.**

Privatized Prisons & Detention: The Absence of Morality

Nowhere is the triumph of greed over the public interest more twisted than in the privatization of prisons and immigrant detention. When incarceration is a business model, human suffering becomes a line item on a spreadsheet. For-profit detention centers thrive on high occupancy, long stays, and low operating costs. In other words: more people behind bars, for longer periods, with fewer services, thinner staffing, and weaker oversight. It’s a system that rewards punishment and human rights abuses, not rehabilitation. It is warehousing people, not justice.

The original purpose of a justice system is to safeguard society, uphold rights, and, where possible, restore people to their communities. Privatized detention flips that purpose upside down. It replaces moral responsibility with contractual obligations and abuse oversight with proprietary corporate governance. The result is predictable: abuse scandals, medical neglect, preventable deaths, and communities torn apart—not because it protects the public, but because it provides executive bonuses and a return on investment. Human captivity becomes a commodity, freedom becomes a privilege, and justice becomes whatever the market can bear. This is the logical endpoint of treating public institutions as revenue opportunities: a system that serves shareholders while systematically failing the society it’s supposed to protect.

As of this writing there are ICE detention centers being proposed in Newport, Oregon, Marana, Arizona, and Dublin, California to name a few. While the Trump Administration promised to make communities "safer" by arresting and deporting violent criminals, the reality has been starkly different.

https://www.cato.org/blog/5-ice-detainees-have-violent-convictions-73-no-convictions

The cruelty of this corrupt Administration becomes our own cruelty and the grotesque abuse of refugees, immigrants, and people just trying to survive belongs to all of us.

**Yet another photo op for the very corrupt Kristi Noem, appearing here on the wrong side of the bars.**

Turning the Tide

If we are serious about rescuing American democracy from its current freefall, then incrementalism is simply not enough. We need a profound shift—one that matches the scale of the crisis created by secretive billionaire PAC donations, extremist politics, corporate lobbying, and a governing class increasingly unmoored from "We, the People".

Institutional reform alone is too passive for this moment. We must build a massive, nationwide political movement—unbound by political party, uncorrupted by billionaire money, and anchored in integrity, shared purpose, and the fundamental belief that government must work for all people, not just those with vast accumulated wealth.

Then, post-elections, the commitment of the subsequent Congress to the rapid rebuilding of the institutional guardrails that once kept governmental power accountable to the people. This means restoring the independence of Inspector Generals and watchdog agencies, enforcing ethics standards with real penalties for all -including Supreme Court Justices, reestablishing federal norms that constrain executive branch abuse, and modernizing the machinery of governance so it cannot be hijacked by those who treat public service as a tool for private gain.

This movement must be broad, multiracial, cross-generational, and rooted in civic courage rather than partisan loyalty or hat color. America’s future cannot depend any political party; it must depend on the health of what should be a vibrant democracy, its moral imagination, and its willingness to hold power to account. We need a coalition that demands transparency, fairness, and affirms that equality, dignity and justice are fundamental and mandatory.

Addressing the extremism, illegality, and strategic cruelty of the Trump administration, its GOP enablers, and their billionaire backers requires a willingness to establish new guardrails where the old ones have failed. The Supreme Court, compromised by conflicts of interest, political favoritism, and open defiance of precedent and ethical norms, cannot be the final arbiter of democratic integrity. To protect the Republic, we need an independent constitutional tribunal—empowered by Congress, insulated from political interference, and driven to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Its explicit purpose: to evaluate evidence, hold public hearings, and bar all individuals who participated in, supported, or enabled the attempt to overturn the 2020 election from ever again holding public office. A democracy that cannot disqualify insurrectionists cannot defend itself. There must be retroactive taxation consideration given to the societal level fraud of trickle down that has encouraged the unabated accumulation of wealth by the few. No democracy can survive an extreme wealth inequality, and we must understand that policies supporting tax cuts for the wealthy to "encourage investment and job growth" represent a direct attack on a fair and equitable system.

Democracy cannot co-exist with an extreme concentration of wealth and power.

I've often written any meaningful form of democracy demands an educated, informed, and engaged society.

When united, we wield enormous influence not only as voters but as consumers and if we are fortunate enough -as investors. We must stop financially empowering corporations that are actively undermining democracy, exploiting workers, externalizing environmental harm, and leveraging concentrated economic power to distort public policy through lobbying efforts. A functioning democracy requires citizens who scrutinize where their dollars go and choose to support companies that strengthen, rather than sabotage, the social foundations that make free societies possible. Every purchase, every investment, every subscription is a political act. If we reward responsible governance, fair labor practices, and ethical conduct—and penalize companies that bankroll abuse, exploitation, and extremism—the so-called "free market" economic incentives will shift faster than any piece of legislation could.

Reversing the hostile authoritarian takeover in the United States demands a clear, collective choice: to reject apathy, confront corruption, and rebuild a system where morality is not the punchline of a joke and the public interest is not a historical footnote.

Turning the tide means choosing courage over convenience, integrity over ideology, and shared prosperity over the hoarding of wealth and power. It means rebuilding institutions resilient enough to withstand bad actors, and a civic movement strong enough to ensure they never rise unchecked again.

And the moment to defend it—boldly, unapologetically, and together—is always -right now.

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