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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBob Herbert Tells Bill Moyers How Corporations and the Big Banks Have Hijacked the Country
http://www.alternet.org/economy/herbert-tells-moyers-how-corporations-and-banks-have-hijacked-countryThree years ago, reporter and former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert took to the road and traveled across the United States to gather research for his new book, Losing Our Way. In it, Herbert tells the stories of the brave, hard-working men and women he met who have been battered by the economic downturn. He found an America in which jobs have disappeared, infrastructure is falling apart and the virtuous cycle of well-paid workers spending their wages to power the economy has been broken by greed and the gap between the very rich and everyone else.
He tells Bill: [W]eve established a power structure in which the great corporations and the big banks have allied themselves with the national government and, in many cases, local government to pursue corporate interests and financial interests as opposed to those things that would be in the best interests of ordinary working people Once you do that, you lose the dynamic that America is supposed to be. Its supposed to be an egalitarian society, a society of rising standards of living, a society of a vast and thriving middle class. And we are getting farther and farther away from that ideal.
As for solutions, Herbert says, People need to start voting against the excessive power of the great moneyed interests. But more than that, we need a movement, a grass-roots movement that will fight for the interests of ordinary men and women
Herbert is a senior distinguished fellow at the public policy and analysis think tank, Demos. He is also a board member of the Schumann Media Center, from which he is presently on leave working on a major documentary.
http://vimeo.com/108409201
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Bob Herbert Tells Bill Moyers How Corporations and the Big Banks Have Hijacked the Country (Original Post)
xchrom
Oct 2014
OP
ellenrr
(3,864 posts)1. I think Bill knew this.
chervilant
(8,267 posts)2. I think many of us know this.
I've been aware of this initiative since St. Ronnie.
For a while, OWS was giving me hope, but the corporate megalomaniacs (who've usurped our media, our politics AND our global economy) sicced their militarized police on activists, and rendered us rather powerless.
(BTW, telling us to "get out and vote" is offensive, given easily hacked electronic voting machines.)