A few issues for forthcoming elections

Hartmann Report -     Tax cuts and loopholes for billionaires and big corporations that, in aggregate since 1981, add up to more than our total national debt of $38 trillion (in other words, Republicans borrowed $38 trillion in our names that our kids will repay and gave all of it to the morbidly rich).

-- Reagan’s 1983 suspension of enforcement of the anti-trust laws that has caused every industry in America to become a form of monopoly dominated by five or fewer massive corporations, gutting competition and raising prices.

— Five on-the-take Republicans on the Supreme Court ruling that corporations are persons and money is the same thing as “free speech,” handing our elections over to the highest bidders.

— Virtually every legacy federal regulatory agency being run by industry insiders working on a revolving-door basis.

— Members of Congress and the corrupt Trump regime engaging in insider trading with impunity.

— A GOP-aligned military-industrial complex that’s essentially taken over Pentagon procurement.

— An anti-labor Labor Department; an anti-education Education department; an anti-civil rights Civil Rights enforcement agency; an anti-environment Environmental Protection Agency; etc…

— Trump’s mysterious pardons that always seem to go to people who’ve given him millions of dollars (after Giuliani claimed he and Trump were selling pardons for two million each and splitting the money).

— The wholesale gutting of the Internal Revenue Service enforcement budget and staffing so that wealthy tax cheats and multinational corporations can evade taxes with near-impunity, shifting the burden onto working people.

— The systematic sabotage and privatization of public institutions — from the US Postal Service to public schools to prisons — so Republican-connected corporations can profit off services that used to be part of the commons and kick some of that money back to the GOP.

— The explosion of dark money after Citizens United, allowing billionaires and corporate fronts to secretly pour unlimited cash into elections with zero accountability.

— The weaponization of the Federal Communications Commission to loosen media ownership rules while threatening outlets that don’t sing Trump’s praises, accelerating consolidation so a handful of right-leaning billionaires dominate what Americans see and hear.

— Red-state-level voter suppression laws — strict ID requirements, purges of voter rolls, and reduced polling access — that entrench GOP power by making it harder for poor, young, female, and minority voters to participate.

— The Republican refusal to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices for years, a policy written by and for Big Pharma that forces Americans to pay the highest prescription costs in the developed world.

— The systematic dismantling of campaign finance enforcement, turning the Federal Election Commission into a deadlocked, do-nothing body incapable of policing even blatant violations.

— The use of tax havens and trade policy to encourage offshoring American jobs while bigshot executives reap record profits and bonuses, hollowing out the American middle class.

— The Republican normalization of lobbyists literally writing legislation via groups like the Koch-funded ALEC, ensuring laws are crafted to benefit industries and billionaires rather than the public.

— The quiet rewriting of environmental and labor rules to favor polluting industries, often by GOP appointees with direct financial stakes in the companies they’re supposed to regulate.

— The strategic packing of the federal judiciary with hardcore rightwing/neofascist judges, often vetted by groups like the Federalist Society, ensuring decades of rulings that favor corporate and billionaire power, weaken labor and consumer protections, and shield the GOP’s corruption from any sort of meaningful accountability.