U.S. plutocrats leading us toward fascism

Deregulation and lower taxes at the top have created a new class of corporate plutocrats. They spend hundreds of millions to tilt elections. They want to control government by starving it and shift their taxes onto everyone else. They want to send more to the top, less to the bottom, and squeeze the middle.

People they elected gave us a devalued dollar, budget and trade deficits, foreclosures, unemployment, a shrinking middle class, a depression, the biggest transfer of wealth in history, torture, rendition, concentration camps, secret tribunals, invasion under false pretenses, spying on citizens, ignoring laws, suspending civil rights and war that never ends. Must we wait for genocide to call this what it is?

Fascism is when capital controls government. Fascism is the idea that big business should do whatever it wants.

This idea gnaws at America like a viperous worm. It kills unions, jobs, the economy, the middle class. No democracy has come into existence or long endured in the absence of a strong middle class.

When plutocracy replaces democracy, oligarchy and dictatorship follow. Plutocrats like Krupp brought Hitler to power, thinking they could profit. The Koch brothers and their ilk are making the same mistake; they're unleashing hate they can't control.

It happened to Italy and Germany; it's happening here.

James Sutton

Des Moines