Our Representative Democracy has devolved in a Kleptocracy where the representatives are the best politicians money can buy. And buy it has.

The middle class cannot even afford to send it's children to top schools, and settles for what results say are pitiful charactures of elitism schooled in consumption and devoid of real values. The sheeple have won the right to be lambs led to slaughter.

The reality is globalization has fragmented the populace and allowed the corporate elite to create a superclass of New Aryans with no more regard for the common people than they have for farm animals. We are drifting into the new dark ages ruled by barbarian looters (also called Private Equity Partners) who purchase political power as a cost of doing business. But I suspect China will be less likely to succumb and thus will be the bridge taking the world through this dark age.

Are we observers and lemmings, pawns of this corporatocracy, or do we want to remove the basic cause of many of our national ills, money-in-politics?

My proposed approach to getting the money-givers out of politics is to file multiple court challenges in selected district courts to two absurd Supreme Court decisions, Santa Clara ("corporations are persons") and Buckley ("money is speech").

These class-action lawsuits could be based, for example, on a Fourteenth Amendment argument pointing out how our votes are being unfairly outweighed by the legalized monetary corruption of our political leaders.

There ought to be some innovative legal arguments that are sufficiently compelling to sway at least one of the five-Justice majority (including the four ideologues) that prevailed in Citizens United. Who knows, there may be a true patriot among them who will respond to public opinion and be recognized in history. And past Supreme Courts have indeed been swayed by public opinion.

I can envision a growing public outcry as these lawsuits move toward the Supreme Court. My guess is that 80% of the people are so disgusted with the legalized corruption of our politics that they will support this rising movement.

Although the likelihood of its success may be small, this liberation movement will still have been worthwhile for what it can achieve in educating the populace as to what we are up against.

In the event of success in reversing those decisions, the liberated Congress would be enabled to legislate in the public interest, such as to enact public financing of elections, free airtime for candidates, universal health care, and raising needed revenue from those who can best afford to provide it.

What a book. It explains why African countries and their peoples are poor and will remain poor as long as state power is rediced in favour of a class of corrupt leaders.

Warren Buffett was not exaggerating. The task is to reclaim more inclusive institutions, to move them back to what they were becoming between the end of WWII and 1973. Extraction and inclusion are matters of degree. By controlling public education and commercial news media the upper class has convinced the majority of Americans that they are economically and politically included to the extent that they deserve to be. Blaming the victim is so elegantly effective when the victims internalize the moral judgment. Of course, the upper 1 percent and above thoroughly believe it themselves: they are rich because they deserve to be and their wealth proves it.

We should not forget that the upper class has very effectively marshaled almost the entire economics profession to propagandize the more educated members of society on their behalf.