Hear Carter’s warning on campaign financing

As we celebrate the long, distinguished life of President Jimmy Carter we ought to acknowledge not only his incredible accomplishments, but some of his serious and prescient warnings. In 2015, soon after the Supreme Court took off all limits from corporate donations in “Citizens United,” the late president told Oprah Winfrey “We’ve become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that’s been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I’ve ever seen in my life.”

This sad truth is now more evident than ever before. Today the oligarchs are about to move from the board rooms of Wall Street into the Cabinet Room of the incoming administration. Nominees to the Cabinet themselves have a net worth of $400 billion. This is not a “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” but a government of, by and for the wealthy.

Money = oligarchs = government. This equation does not include the people and especially not “the least of these,” the have-nots, the starving and underfed, the homeless, the immigrants and the seniors.

We must change the equation to “people = compassion = government.” And that calls us to eliminate “Citizens United” and the “unlimited political bribery” that was unleashed at all levels of government, as Carter warned. In his spirit we must activate a movement to reduce the obscene gap between the have-more elites and the have-little multitudes.

Martin Deppe

Chicago