The Beltway Beast: Stealing from Future Generations and Destroying the Middle Class

By Munir Moon

The Beltway Beast: Stealing from Future Generations and Destroying the Middle Class, transcends the anger and frustration of American people with their leaders failing to solve the country’s problems. It documents our current reality and offers transformational ideas, such as shrinking the Presidential Primary process by utilizing

• Language: English
• Publisher: Munir Moon LLC
• Release date: Sep 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9780991372119

Book preview

Prologue

The American political system is going through an unprecedented transformational process by having a disruptor and an outsider President Donald Trump. He won the 2016 presidential election by defeating an establishment candidate Hillary Clinton and challenging The Beltway Beast. Candidate Trump used the metaphor of draining the swamp as one of his campaign slogans, referring to Washington D.C or The Beltway Beast as described in this book.

According to a Gallup survey, sixty percent of Americans say that a third major political party is needed because the Republican and Democratic parties do such a poor job of representing American people. Therefore, the time is right for a grassroots movement to start a mainstream third party that represent all Americans and can not only place a check on both major parties but also bring Americans together. That is why this book is so necessary - more than when it was first published.

The aim of this book at the first publication was to make a contribution, however small, to bring the voice of Main Street America back into our public discourse, front and center. The American Dream is threatened by a widening gap between our leaders and average, everyday citizens. The former seem quite oblivious to the grind—the daily struggles and hardships of lower and middle class America. It is frustrating to watch our political leaders, who we are supposed to look up to, behave like children, pointing fingers at each other instead of fulfilling their promise to serve the people and own up to their failures.

Numerous books on the subjects covered here have been written by well-qualified scholars and many solutions have been offered. The Beltway Beast compiles some of those ideas in one place and provides the perspective of an outsider to our public discourse. It is a compendium of the real state of our union, covering a broad range of subjects affecting our lives instead of offering an in-depth analysis of one subject. It contextualizes the current crisis at a macro level and proposes a way out of our current quagmire.

The solutions offered in the book are not an end all to our problems, but a beginning of a discussion for the future of our children. The hope is that upcoming leaders use this book as a framework and a platform to set up a new party, The People’s Party of America (PPA), a party that is fiscally responsible, socially compassionate and represents all Americans. We are facing a crisis of confidence because we have stopped believing in ourselves—and in doing so have stopped leading the world, much of which looks up to us as a role model.

More than anything else, this book transcends anger and frustration with our leaders to solve our problems and revive America with simple common sense solutions. The Beltway Beast documents our current reality and calls for real competition in electing our leaders and transforming our political, healthcare, and tax systems. In every crisis there is opportunity, and this book will mobilize Americans to take back the country. Prosperity will come back once we get our leaders to stop stealing from future generations and destroying the middle class and we can all be part of that change.

Introduction to the Original Edition

MORE THAN FORTY YEARS ago, I came to this country on a one-way ticket, hoping to get a quality education. I had no friends or relatives here and barely spoke English. Over time, I was fortunate enough to earn two master’s degrees from UCLA and am well aware that this sort of thing happens only in America. Needless to say, I am eternally grateful—and this book is my way of trying to repay my debt to this country that welcomed and enabled me to prosper.

After completing my MBA, I had aspirations of climbing the corporate ladder and running a large enterprise. As is so often the case, though, life does not turn out the way you plan it. At age thirty-three, my life changed forever when my second son, Atif, was born with Neuroblastoma, a rare cancer of the spinal cord. He was given very small chance of survival. Atif fought hard against the cancer from day one, undergoing three surgeries and eighteen months of chemotherapy, starting at the tender age of one month. He conquered the disease, though he was left paralyzed from the waist down and is now wheelchair bound.

I’ve had a close-up view of what this country has given Atif when it comes to healthcare, education, and personal opportunity. I am also mindful that only in America is a story like Atif’s possible.

I am not a pundit, scholar, or expert, but an average American who has experienced a range of emotions from frustration to anger to disillusionment over the last few years with regard to the state of our great nation. I spent the first ten years of my corporate life mostly in the financial industry, where I witnessed the collapse of the housing industry and the demise of the Savings & Loan industry in the late eighties, repeated twenty years later in 2008 in a different form. I have experienced the best and worst of our healthcare system over the last twenty-eight years—much inefficiency is built into the delivery of service, resulting in ever increasing costs to all of us. As a small businessman over the last twenty-five years, I have been at the receiving end of all the government regulations, taxes, and fees that impede job growth. However, my faith in the American Dream has never been shattered. In recent decades, both major parties have failed us. In this book I am making a case for transforming America through a third party that represents all Americans and brings us together.

We are leaving a mountain of debt for our children to pay so that we can live beyond our means. Thomas Jefferson said, I sincerely believe that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

We have an educational system that fares poorly in preparing our children for the intense competition that awaits them in the global marketplace and a tax system that is grossly unfair to the working American. Our civil liberties are violated by the Big Brother Era—drones are flying over American cities, multiple cameras are watching us at road crossings, and our phone and emails are being monitored—all in the name of security that actually renders us less personally secure.

We are a democracy in which private and public institutions are not reflecting our citizenry in terms of its economic, ethnic, and gender diversity. Our once-vaunted middle class, the backbone of our society, is disappearing rapidly.

The truth is that we are being deprived of our greatest asset—our diversity—because minorities are not engaged in a proportionate share of the decision-making process. We must figure out a way in which all of our voices can be heard. Our objective must be to enlist every citizen as a stakeholder in the future of this great nation. After all, in thirty years, according to projections, no ethnic group will have a majority. If we can do this, we will remain the global leader and role model in offering freedom and prosperity to those who would dare to dream.

We face seemingly insurmountable challenges regarding our debt, healthcare system, education, and citizens’ lack of access to the political process. Yet, as complicated as these problems may be, the solutions are not out of reach. After all, these are man-made problems, and we can solve them once we start believing in ourselves. Together, we can begin a substantive conversation about charting an entirely new course that is flexible and adaptable to the times. We are currently stuck in an old paradigm, one that no longer works. We are a resilient society and nothing can stop us from overcoming our challenges as long as we are willing to dare.

Moreover, Washington’s policies over the last few decades have encouraged passive rather than active behavior—a trend that is beneath us and inimical to our historical legacy. Working people, for example, pay higher tax rates than people with non-working income. Patients are required to pay hospital bills regardless of the quality of service or results. Business leaders profit through clever financial engineering rather than by building new factories. Furthermore, Congress has failed to pass a budget in several years and continues to kick the can down the road—an inexcusable abdication of their responsibility and a recipe for a potential financial shipwreck.

We are encouraging failure by refusing to hold people accountable for their actions. To be specific, consider how poorly we have handled national debacles during the first decade of the 21st century as the housing and banking crisis, the auto industry bankruptcies, wars, and the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. Therefore, we should not be surprised that the average American is so apathetic.

We keep on reforming reforms, so to speak, but to no avail. What we need instead is to get to the root of the problem with systemic renewal and transformation—the sort that utilizes disruptive innovations and rewards entrepreneurship, hard work, and smart risk-taking all across the economic, political, and social spectrum. Once we become intentional about this, we will be able to engage the public in charting the nation’s course for the 21st Century.

This book is not meant as an attack on anyone in particular. Rather, it is directed toward a system that we have created—I call it The Beltway Beast. The Beltway consists of Washington, DC, and surrounding counties; the Beast includes the Military-Industrial Complex, multinational corporations, lobbyists, media, and Congress, among others. Honorable people go to Washington filled with idealism, wanting to serve their country—but immediately find that they are enmeshed in tribal warfare instead, unable to function in any meaningful sense apart from the unwritten rules and expectations of the two-party system. Consequently, some of them at the top succumb to the Beltway Beast and become part of its machinery. The preservation, perpetuation, and enshrinement of the Beast become an end in itself.

According to a Gallup poll in October 2013, only 26% of Americans believe that two major parties adequately represent them, and 60% think that a third party is needed. This book is designed to be a platform for those Americans who are yearning for an option outside the two-party duopoly.

Once upon a time, my dream was to experience good fortune in America. My dream now is that 21st Century America will represent all of its citizens and continue to lead the world in offering everyone the same benefits and opportunities that I have enjoyed—equal access to quality education, jobs that pay a fair salary, and affordable healthcare. If we can accomplish that, I am confident that our much-cherished values of freedom, democracy, and human rights will find their way around the world and into the hearts of all those who seek prosperity and liberty.

Pundits would call the idea of PPA naïve and an exercise in futility. But if young Egyptians with the power of Facebook and Twitter can start a long road to the transformation of their society by removing a dictator of thirty years in only nineteen days without violence, surely we can transform our political process and simplify our lives. As I tell my kids, we will never know unless we try. Besides, what is the alternative?

CHAPTER 1

The Case for a Third Party

Bring democracy to electing our leaders

IN ROBERT FULGHUM’S BOOK All I Really Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten, the writer poignantly observed. All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the kindergarten sand pile. These are the things I learned: Play fair. Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.

PPA’s goal is to transform America through a third party that represents all Americans and brings us together. It proposes to start the transformation by bringing democracy and freedom of choice in electing our leaders, as discussed in this chapter.

America is a resilient society with a dynamic economic system, and its best days lie ahead—but the country must first candidly address its current conundrum. Just like any addict, we cannot continue to exist in a state of denial by living beyond our means. Therefore, we must accept reality and get detoxed. It will take time, but we will come out stronger, better, and ready to face the 21st century’s challenges.

The challenges we face are complicated and are decades in the making. However, just as laptops and smart phones are technologically very complex products yet simple to use, the least we deserve from our leaders is to solve our problems and simplify our lives, not add more stress to them.

Did you know?

Women represent 51% of the population but make up only 20% of the Senate and 18% of the House in 2013.

African-Americans comprise 15% of the population, but there is only one black elected U.S. senator in 2013, and only five African-Americans have been elected to the U.S. Senate since this country was founded.

There are only three Latino senators in 2013, all of whom are men.

Sixty-seven percent of senators are millionaires.

The average age of a senator is sixty-two years, while the median age in America is only thirty-seven.

Seven of the top ten counties with the nation’s highest household incomes are located in the Washington Beltway.

Most of the ideas proposed in this book are already in the public domain and have been offered by various experts and scholars. This book is a compilation of as many of them as possible to show that we have no shortage of great ideas and solutions. What we are missing is a platform to challenge the Beltway Beast.

With that in mind, the PPA’s platform quite naturally emerges as a declaration of our shared intentions, objectives, and principles. We come together in a common purpose by focusing on what unites us: equality, fairness, freedom, and justice. We must emphasize personal responsibility yet be compassionate. Thinking this way, we bring government closer to the people, as was envisioned by our founders, instead of feeding and enabling an outmoded system that autonomously operates thousands of miles away.

In other words, we become intentional about dismantling and disempowering the Beast, which can be compared to a feudalistic and tribal system that lives in its own bubble and is detached from Main Street America. In this distorted view of reality, the people in the Beltway are so entrenched in their beliefs that they’ll go to any lengths to justify the means to their ends. Think of author Fulghum’s values in reverse and you’ll very easily get the picture. Inside the Beltway, elections are won at any cost, even if the campaign attack ads border on outright lies. Politicians shirk from making tough decisions for the good of the country for fear they’ll lose their next election. In corporate America, business executives fire employees to increase profits instead of growing their businesses to accomplish the same.

How did this happen? Were there no viable choices? Were any of these winners doing their jobs? Consider that a national budget has not been passed for four years;¹ job prospects are scarce for working Americans who seek decent salaries, and the divide between the rich and poor keeps getting wider.² It is not a stretch to hold the Beltway Beast mostly responsible for our quagmire.

The Beltway Beast

The Beltway Beast and its tentacles tap into every city, county, and state. But there is so much more to the Beast’s immensity and complexity. The Beltway consists of Washington, DC, and surrounding counties; and the Beast includes defense contractors such as Northrop Grumman that make fighter planes and drones, lobbyists, major corporations with their public affairs departments, think tanks, advocacy groups, journalists, foreign agents, and everybody else who wants something from our government. All of them congregate in the Beltway and are actively engaged in soliciting legislative favors and taxpayer money. Then there is Congress and the White House who need the lobbyists and Wall Street for campaign funds, all part of the Beast living in a bubble called the Beltway.

It is The Club, as The New York Times Magazine’s national correspondent Mark Leibovich described in his book, This Town.³ He further describes, in the words of Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, today’s Washington as a permanent feudal class, a massive, self-sustaining entity that sucks people in, nurtures addiction to its spoils, and imposes a peculiar psychology on big fish and minnows alike. The members of The Club (the Beltway Beast), have their own culture with lots of acronyms and are detached from the daily struggles of Main Street America. Here is where the massive wheels of power turn, where the deals that affect us all are brokered, where average, everyday Americans are relegated to the back of the bus—if not tossed underneath it.

To be fair, many of our newly-elected leaders and public employees are honorable people with wonderful ideas and idealism. They go to Washington to serve their country, only to realize that Washington has its own universe, one that is far removed from the daily realities of America. However, before they can make a difference, they get sucked into the belly of the Beltway Beast. Even our presidents find themselves unable to escape the vortex-like pull. Presidents of both parties, during the campaign and while in office, routinely make solemn pledges to the people—only to renege on virtually everything they have promised, including their vows to change the culture of Washington and to do the people’s business in a different way. It is not that they are inherently bad or want to deceive us. It is that the Beast has gotten them before they have gotten the Beast. The politicians are not the only ones whom the Beast has swallowed alive; the journalists, think-tankers, and career public servants have been drawn and quartered as well.

This sort of deadly seduction is understandable. As human beings we are wired with a strong desire to be accepted—indeed, to be liked—by our social, cultural, or political surroundings. This is the human flaw that the Beast thrives on (along with those other failings, that the root of all evil is the love of money, power, and status). They start believing that what they are doing is right and that without them everything will fall apart.

During the 2000 campaign, candidate George W. Bush⁴/⁵ called for a humble foreign policy and no nation-building, I am not so sure the role of the United States is to go around the world and say this is the way it’s got to be. If we don’t stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we’re going to have a serious problem coming down the road. And I’m going to prevent that. If we are an arrogant nation, they will resent us.

Truer words were never spoken—unfortunately President Bush didn’t take his own advice. As President, he did just the opposite. He spent trillions of dollars and we lost thousands of lives building Iraq and Afghanistan, with nothing to show for it. Then he told the world, either you are with us or against us,⁶ projecting American power and arrogance.

Candidate Barack Obama⁷ in a campaign advertisement during the 2008 election questioned the same old game in Washington: The pharmaceutical industry wrote into the prescription drug plan that Medicare could not negotiate with drug companies. And you know what, the chairman of the committee, who pushed the law through, went to work for the pharmaceutical industry making $2 million a year. I don’t want to learn how to play the game better; I want to end the game plan.

Not long thereafter, he ended up agreeing to the same deal under Obamacare. This means that