On The Front Lines
New to OldSpeak: David Cay Johnston Takes Aim at Rapacious Rich and Corporate Subsidies & Tax Breaks That Bleed Average Americans Dry
"Too many Americans waste their time finding out who will be the next American Idol or what Britney Spears is doing instead of being citizens. When people start behaving like citizens and support organizations that favor their interests, then government will be responsive to them. If people want a government responsive to them, they have to decide to be citizens. Outsourcing jobs has not been good for blue-collared workers. Outsourcing democracy to the rapacious among the rich and large corporations has been even worse for our government."--David Cay Johnston, author of Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill)
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. --How does a strong and growing economy lend itself to job uncertainty, debt, bankruptcy and economic fear for a vast number of Americans? In this OldSpeak interview, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Cay Johnston, author of Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) , suggests that the answer lies in today's governmental policies and spending that reaches deep into the wallets of the many for the benefit of what he calls the "rapacious rich."
In this provocative and eye-opening interview with John W. Whitehead, Johnston reveals the forces that shape our everyday economic lives ("Right now, our biggest problem is that our government has been captured by large corporations and those among the rich who are rapacious") and shows what Americans can do to make things better. "We can change this system," observed Johnston, "but people have to spend time and effort. It is not easy. It is not simple. But no one else is going to do it for you. If you want to live in a free society, if you want to have your liberty, if you want a government that looks out for you, instead of the already rich, then you have to spend time getting organized with other like-minded people and being citizens... If we do not do the business of being citizens, then we are hastening the day when high school students will sit down and open up a book with a chapter on history that will begin with these words, 'The United States of America was.'"
David Cay Johnston, a former investigative journalist for The New York Times, now works as an independent reporter, focusing on the subject of taxation. Johnston received the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting "for his penetrating and enterprising reporting that exposed loopholes and inequities in the U.S. tax code, which was instrumental in bringing about reforms." He also won the Book of the Year award from Investigative Reporters & Editors. Johnston has hunted down a killer the police failed to catch, exposed LAPD abuses, caused two television stations to lose their licenses over news manipulations and revealed Donald Trump's true net worth. He has uncovered so many tax dodges that he has been called the "de facto chief tax enforcement officer of the United States."
OldSpeak, the online journal of The Rutherford Institute, is dedicated to publishing interviews, articles and commentary on subjects often overlooked by the mainstream media in the areas of politics, art, culture, law and religion. The Rutherford Institute is an international, nonprofit civil liberties organization committed to defending constitutional and human rights.
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