Oligarchy and crony capitalism.

Most people intuitively know the answer to that. The modern economic reality is an oligarchy where public officials and private lobbies intersect.

The dirty handshakes between the public sector and the private led to this disaster. It’s easy to call for more regulation in response—but who regulates the regulators?

Obama rose to power on wheelbarrows of money from the rich, the super-rich and from unknown sources that have never been accounted for. He raised twice as much money as McCain, and while the media disinformation machine insists that it was the power of social media at work, it was actually the power of socialism.

Socialism is just crony capitalism misspelled, and everyone knows it.

The evisceration of the Commerce Clause, among other betrayals of the Supreme Court and voter stupidity (like voting in an income tax), have effectively trashed the original federal scheme of the Constitution and made the federal government the only government that matters in the United States.

Its powers are irresistible and they reach all areas of our personal and working lives. If you're unhappy about some new federal overreaching or betrayal you have the single constitutional option that the Supreme Court thinks you're entitled to, which is to say, you can vote for or against particular federal officials every two, four or six years where all 8,000 votes and policy choices made by each official are on the table for your one (1) vote to smash, destroy, obliterate, dilute, and crush. No chance of working at cross purposes with any of your fellow citizens there.

Victory lap for the incumbent.

Nor has the Supreme Court prevented you from "petitioning" your federal government. Being one of 600,000 people who write your member in the House of Representatives and one of 200,000,000 people who write to the president definitely puts you in the catbird seat when it comes to changing things politically. They have no choice but to hang onto your every word.

So, what part of "oligarchy" don't you understand? Do you think that what gets done and decided in this country -- whose laws and political realities you probably meekly accept – is at the behest of the "sovereign" people? Even the most bovine of American voters can no longer believe that hogwash.

On the "capitalism" issue, the leftists of all stripes and flavors love to point out that this or that "problem" – e.g. , through-the-roof rampant black crime rates – is the result of "capitalism." The truth of the matter , as Mr. Greenfield points out, is that ours is no longer a capitalist society, it is at best one with a mixed economy, which is a nice way of saying the economy has been choked by regulation and taxation till it gaps for every breath with just enough sense on the part of the socialist/communist/progressive attackers to let up enough so that all oxygen isn't cut off.

Maybe not even that. To leftists, anything worth destroying is worth destroying completely.

Possible new paradigm = problems result from leftist madness? It's worth considering.

What we have isn't capitalism so much as it’s a thinly disguised form of fascism where there's a semblance of private ownership of the means of production but the state really controls things. This control can be exercised by the threat of bodily harm to the owner of a productive enterprise or to his family (National Socialist Germany) or the threat of OSHA, FDC, CPSC, EEOC, NLRB, Corps of Engineers, DOJ, FEC, or EPA regulation, inspection, or litigation (late 20th- and early 21st-century U.S.A.). Businesses that survive do so because – like General Electric – they are friendly right back to the politicians.

Now you can go back to sleep. In that constitutional republic with the rule of law you've heard so much about.

"An Earthquake Comes to Washington." By Daniel Greenfield, Canada Free Press, 8/24/11.