David Cay Johnston

[E]lectric and gas utilities in more than twenty states have... quietly obtained government approval to make customers pay in advance for new or upgraded facilities. It is as if... everyone has loaned them the money at zero percent interest.

[S]tate and local governments alone spend at least $70 billion a year of taxpayer's money to subsidize factories, office buildings [etc.]... $900 per year for a family of four.

America has been transformed from a land of growing economic plenty into a hollow shell.

Unlike individuals, who must take responsibility for their conduct, corporations' legal responsibility... has benefited from limits to that responsibility established by law. The rationale... is that people who... build a business would not take the same risks if failure meant they would lose... their houses, cars... and everything else. ...[T]hey can go about their corporate business, creating enterprises and generating wealth.

Members of Congress routinely vote on tax bills that they have never read, much less understood even on a superficial level. Sanford J. Schlesinger... says that "there hasn't been a member of Congress with a comprehensive understanding of the laws since ..."

[P]residents of companies have gone from apologizing when they had to lay off workers to boasting of the riches... obtained through mass firings. ...[I]nvestors ...owe their wealth ...to buying companies in deals that required destroying lives and careers

Usury laws that protected consumers against rapacious lenders existed until 1978. Now they are gone because of a Supreme Court decision. ...[O]ur government has set forth onerous new rules that reward those who prey on the poor. ...These lenders, or their fronts, can now charge rates and impose penalties that were illegal, even criminal, a generation ago.

In Britain only about 18 people a year die at rail crossings. ...Even taking into account that America has five times as many people... the death rate at crossings is four times that of Britain.

At the same time that the rules have been rewritten to favor the already rich, new rules have been written that ensure harsh treatment for the poor... Coping with the foul effects of poverty costs us trillions of dollars a year... Poverty wastes minds and spirits, robbing all of us of opportunity. ...It makes us less trusting, less willing to see ourselves as one people...

[L]ess than a century after its adoption, the tax system is being turned on its head. Since at least 1983 it has become the explicit, but unstated, policy... to let the richest Americans pay a smaller portion of their incomes in taxes and to defer more of their taxes... a stealth tax cut, while collecting more in taxes from... the middle class.

In every place where there is no real tax system, such as Honduras or Afghanistan, there is no widespread wealth.

In the past quarter century... new rules... have weakened and even destroyed consumer protections while increasing the power of the already powerful. ...[T]he rules affecting who wins and who loses economically have been quietly and subtly rewritten.