Interesting excerpt in the Sunday New York Times of the new book Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government–and How We Take It Back, by David Sirota:

[W]hen House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) gave a major speech on March 12 [, 2003] — just weeks before the invasion — the average onlooker might have expected a demand for national sacrifice, a patriotic call to make sure the country was protected and our troops were safe. Instead, we got a glimpse of just how far our political leaders will go to reward the wealthy. "Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes," DeLay proudly declared. Nothing? Not securing our country, not preventing another 9/11, not protecting American troops heading into battle? No, to DeLay, the impending violence was just another excuse to reward the rich donors who fund political campaigns.

You might think this comment was the strange babbling of an unhinged lunatic and was greeted with outrage or at least dismissive scorn. You would be half right: the source of the comment was, in fact, a babbling fool….But in today’s Washington, the absurd notion that cutting taxes is the noblest and most important mission of the government-even in a time of war-is so commonplace that few reporters thought DeLay’s comments newsworthy enough to write about. Big Money’s Hostile Takeover of our political system has made DeLay’s logic the rule, rather than the exception….

[S]lowly but surely, arguments opposing this perfectly functional [tax] system began to take hold. At first they were promoted only by a small coterie of tax-cutting zealots who possess a cultish devotion to the idea that allowing the superwealthy to accumulate more wealth is the highest economic good. But soon this crusade to change our tax code found converts in the highest levels of government. And the result has been a tax structure flipped on its head.