The essay contends that rising consumer prices—gas up nearly 50 percent from the Iran war, household costs increased by an estimated $1,100 from tariffs, higher mortgage rates and electricity from AI data centres—are inseparable from political corruption that enriches Trump allies through contracts, exemptions and donations.

Specific examples include SpaceX quintupling Pentagon fees, tariff carve-outs for Apple, Tesla and Republican donors, and Medicaid cuts that finance tax reductions demanded by megadonors.

If Democrats retake Congress, the author argues they must end the war and tariffs, restore independent oversight bodies and introduce public-matching campaign finance to sever the link between pay-to-play schemes and affordability.

In these last weeks before the midterms, Democratic candidates have been gaining ground by talking about two things: the affordability crisis and political corruption.

If Democrats regain control of Congress and genuinely want to respond to affordability, they’ll need to do everything possible to root out the corruption.

The two are inseparable. In large part, prices are rising faster than paychecks because so much of the economy has become subject to political bribery, Trump Republican pay-to-play schemes, and kickbacks to Trump and his cronies.

1. Trump’s war and the corruption underlying it

Trump’s war on Iran is causing Americans to spend almost 50 percentmore on gas than before the war, on average. And the diesel fuel needed to transport almost everything else we buy now averages more than $6.00 a gallon, which is also being passed on to consumers.

These price increases due to Trump’s war tell only half the story. The other half is the political corruption at the root of the war — enriching Trump’s friends and family.

The war has been a huge windfall for Big Tech supplying the military — such as Palantir, a core artificial intelligence and data-integration partner for the U.S. Department of Defense, founded by Trump and JD Vance’s buddy Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk.

Musk’s SpaceX reportedly quintupled its connection fees........

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