"The Court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation. The path it has taken to reach its outcome will, I fear, do damage to this institution.
While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics."
~Justice John Paul Stevens, dissent on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
The 2010 elections are done and spell further doom to anything resembling the American Dream. The lukewarm, mild, tepid support of the New Deal safety net by the Democrats was swamped by a scalding-hot tea mess of ultra-right nutcases parading as populist reformers. The tea they served was brewed from an ocean of money provided in part by the Koch brothers, savvy businessmen who want a return from their investment.
They spent millions on attack ads, robo-calls and other forms of nefarious disinformation and now expect billions from the U.S. treasury to be provided by their army of looters soon to be sworn in to congress. This will come at the expense of anyone hoping to retire before the age of 80, anyone not raking in more than seven figures a year, and anyone trying to go to college without being saddled with debt for the next 30 years after graduation.
The campaign finance system is no longer just broken, it has been pulverized by corporate cash into a shadowy, toxic fog that cannot even be traced. Anywhere there is dissent from the corporate agenda the fog rolls in and blankets the airwaves with poison. The dissent is killed and replaced with a compliant tool to accomplish the further dismantling of FDR's social contract. This wave election may be the wave of the future if the walls between corporate money and fair elections are not rebuilt. Expecting the politicians to fix this is like expecting a drug cartel to police themselves and a drug addict to come clean without any type of intervention. It is up to we the people to get a constitutional amendment to fix this mess. That's the only hope of stopping the slide back to the Gilded Era of robber barons.
4 comments:
The decline of the American Dream is taking place in plain sight.
The American people are seeing what's happening, and are rightfully alarmed, but they're attributing the decline to erroneous factors--factors that have been selected by others, in a slight-of-hand maneuvering that have them looking in the wrong direction, a calculated misdirecting that's keeping them in the "toxic fog," and in the dark, about what's really going on.
They're told: It's the Muslims that are at fault. It's the brown people here illegally. It's the "evil" and "vile" socialism, the trademark of this president and liberals in general. It's government regulations. It's the assault on free market principles. It's the gays.
I'm reminded time and time again of the movie, Idiocracy. The movie is a metaphor of our times, and how far we have descended, as a nation, into a moronic stupor of inaction, and the uncritical acceptance of almost anything, as long as it supports our particular biases, and plays to our bigotries.
"It is up to we the people to get a constitutional amendment to fix this mess. That's the only hope of stopping the slide back to the Gilded Era of robber barons."
I agree: But how do we do that?
How do you get people to rally for something like this when they're being told that their salvation lies in the defeat of liberalism, the destruction of Muslims around the world (a daunting task in itself, but good for military industrialists), and the expulsion of the brown people in our midst?
BD...the majority of people don't even vote, especially in mid-term elections. The reasons for this intrigue me. Have they decided that voting won't change anything? How did they reach this conclusion? Perhaps there is a strategy that can be used to engage them by explaining the benefit of change to a system that they have decided does not work to their advantage.
I don't think the reactionaries are a majority, their nonsense and noise is amplified by a friendly corporate media. This year was a repeat of 1994, when a timidly pro-corporate agenda (healthcare reform was turned into yet another industry bailout) caused the Democratic base to lose energy. That combined with the fact that 30 years of "free trade" bi-partisan treachery sent jobs out of the country, never to return. The good thing is now the Republicans have partial ownership of the hole that they mostly dug themselves.
Ernesto said...
"BD...the majority of people don't even vote, especially in mid-term elections. The reasons for this intrigue me."
Yet, there's not a paucity of rationalizing or Monday-morning quarterbacking to explain the phenomenon.
If you ask Republicans, they'll insist that the American people have spoken, and, by speaking, have given their party the green light, and a mandate to push their brand of solutions, solutions which are as predictable as the passing of collection plates on Sundays.
If these sometime-voters (those who don't vote in mid-term elections, but turn out for national ones) believe that their voices (votes) only count then, but not at other times, then their notion of the political process is skewed, and the fallout from their decisions (not to vote) is part of the reason that the system continues to work against them.
I'm composing a new blog entry that will, in part, discuss this failing on the part of so many in our country.
"The good thing is now the Republicans have partial ownership of the hole that they mostly dug themselves."
They may choose to do what they've done for the last two years: NOTHING! But there's a silver lining that might force them.
The Tea Party may turn out to be useful idiots in this whole process--forcing the Republican establishment off their dime, and compelling them to make changes to eliminate the corruption that has soured the process (for one, earmarks).
My concern: The Tea Party will go overboard and attack entitlements and not defense spending, do away with needed regulatory oversight, and give corporations the power to outsource at a quickening rate, thereby accelerating the decline of the American economy.
BD...I wish the Tea Party was more than just an astroturf group bankrolled by Big Oil. They aren't, but there are people out there who think the Republicans will do what they said about balancing the budget, etc. They are in for a rude awakening, just like after the 1994 elections and the promises of term limits, etc.
History repeating itself. K Street still runs the puppet/horror show.
Post a Comment