DU POLL: Only money matters in the NEW US?

[RKP5637]

Simple question. IMO only money matters in the US today. I don't like it that way and it's absolutely wrong. ... but what I see in politics today is only a focus on who got the most money in contributions. To me, it's a sad state of affairs.

Hence my question.

Only money matters in the NEW US?

8 votes, 0 passes | Time left: Unlimited
	Yes
	6 (75%)
	No
	2 (25%)
	Dumb poll, the answer is obvious!
	0 (0%)
	You must have gotten up early today, most of your polls are at night!
	0 (0%)
	All of the above!
	0 (0%)
	Too difficult to answer!
	0 (0%)
	0 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
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[madokie]

1. Two issues that really need attention

and until we do we're truly fucked. Money in politics and the lack of a free and honest Press

[RKP5637]

17. Exactly, madokie! What you said is the common thread and the bottom-line as to what is at the

core of the problems in this country ... and if not corrected, we will be/are truly fucked!

[RoccoR5955]

30. And there's only ONE issue that needs attention more than that

That would be our environment.
If we screw up our Mother Earth, there is no Planet B.

End the money in politics as much as you like, and have a free and honest press forever, and you still have to deal with the climate crisis. You can't eat, drink, or breathe a free press, nor a non-monetized political arena.

We MUST take care of our planet, at all costs.

Too many people are concerned with other things, and they ignore the one thing that sustains all life. Our Mother Earth should be our main priority.

[madokie]

31. Gotta get the two I mention under control before we get this though

as it stands now the politician and the press is in the pockets of big money and as long as that is the case the environment issue will not stand a chance.
gotta get them ducks in a row and all that you know

[RoccoR5955]

33. Oh, so to you Planet Earth is number two?

I think that this is part of the problem. People don't want to take on what little that they can do as individuals. Perhaps if we all did, the corporatists would see that we will not buy their polluting carp, and want a cleaner environment, and THEY will come along.

Like I heard someone say, "If the people lead, the leaders will follow."

[madokie]

37. We don't make laws

so if we don't take on the money in our elections and the press problems there is no way we can do what you're saying.
Are you being obtuse on purpose or what?

[RoccoR5955]

43. No, I am not being obtuse.

You can do plenty of small things like saving power, buying recycled goods, not driving so fast, combining trips when driving... These all add up, especially when more and more people do them.
Treading lighter on Mother Earth than we have should be everyone's job one.
Sorry to say, but there is EVERYTHING that we can do as individuals. We cannot wait for legislators to pass laws to make us to do things. We have to take the initiative and they will follow. This has often been the case with any issue that has been facing the public. Not only in the US, but in other countries as well.

[haele]

39. The problem is that "Money" gets in the way of saving the environment.

Those Very Serious People who worship at the altar of Mammon have co-opted pretty much every venue that could be used to take care of our planet. When the CEO of Nestle can say in public without hesitation or a sense of shame that "water is not a public right, it needs to be managed by businessmen", Money becomes the significant issue in the world - because of the power that the population in general gives to Money is transferred as power to these people over the Earth's natural resources and the management of resources.

The Environment managed by businessmen means that businessmen decide what areas of the earth would have access to clean water or remain as wildlife habitation, and Monsanto, Nestle, KBR, and investment hedge fund managers will decide where agriculture, mining, and manufacuring will be more important - that is, profitable - than maintaining a healthy environment, biodiversity, or a place of natural beauty or wonder.

If a wealthy person's summer home or winter lodge is not on the property or it doesn't "disturb the view", who would care if a hundred square mile of mountaintop and rapirian wilderness became a moonscape of stripmines and poisonous tailing pits?
Look at the Alberta Tarsands area - since the government of Canada is all into neo-liberal "free-marketry" and nobody of importance lives there, a whole (and very important in terms of watershed and climate affects) ecosystem accross a wide swath of the earth has been destroyed for profit.

Yes, Money is one of the most important issues we are faced with. Because it's a False God, with a whole lot of powerful, feckless followers who can't see past their own mirrors.

Haele

[hfojvt]

2. it isn't new

this song is from the 1980s

[hfojvt]

6. and it is much older than that

Alexis de Toqueville toured America in 1831 and wrote a book called "Democracy in America"

I have never read that book, but I read a book ABOUT that book that quoted some of it.

One of the seminal quotes, unfortunately not listed here http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/alexis_de_tocqueville.html was this one

"Americans desire businesses that make 'more money'. There, in two words, you have the American character."

I mean, come on, what is this much ballyhooed "American Dream"? if not "more, more, more" (how do you like it? How do you like it?" or "too much is never enough" (it's gonna getcha) or "faster horses, younger women, older whiskey, and more money"

[TimberValley]

3. Very much disagree.

There is so much else that matters in the United States that I would in fact even consider money to be only a relatively small issue by comparison.


The bigger picture involves far more things than that.

[RKP5637]

7. Just asking, how do you control the direction of the US given the way things are

working anymore if money is a small issue?

[TimberValley]

8. Votes. Persuasiveness. Make compelling arguments that are valid and true. nt.

[lumberjack_jeff]

4. Absolutely true. Everything else matters only to the extent that it affects accumulated wealth.

Say what you want about their tactics, but militant organizations like Black Panthers, Wobblies and Molly Maguires were successful in their goals.

OWS? Kind of tame.

[frazzled]

5. As in the old US (and elsewhere)

How old are you? Cause I've been around for more than 60 years, and I don't ever recall it being otherwise.

[RKP5637]

11. A lot of things have changed IMO since you and I were young. We have Citizens United, a

severely skewed distribution of wealth and a huge influx of money into the political process, as well as highly monied political operatives. Yep, money has always been a factor, but today, IMO, we have never seen money with such a high leverage across many aspects of this nation. ... basically, the country has been bought ...

[frazzled]

24. You must not remember the political process at the 1968 Democratic Convention

Only 14 states had presidential primaries at the time. That's how Hubert Humphrey became the party's candidate ... in the back rooms, with the party's bosses. Otherwise, the popular voting was as follows:

Total popular vote:[7]
Eugene McCarthy - 2,914,933 (38.73%)
Robert Kennedy - 2,305,148 (30.63%)
Stephen M. Young - 549,140 (7.30%)
Lyndon B. Johnson - 383,590 (5.10%)
Thomas C. Lynch - 380,286 (5.05%)
Roger D. Branigin - 238,700 (3.17%)
George Smathers - 236,242 (3.14%)
Hubert Humphrey - 166,463 (2.21%)
Unpledged - 161,143 (2.14%)
Scott Kelly - 128,899 (1.71%)
George Wallace - 34,489 (0.46%)
Richard Nixon (write-in) - 13,610 (0.18%)
Ronald Reagan (write-in) - 5,309 (0.07%)
Ted Kennedy - 4,052 (0.05%)
Paul C. Fisher - 506 (0.01%)
John G. Crommelin - 186 (0.00%)

Also, you may not recall that there WERE NO campaign finance laws until the mid-1970s, and they didn't clamp down on soft money until 2002, with McCain-Feingold.

[RKP5637]

28. Thanks! n/t

[TimberValley]

9. I'm tired of the idea that everything will suddenly become fine if money is gone from politics.

It is a very oversimplified view.

[theKed]

21. It is a

core issue, from which springs many, many others problems.

[flamingdem]

10. It's not that money is so bad, it's the character of those who put it above humanity

that poison the society. It's the balance that's missing.

Sadly with the efficiencies brought by computers and information flow making money is rules over any humanitarian concern. If one goes against that there's always a competitor who'll find a way to profit.

There are few strokes for those who consider others in our society especially when TO HAVE THE MOST
MONEY = strokes, regardless of the destruction or ethical damage done in the acquiring.

[RKP5637]

13. Yep!!! Well said!

[flamingdem]

27. You probably read Krugman's article on austerity

I'm reading the comments -

Sheldon Bunin
Jackson Heights NY

“...[w]e have policy of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent, for the 1 percent,..." The USA is a plutocracy. The 1% or control the main stream media, major corporations and the GOP. Plutocrats, royalists, barons of banking and commerce, ran Briton in the 18th century and the American Revolution was about trade and manufacturing and cheap cotton produced by slaves for English mills. In Briton there was a wide class difference and the working class was locked into estate tenancy or mill and mining work and they saluted their betters.

Our constitution doesn't invest political power in wealth, heritage or , land. “We the People” had sovereignty and guaranteed rights giving a poor man equally protection under the law. Government was a counter balance to corporate power. That is no longer true, if it ever was, but the ideal remained. If the 1% does not want it or need it, government shall not provide it. To a billionaire who remains a billionaire in a depression while the wage earner starves, a depression is not so bad and the social distance between the classes widens. The 1% not only want to live like aristocrats they want to be aristocrats. Their selfishness transcends patriotism. They have organized to further their own selfishness. The nation and its people be damned. Organized selfishness is fascism. Where there is no space between government power and the power of the 1% and their corporate alter egos, we better understand that fascism is being pushed down our throats.

[RKP5637]

29. Thanks!!! n/t

[haele]

40. Money's an easy metric to assign value in anything. That skews the balance that should be sought.

Art, Beauty, Health and Well-being are much harder to establish a value on, especially in an increasingly polar way of looking at society and actions in general.
It's getting harder to measure or assess issues, actions, or things that are not "countable". When people start depending on technology to assess what's good for them, the technology just sees "does it meet the enumerated requirements to meet A or B?" and tends to ignore anything that doesn't fall within the bounds of the question. The decision making process is now increments of "Good/Bad, More/Less, Yes/No", with the goal of determining what meets the maximum critera for any of those categories.

So when it comes to balance, unless "A=Z" is "Yes", you're not going to see an attempt for balance.

It won't matter how thoughtfull or kind a person you really are, if you're reliable, how effective a leader you can be, or if you are willing to sacrifice to make the best decision for everyone - only the numbers will count.
How much money do you make? How much do you weigh? How old are you? How many people or how large an area of work do you oversee? How much education do you have? What social groups do you belong to? What's your religion? How many parking tickets you have collected? Do you own or rent? What's your credit score...
With Money as an easy measuring component in all of those questions - even in religion and social groups, there's a money component that can be measured.
The ability to aquire and spend Money = Class.

And that's a very sad thing to see us as a society "comfortably" slide into.

Haele

[RKP5637]

42. And the result is a quantized species, void of personality ... simply pawns in a game. n/t

[Marr]

12. Today? Absolutely.

The system is utterly corrupted today. It's little more than an increasingly threadbare stage show, run by monied interests. It's become more and more obviously fake over the last 12 years or so, to the point where the people running it often don't even bother with a pretense of working for the benefit of the general populace anymore.

I remain convinced that it can be turned around, however, and if/when it happens, it's going to happen so fast that the people currently in charge won't even have a chance to put together a cohesive PR campaign before the fight is over. Something like Occupy could drain the political swamp very quickly. It's just a matter of whether or not people all get fed up enough, and where they put the blame.

[RKP5637]

15. Exactly, and why Occupy was suppressed so quickly. n/t

[Marr]

19. Yep. You could really sense a sort of panic in the establishment response.

Occupy wasn't anything violent, and that was beyond obvious. But the establishment response was frantic. They tried the usual things, then some unusual things, then went straight to violence. I feel like they really showed their hand there and colored a lot of peoples' thinking. If this situation is corrected in time, I expect much of it will be rooted in realizations people had during the clampdown on Occupy.

[RKP5637]

25. Meanwhile, the noose, so to say, is tightening and tightening against any show of unrest and

cohesion like Occupy.

[sarisataka]

14. Money is not the only currency

those who have *something* that legislators want can get their voice heard louder than those who do not. Money is the most obvious form, but there are many other deals made that do not involve dollars

[rrneck]

16. Lots of other things matter here other than money.

But when it comes to politics, it's money. Which is as it should be. In the modern world money=resources. Politics is the art of who gets what. As it stands now, a very few people have stolen our money, and we want it back. Government is the tool to use to enforce fairness in resource distribution. We just aren't using it because we have confused citizenship with consumerism.

It always comes down to money. They stole it, and we need to take it back.

[RKP5637]

20. How will it be taken back? That, is always what puzzles me. You make an excellent point, "we have

confused citizenship with consumerism."

[rrneck]

23. Taxes. nt

[RKP5637]

26. YES, that would be highly effective!!! nj/t

[Alva Goldbook]

18. We don't have a problem with "money in politics"

We have a problem of rich people bribing our politicians. Of course, no one is ever prosecuted for this because the everyone is the entire system is bribed. We just call it "lobbying".

[RKP5637]

22. Exactly! And, we have a revolving door between Congress, lobbyists and corporations. They all

shake hands, for the most part, be they D, R or I. It's an old boy's club ... and as George Carlin said, we aren't part of it!

[BainsBane]

32. What do you mean by new?

I think it's been that way for a long time, though it seems more naked in the couple of decades than before.

[RKP5637]

34. Yeah, today it's more blatant and in our faces, with IMO the message being, so what are

you peasants gonna do about it ...

[BainsBane]

35. Good question

I say start with public financing of elections. Make sure we get Dem presidents who can appoint SCOTUS judges who will overturn those bullshit rulings equating buying politicians with free speech. Then we can pass laws mandating public financing of elections. Only then can we effect real change through the political process.

[RKP5637]

36. That, would be an excellent start. Also, Americans need to wake up to the game being played to

keep us at each other's throats, and the hate jocks using media to line their pockets with cash all the way to the bank.

[treestar]

38. IMO it is not so much that

as that voters are not interested enough. Thus the ones with big money can get their attention the easiest. People need to get off the cynical, I'm-too-good-for-politics angle - it only shoots us in the collective foot. It's what allows the politicians to misbehave.

[RKP5637]

41. Exactly, and they will get what is dished out to them ... and then say WTF, and then it's

too late!