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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBill Moyers and Michael Winship: Super PAC Money Throws Democracy Overboard
Money Throws Democracy Overboardby Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
February 14, 2012
Yes, the results are in and our elections have replaced horse racing as the sport of kings. Only these kings arent your everyday poobahs and potentates. These kings are multi-billionaire, corporate moguls who by the divine right, not of God, but the United States Supreme Court and its Citizens United decision, are now buying politicians like so much pricey horseflesh. All that money pouring into super PACs, much of it from secret sources: merely an investment, should their horse pay off in November, in the best government money can buy.
President Obama -- who kept his distance from Priorities USA Action and used to call the money unleashed by Citizens United a threat to democracy -- has declared if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. He urges his wealthy supporters to please go ahead and back the super PAC. "Our campaign has to face the reality of the law as it stands," his campaign manager Jim Messina said. To do otherwise, he added, would be to "unilaterally disarm" in the face of all those Republican super PAC millions. So much for Obamas stand on campaign finance reform everybody else is doing it, he seems to say, so why dont you show me the money, too?
When all is said and done, this race for the White House may cost more than two billion dollars. Whats getting trampled into dust are the voices of people who aren't rich, not to mention what's left of our democracy. As Democratic pollster Peter Hart told The New Yorker magazines Jane Mayer, Its become a situation where the contest is how much you can destroy the system, rather than how much you can make it work. It makes no difference if you have a D or an R after your name. Theres no sense that this is about democracy, and after the election you have to work together, and knit the country together.
These gargantuan super PAC contributions are not an end in themselves. They are the means to gain control of government and the nation state -- for a reason. The French writer and economist Frederic Bastiat said it plainly: "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." Thats what the super PACs are bidding on. For the rest of us, the ship may already have sailed.
Please read the full article at:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/14-4
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Bill Moyers and Michael Winship: Super PAC Money Throws Democracy Overboard (Original Post)
Better Believe It
Feb 2012
OP
valerief
(53,235 posts)1. So true. nt
unkachuck
(6,295 posts)2. K&R....n/t
cbrer
(1,831 posts)3. This handwriting has been on the wall
For a long time. And they control the police, the military, and the voting machines.
Posse Comitatus laws are easily made, easily broken.
I'm only seeing one other choice on the wall...
What other choice do we have to unseat the Oligarchy?
Better Believe It
(18,630 posts)4. Kick