most of us are here to support Democrats ... some of us seem to believe, however, that there is no room to criticize Democrats when they deserve to be criticized ... one thing that must never be put up for sale is the government's obligation to represent the best interests of ALL the people instead of the "special" interests of big money and big corporations ...
Bill Moyers lays out a very ugly case about what has happened to our democracy ... he makes it painfully clear that both parties are to blame ... if our candidates for office are financed by "special" interests and lobbyists are allowed to bribe elected officials, the voice of the people will never be heard ... btw, the reference to "one of the most powerful Democrats" Moyers mentioned in his essay was Rahm Emanuel ...
the day after this next election, we should declare war on the money changers ... no person of either party playing this cruel hoax on the citizenry should be spared ... only a fool would believe that in accepting contributions from profit seekers, there is no quid pro quo ... you cannot serve two masters ... either the best interests of the people are put first or they are not ... the poisoning of our democracy by big money has got to end ...
source:
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1003-30.htm Lincoln Weeps<skip>
Once upon a time the House of Representatives was known as "the people's house." No more. It belongs to K Street now. That's the address of the lobbyists who swarm all over Capitol Hill. There are 65 lobbyists for every member of Congress. They spend $200 million per month wining, dining and seducing federal officials. Per month!
Of course they're just doing their job. It's impossible to commit bribery, legal or otherwise, unless someone's on the take, and with campaign costs soaring, our politicians always have their hands out. One representative confessed that members of Congress are the only people in the world expected to take large amounts of money from strangers and then act as if it has no effect on their behavior. This explains why Democrats are having a hard time exploiting the culture of corruption embodied in the scandalous behavior of DeLay and Abramoff. Democrats are themselves up to their necks in the sludge. Just the other day one of the most powerful Democrats in the House bragged to reporters about tapping "uncharted donor fields in the financial industry"—reminding them, not so subtlely, of the possibility that after November the majority leader just might be a Democrat.
When it comes to selling influence, both parties have defined deviancy up, and Tony Soprano himself couldn't get away with some of the things that pass for business as usual in Washington. We have now learned that Jack Abramoff had almost 500 contacts with the Bush White House over the three years before his fall, and that Karl Rove and other presidential staff were treated to his favors and often intervened on his behalf. So brazen a pirate would have been forced to walk the plank long ago if Washington had not thrown its moral compass overboard.
Alas, despite all these disclosures, nothing is happening to clean up the place. Just as the Republicans in charge of the House kept secret those dirty emails sent to young pages by Rep. Mark Foley—a cover-up aimed at getting them past the election and holding his seat for the party—they are now trying to sweep the DeLay-Abramoff-Reed-and-Norquist scandals under the rug until after Nov. 7, hoping the public at large doesn't notice that the House is being run by Tom DeLay's team, minus DeLay. All the talk about reform is placebo.
The only way to counter the power of organized money is with organized and outraged people. Believe me, what members of Congress fear most is a grassroots movement that demands clean elections and an end to the buying and selling of influence—or else! If we leave it to the powers that be to clean up the mess that greed and chicanery have given us, we will wake up one day with a real Frankenstein of a system—a monster worse than the one created by Abramoff, DeLay and their cronies. By then it will be too late to save Lincoln's hope for "government of, by, and for the people."
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