David Sirota: The Bailout - How Capitalism Killed Democracy

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http://www.alternet.org/story/101523/the_bailout%3A_how_capitalism_killed_democracy

The Bailout: How Capitalism Killed Democracy

By David Sirota, AlterNet. Posted October 4, 2008.

We now face market forces uninhibited by democratic governance. The bailout is an aggressive attempt to trade democracy for autocracy.

The marriage of American capitalism and democracy has always been a Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee affair -- stormy and erratic since its hasty wedding. But during the debate over a Wall Street bailout this week, we watched that matrimonial knot unwind into a tangled tale of terror.

As a financial crisis became a political panic, capitalism murdered democracy (ironically, while pursuing a vaguely socialist bailout). Only, unlike a typical horror story, the dead body wasn't hidden, it was dumped in the nation's public square.

The fiasco started, like most, with unreasonable demands. Under threat of financial meltdown, capitalism's corporate lobbyists asked our democracy to forsake its usual deliberations and hand over $700 billion of taxpayer money in less than a week.

Many were surprised when democracy responded with such valiant defiance. As television screens split between the floors of the stock exchange and the House of Representatives, lawmakers initially voted with their constituents and against the bailout.

That's when this husband-and-wife argument escalated into a grisly crime of passion.

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