If you think things can be changed with electoral politics today, think again. Matt Taibbi's lastest Rolling Stone article has certainly confirmed my attitude towards electoral politics.
The system, at this time, is totally broken. Elections are done using totally manipulable electronic voting machines. Election counts are a chimera, the idea of recounts, a fraud, the idea of trustworthy election counting-- a delusion or outright lie.
David Swanson's book, Daybreak, suggests that the US Senate has become pretty much un-approachable by constituents. In his book tour, promoting Daybreak, David basically said it is not worth spending time attempting to influence members of the Senate. He convinced me. A senator is either a good guy, like Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown, or they're party hacks or DINOs, ie., Corporatists-- corporate bought and paid for.
Since the passage of Obamacare, including the selling out of the Democratic progressive caucus, where they broke their promise not to pass any legislation that didn't include a public option, I've written off the House as well. Sure, I'll vote, occasionally for the odd Democrat who has promise, but for the most part, I've written off wasting time on electoral politics.
Change-- big change, like America and the world desperately needs, will not happen in Congress. It could happen through there, not ith Citizens United and the power of lobbyists in place. Those must change.
Change CAN happen in America, but it will take people in the streets, people, en masse, confronting corporate power. The bottom up and horizontal worlds must confront and defeat the top down powers of the world.
Matt Taibbi wrote, in the May 24th issue of Rolling stone, an article, How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform. This is a powerful article, and to me a profound example of just how broken Congress and the electoral system are. Taibbi wrote:
The giant reform bill turned out to be like the fish reeled in by Hemingway's Old Man -- no sooner caught than set upon by sharks that strip it to nothing long before it ever reaches the shore. In a furious below-the-radar effort at gutting the law -- roundly despised by Washington's Wall Street paymasters -- a troop of water-carrying Eric Cantor Republicans are speeding nine separate bills through the House, all designed to roll back the few genuinely toothy portions left in Dodd-Frank. With the Quislingian covert assistance of Democrats, both in Congress and in the White House, those bills could pass through the House and the Senate with little or no debate, with simple floor votes -- by a process usually reserved for things like the renaming of post offices or a nonbinding resolution celebrating Amelia Earhart's birthday.The fate of Dodd-Frank over the past two years is an object lesson in the government's inability to institute even the simplest and most obvious reforms, especially if those reforms happen to clash with powerful financial interests. From the moment it was signed into law, lobbyists and lawyers have fought regulators over every line in the rulemaking process. Congressmen and presidents may be able to get a law passed once in a while -- but they can no longer make sure it stays passed. You win the modern financial-regulation game by filing the most motions, attending the most hearings, giving the most money to the most politicians and, above all, by keeping at it, day after day, year after fiscal year, until stealing is legal again. "It's like a scorched-earth policy," says Michael Greenberger, a former regulator who was heavily involved with the drafting of Dodd-Frank. "It requires constant combat. And it never, ever ends."
That the banks have just about succeeded in strangling Dodd-Frank is probably not news to most Americans -- it's how they succeeded that's the scary part. The banks followed a five-point strategy that offers a dependable blueprint for defeating any regulation -- and for guaranteeing that when it comes to the economy, might will always equal right.
Here's a list of the five ways,. The article gives great detail on how each of these work and were accomplished for the Dodd-Frank legislation.
STEP 1: STRANGLE IT IN THE WOMBSTEP 2: SUE, SUE, SUE
STEP 3: IF YOU CAN'T WIN, STALL
STEP 4: BULLY THE REGULATORS
STEP 5: PASS A GAZILLION LOOPHOLES
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