Bill Moyers said that money in politics is the "dagger directed at the heart of democracy".
He went on to explain, "the activist reactionary majority on the Supreme Court..has opened the floodgates for oligarchs and plutocrats ( the very rich ) to secretly buy our elections and consolidate their hold on the corporate state."
We see the direct effects of this like in no other time when the very wealthy are poised to take control of Congress and eventually the White house.
With backing by such well funded and organized groups such as the Republican party and the Koch industry funded Tea Party movement, ordinary working class citizens are being tricked into handing our government over to corporate control.
Big business does not spend money unless they expect to get something in return. They don't spend money to elect people to congress who will not do their bidding. Who do they spend their cash to support? Why those people?
There is no doubt that all of Congress is corrupt. The single biggest reason for this corruption is the money required to successfully run for office. When big business takes sides and puts up its millions of secret dollars, they are choosing the side they know will do their bidding and who will create a government designed for the best interest of the wealthy 1%, not one who will listen to the rest of us who cannot afford to compete financially.
Look at what the right is promising and ask yourself if this is good for Americans working people or better for American's very wealthy few.
- Eliminate or "privatize" Social Security which despite the lies is NOT bankrupt and has a $2.3 Trillion bank account.
- Eliminate or "privatize" The VA
- Eliminate or "privatize" Medicare/Medicade
- Remove new safeguards to your access to health insurance by going back to allowing insurance companies to refuse care even if you have paid your premiums when it affects their profits.
- Elimination or reduction of them minimum wage, even as middle class workers have seen a decade of decline even as we work harder and longer.
- Return to the same unregulated banks that nearly brought down our economy because of greed and fraud.
- Bring government to a halt or cutting government spending by as much as 40% in the middle of a recession. (This will lead to millions more out of work,losing more homes and a full blown depression. )
Democrats are often no better when it comes to working the deal, leaning to help some of the same special interests. But the left has one thing to offer that we desperately need today, an inclination to clean up a dirty campaign system, to do things for actual middle class people. Very few in Congress today really do their job well. Republicans have made it clear they intend to work for the rich. It is no secret that 1% of Americans who hold 98% of our national wealth own the Republican party and fund the Tea Party movement through the likes of the Kock brothers and others through front groups.
I do not disagree with many of the issues the Tea Party have with government...but they have been co-opted and are unwittingly working for the very people who have nearly wiped out the American economy. People who use "catch phrases" that sound good and have an emotional appeal that is hard to resist but who have presented no plans for our future. What does "cut government spending" mean? What does "free market" mean? These are code words for deregulation of corporations who have a great potential to abuse individuals and our economy as proven in the recent Wall Street and mortgage melt down. Main Street lost that fight even as Wall Street rebounded with record profits. We bailed them out with TARP. True almost all of that has been repaid to the taxpayer with a profit but why should that sort of thing even be permitted to happen in the first place.
Your government is the only thing that can stand between you and I and other average Americans and the greed, corruption and misconduct of huge wealthy corporations. We are the government, for now at least, and regulations are how we protect ourselves from corporate misconduct. If corporations gain control over government, as they are trying to do this election, we no longer stand any chance of self protection. We will be giving our freedoms over to corporate whim. We become wage-slaves who no longer have any say in what was once a government of the people, turned government of 1% of the people.
These 1% want to be able to manipulate the very future of our democracy to exclude an meaningful representation of the other 99% who make up America.
Our economy is a mess, not because of the Democrats in power today, but because of the prior administration's pandering to the rich who put them in office eight years ago. The hole they dug cannot be expected to be filled in 18 months. Not possible. But the bleeding has been stopped and a slow but measurable recovery is under way.
Before you vote ask yourself one question. "Do I want a government run by a hand full of CEO's who earn more in one day than I can earn in a year or do I want officials who work for me?" Do you want an end to democracy, replaced by a corporate take over of American from which we may never be able to recover?
Which party supports the cause of corporate America? The US Chamber does not back Democrats because Democrats refuse to be their puppets. The Chamber and big business are willing to invest billions to elect only those they know they can control...Republicans.
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