Citizens (United) Gone Wild, Part 2

You Bought It, You Broke It

Wa$$hington, DC

April 10, 2014

Maybe I'm just jealous. Who knows, maybe if I made $123,000 a year I would just buy myself some politicians. You know what they say: Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man how to fish and he'll eat forever, give a man his own politician and he can make other people bring him all the fish he wants, when he wants for as long as he wants and he doesn't have to do any work whatsoever. I may have paraphrased, but you get the drift. $upreme Court Chief Jackass Justice John Roberts would have us believe that nobody gives huge sums of money to get someone elected in the hope that their money has no effect whatsoever on how that person governs. He actually said that...out loud...from the bench.

 

Billionaire Charles Koch - proud owner of many politicians all across this great land - in his recent The Wall Street Journal op-ed piece entitled, I'm Fighting to Restore a Free Society: Instead of welcoming free debate, collectivists engage in character assassination, repeatedly referred to those who disagree with his philosophy of money-as-free-speech as collectivists. I guess the man tied with his brother for fourth richest in America can be forgiven for eschewing the use of the word communists, considering it too passé. Koch whined in Rupert Murdoch's pages, "The central belief and fatal conceit of the current administration is that you are incapable of running your own life, but those in power are capable of running it for you. This is the essence of big government and collectivism." Lest we forget, these Koch brothers sued their two other brothers to wrest their massive inheritance from their father who made his millions in oil and helped found the John Birch Society - the original Tea Party. So these guys know exactly how things work and who should be running things - white guys who were born on third base and act like they hit a triple.

The lead plaintiff in McCutcheon v. FEC, Shaun McCutcheon said "It's about freedom of speech and the government does not need to limit any Americans regardless of economic status." Yes the government that is already practically owned by corporations, the government that has lobbyists writing our laws (How many laws have you been asked to write?), should not be persecuting these poor rich people who otherwise have no say in public affairs. Everybody knows that the government's job is to persecute poor people who don't have money and to make sure they are hindered from voting. That's what a democracy is. And those are the kinds of policies the people Shaun McCutcheon thinks should be running a small (minded) government, believe in too.

Money is Speech, Voting is Passé 

RNC Chair Reince Priebus (Side note: Reince Priebus, also the Latin name for a small cave-dwelling mammal that never cleans itself and avoids predators by emitting a painful, high-pitched shriek while spitting a noxious substance that would make a skunk's eyes water.)beamed, "I am proud that the RNC led the way in bringing this case and pleased that the Court agreed that limits on how many candidates or committees a person may support unconstitutionally burden core First Amendment political activities. When free speech is allowed to flourish, our democracy is stronger." This from the party that spends most of its time illegally purging voter rolls of undesirable (non-white, non-conservative, non-rich) though completely legitimate voters, fighting to restrict voter access and putting out leaflets with the wrong dates in heavily Democratic districts. This from the party that knows and has publicly stated for decades that they know they cannot win if too many people vote. Next they will be passing laws requiring a pigment test in order to vote - it's not about race, just melanin.

In case you missed the recent New York Times headline: New G.O.P Bid to Limit Voting in Swing States, or this Slate headline: Cursed With Nation’s Second-Highest Turnout Rate, Wisconsin Restricts Early Voting, the GOP has been very busy exercising States' Rights to Beat Down The Vote, having taken control of many states. "After the frightening reality of having elected a black president we just can't let something like that happen again," chirped Koch Brothers-owned, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, adding, "If you let one of them become president then they'll all want to be president, and this is a white, Christian nation. We're just trying to protect the Voting Whites Act."

It's not just the Republican'ts standing in the way of voter participation. The same white-hooded black-robed five recently gutted the Voting Rights Act, thereby setting the stage for the states that inspired a need for voting rights to throw black folks caution to the wind and implement myriad roadblocks to keep all non-white, non-millionaires from casting ballots. The Feckless Five are convinced that money doesn’t have a corrupting influence on politics. They do believe that the real corrupting influence on politics is voters. Clearly they are channeling Abraham Lincoln in their quest for a government of the money, by the money and for the money. We're almost there.

Senate minority leader Mulch McConnell explained that rulings like Citizens United and McCutcheon “enable more citizens to be involved, more citizens to contribute to the candidates and causes that they believe in; that’s good for America.” The only good news is that since Global Climate Change is also apparently good for America, we won't have to put up with this crap for too much longer.

In Other News of The Greedy

Paul Ryan, super-genius of Republican't economic policy who still thinks they can repeal the Affordable Care Act after failing to do so over fifty times so far, released his "new" budget. It is his old budget with a different date on the cover page. He wants to privatize Medicare, cut food stamps and Medicaid while proposing to give huge tax breaks to households making over ONE MILLION DOLLARS. This refreshing new idea is bound to stimulate the economy…of households making over one million dollars. If I were you I'd start becoming a household making over one million dollars as soon as possible. The added bonus of course is this will enable you to own more members of Congress.

Maybe Mark Twain was right when he said, “If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it.”

I. Mangrey reporting.

Thanks for listening. I can't be bought, but it's worth a try.
Champagne contributions welcome.