The Kentucky senate race serves as a prime example. The Democratic candidate, Jack Conway, is currently Kentucky's attorney general. Conway is also currently prosecuting a nursing home for allegedly covering up the sexual abuse of one of its residents.
But that nursing home is owned by Terry Forcht, a millionaire who gives prodigiously to right-wing causes. He poured money into Karl Rove's organization, American Crossroads GPS, which ran ads backing Conway's Republican opponent, Rand Paul. Guess who came away with the victory last night?
As Holland emphasizes, the mid-term elections are just how the first phase of the justice system's corruption plays out. Eventually the mere threat of attack ads could be enough to prevent needed prosecutions. Corporate bigwigs could literally get away with murder, and pay for it only through attack ads.
Think this is bad? Just wait for 2012
As David Corn details for Mother Jones, the Supreme Court's ruling has put American democracy in grave danger. This year's big spending is just a warm-up for the 2012 presidential election. Karl Rove has already pledged to keep running attack ads after the mid-terms, and there's no doubt that he'll make good on that. As Corn emphasizes, this issue doesn't just affect how campaigns are financed-it will permanently reshape the very nature of American elections.
The permanent, neverending campaign will become even more permanent and neverending. These big-and-secret-money groups will be working 24/7, opposing and discrediting President Barack Obama and the Democrats in the so-called off-year and then revving up for the 2012 presidential and congressional elections. The negative ads never have to stop.
That, ultimately, is the major take-away from last night's elections. Not the number of seats Republicans picked up in the House, or the Tea Party's ability to infiltrate the Senate, but the formal incorporation of American politics. With literally no limits on the amount of money they can spend to influence elections, corporations and secret billionaires are going to be tipping the democratic scales wherever they smell profit.
War chests from right-wing billionaires and corporate titans are funding tremendous portions of political activity, from the so-called grassroots activism of the Tea Party to the streamlined lobbying assaults of the nation's largest corporations.
On Monday, Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) announced she would not support foreign aid for Afghanistan until she was assured that the Afghan government had put an end to corruption.
"I do not intend to appropriate one more dime for assistance to Afghanistan until I have confidence that U.S. taxpayer money is not being abused to line the pockets of corrupt Afghan government officials, drug lords, and terrorists," said Lowey, who heads the House State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee. Lowey was responding to recent reports that more than $1 billion a year are flowing out of Afghanistan to elite Afghans outside the country, and that Afghan authorities have derailed corruption investigations of politically powerful Afghans.
Lowey's statement is an understandable expression of frustration. But cutting off foreign aid now is absolutely the wrong approach for the United States to take in Afghanistan.
After several visits to Afghanistan in the last few years, Human Rights First issued recommendations to the Obama administration last year specifically recommending that the United States help train Afghan investigators on evidence collection and documentation and help Afghan prosecutors provide fair prosecutions. Current plans do just that, in addition to working with Afghan officials on improving their own detention facilities and their judiciary.
Lowey's frustration is understandable, not only because of the Washington Post's recent news stories, but also because of this report prepared for the State Department last year that reviewed a broad range of Afghan institutions and concluded that corruption is rampant and growing. Not surprisingly, thirty years of war has undermined the development of reliable and legitimate institutions, and of a judicial system able to keep corruption in check. But to keep Afghanistan from returning to Taliban rule or simply descending into chaos, the United States has an obligation to help the Afghan government develop and enforce laws that reduce corruption and improve government transparency. Given the recent reports that Afghanistan has some $3 trillion worth of natural resources it's eager to exploit, transparency will be critical to make sure the proceeds of those riches don't just get shipped out of Afghanistan like the billion dollars a year flying out of there now.
Although our NATO allies should and will be helping in this effort, the necessary "nation-building" isn't going to happen unless the United States commits to funding carefully-targeted programs designed to improve governance and reduce corruption. Continued funding can be made contingent on the acceptance and participation of Afghan leaders and institutions with this anti-corruption agenda.
Lowey is right that US aid to Afghanistan should be spent wisely, and not indirectly fund warlordsto provide security or corrupt officials to spread as graft. But the State Department and the military's Joint Task Force in charge of detention facilities in Afghanistan are just beginning their work to improve local government enough to allow the U.S. military to transition out of there. Cutting off the funding that will allow that to happen would not only undermine the development of legitimate government institutions in Afghanistan, but would make the United States' goal of eventually leaving the country that much more elusive.
Nevada's top political journalist, Jon Ralston, reports:
In the federal penal code, it is known as "structuring."
And it is a word Sen. John Ensign should remember because it is very likely to be on any indictment with his name on it.
That's what I am told by a reliable source familiar with the deliberations occurring inside the Justice Department as federal authorities in Washington try to do with Ensign what they could not do with former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens: Get their man. Or, because they had Stevens and then lost him because of misconduct, Justice wants to make sure if it goes to the next step with Ensign, the charges stick.
Indictment? Don't mind if I do. (Remember, it was the abysmal Bush DOJ that fumbled the Stevens prosecution.) So what is "structuring?"
Structuring is a broad term that refers to the crime of creating financial transactions to evade reporting requirements - for example, a $96,000 payment to your mistress laundered through a trust controlled by your parents and calling it a "gift" instead of what it obviously was: a severance payment that had to be reported.
Based on the facts already in public domain, it seems there may be enough for an indictment.
Two former federal prosecutors in the past two weeks have said there is enough evidence to indict Ensign. "Just based on what the senator has said himself and what Mr. (Doug) Hampton has said ... under the federal standard of probable cause, there's enough to indict the senator now," ex-prosecutor Stan Hunterton, a well-respected local attorney, said March 19 on "Face to Face." Then, Thursday on the program, Melanie Sloan, the former federal prosecutor who now heads a D.C. watchdog group that has filed several complaints against Ensign, said, "I completely think" Hunterton is right. ...
The department is being very deliberate in assembling a case against Ensign. But Justice has a mountain of documents and e-mails that, combined with the senator's own admissions or statements in e-mails, would seem to amount to a formidable case. And last week's New York Times story, showing how Ensign's contacts with a local company (similar to several other interactions), show how far the senator was willing to go to get Hampton work, mostly while he was employed by ex-Ensign aides who had formed a lobbying/consulting firm. The structure, so to speak, is becoming more transparent all the time.
Beyond Ensign's dire and deserved legal fate, what are the political implications?
If Ensign gets indicted, he will become a national and state nightmare for the GOP. National Democrats will brandish him as a symbol of corruption (they may anyhow) and local Democrats will wrap the junior senator around the GOP Senate nominee's neck, especially because Sue Lowden and Danny Tarkanian foolishly have said they would welcome his support. I wouldn't even be surprised to see Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid directly go after his pal to boost his sagging fortunes. I can hear it now: "Sorry, John. But now you know how Doug Hampton feels - how it feels to be screwed over by your best friend."
Why are the national and state Republicans mute? Cowardice, perhaps? Or is it, as NBC political guru Chuck Todd tweeted Friday, repeating something he previously said on "Face to Face" a couple of weeks ago: "NV/DC GOPers desperate to wait for Gov. Gibbons to be out of office before pushing Ensign out but can they really (http://nyti.ms/91kElt)?"
The Web link in Todd's tweet is to last week's Times story, emphasizing the point that if the Republicans wait too long, their silence could be very costly. And if Ensign gets indicted and no prominent Republican has called for him to resign, there's no way to structure that deal to the GOP's benefit.
Ensign and Washington Republicans can continue to do what they've been doing all along - ignore, ignore, ignore. But they might not be able to run out the clock on Election Day 2010 - still seven months away - before indictments come down. And, as Ralston points out, if the Washington Republican establishment stays mum on all of this, the issue becomes a matter of the entire Party coddling its corrupt members. Hmmmm, Republican Culture of Corruption, where have I heard that before? And that's on top of the already-competitive gubernatorial and Senate races in Nevada, which is also a key 2012 swing state, don't forget. (Lowden's and Tarkanian's poorly thought out statements welcoming Ensign's support will no doubt bite them in the backside if either is the Republican nominee against Majority Leader Harry Reid. The political ad writes itself.)
Particularly as it relates to the 2010 Senate races, the Senate Republican caucus is the Ensign-Vitter caucus. Every Republican incumbent Senator and candidate for U.S. Senate should be asked by their local media if they think hypocritical lawbreakers like John Ensign and David Vitter should resign their seats. They should be forced to call for the ouster of these hypocritical, lawbreaking Republicans or be forced to serve as apologists for them and let the voters decide. Though the media around the country largely may be dropping the ball on their responsibility, it appears federal investigators aren't. The national media that gave a relentless week of news coverage to the Eric Massa absurdity still hasn't fully given the Ensign matter (or the Vitter matter) its due. However, the handing down of indictments, should that come to pass, will be national news and should force the issue for every Republican seeking federal office in 2010.
Over the past thirty years, Wall Street has waged a steady war against governments around the globe, convincing policymakers of various ideological stripes that whatever raises profits for bankers and traders will be good for the rest of society. It's a very simple and appealing portrait of how the world works. Unfortunately, it's completely wrong.
Profiting from hunger
In an interview with AlterNet's Terrence McNally, economic luminary Raj Patel explains the connection between widespread global poverty and wild Wall Street profits. Markets are defined by a set of rules-if those rules completely disregard social welfare, then the participants in those markets will ignore them as well. When traders can make a quick buck speculating on the price of rice, they will, even if that speculation drives up the price of a basic necessity and makes people go hungry.
We've known this for a long time, but as Patel illustrates, governments have allowed financial bigwigs to rewrite the basic rules of the road so that Wall Street can extract profits from anything-even hunger. That process created several crises in the developing world over the past few decades, and has now ravaged the economies of the United States and Europe. As Patel notes:
By basically gaming the system with regulations -- that they authored -- which encouraged a certain kind of playing fast and loose with the numbers, it was possible through some creative accounting for huge amounts of systematic risk to be kicked off into the future and ignored. And of course when the catastrophic risk was realized, everyone ran for the hills and started demanding public support.
Financial turmoil in Greece
This political sleight-of-hand is demonstrated by the looming fiscal crisis in Greece. As Richard Parker explains for The Nation, Goldman Sachs colluded with prior Greek administrations to hide the nation's fiscal situation from both its own citizens and investors (Parker is an adviser to current Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou). Goldman was not interested in fair play-it was interested in making money off of the Greek government in any way it could. If that meant actively sabotaging the market by hiding important information, well, Goldman didn't care.
First Greece, then ...
Now that this budget façade has been stripped away, Goldman and other investors are now profiting from making things very difficult for Greece. As Matthew Yglesias explains for The American Prospect, the rational, profit-maximizing choices of investors are now actively helping to drive Greece into a default that hurts everyone:
When Greece starts looking shaky, the interest rate it needs to pay on its deficit goes up, which makes the country look even shakier. This cycle can push a vulnerable country into a default situation.
Various Greek administrations clearly bear significant responsibility for the situation. Nobody forced them to get in bed with Goldman Sachs, just as nobody forced U.S. administrations to gut our financial regulatory system. But the problem in Greece is not just a problem for a single Mediterranean nation-there is very real risk that the investor "unease" could spread to Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Italy, and by extension the European Union and the global economy. The bonuses at Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan Chase this year were not a sign of renewed strength in the global economy.
Community Security Clubs to the rescue
So if Wall Street can't save us, what can? Our communities could play a significant role, as Andrée Collier Zaleska explains for Yes! Magazine. Zaleska profiles Common Security Clubs in Portland, Boston and Fort Lauderdale to show how people hit hard by the economic downturn are banding together to make ends meet, and organizing for political action.
"[Jared] Gardner, a busy organizer in Portland, launched four CSCs in his church, two of which were comprised almost entirely of unemployed people. By the time his own group had met five times, they were planning tours of local co-housing projects, organizing to fight locally for progressive taxation, and wondering how to bring the rest of their church into the time bank they had created."
Markets are supposed to serve human needs, not the other way around. But Wall Street isn't going to give up its stranglehold on the U.S. political process for nothing. While community-driven efforts are a good start, we need much larger actions and reform to restore balance to the global economy.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
I'm not going to pull any punches here. I detest the two party system. I believe that it undermines representative government. It makes our government more responsive to corporations than to citizens. It decreases the chances of progress and it results in many good ideas being shut out of the national political debate.
This piece was written as part of GreenChange Blog Action Day. Learn more here.
Written by Paul J. Poposky
Tuesday, 08 December 2009
One in 31 adult citizens in the U.S. are in prison. The so called "land of the free" locks away more of its citizens than Russia or China - and the problem is getting worse.
The US prisoner population has increased dramatically over the last decades.
A recent report by the Pew Center on the States reveals that in 2007 a record 7.3 million Americans - 1 in every 31 adults - served time in jail, prison, on probation or parole. This according to Justice Department and Census Bureau statistics. The report found that the United States, which has 5 percent of the world population, has 25% of all the world's prison inmates, based on comparative studies. The U.S. - the "land of the free" - locks away far more of its own citizens than Russia and China or any of the tyrannies that the U.S. props up around the world; and the problem is only getting worse!
In 1999, statistics placed the number of Americans incarcerated at 1 in 149. By 2008, the Pew Center reported that the number had skyrocketed to 1 in 100. It should come as no surprise that, in a nation founded on the enslavement of Blacks and the near extermination of the Native population, the prison population is primarily made up of minorities. Since the 1990s, over 50% of those incarcerated have been non-white. Consider that Black men are 4 times as likely as whites to be locked up. One in 3 Black men are in the corrections system when you include those on probation or parole, and 1 in 11 are in jail or prison each year. The rate of incarceration for women also continues to grow, but is outpaced by men of all races at a rate of 5 to 1.
The comparison to slavery doesn't stop there. While some states still field chain-gangs for forced hard-labor, most states have legalized forced prison labor; 37 states to date have made it legal to contract prison labor to private corporations like Boeing, AT&T, Target and Microsoft. Prison laborers routinely make pennies per hour and profits on prison labor have reached into the billions of dollars. Since prisoners have no rights to form a union or struggle for better labor conditions under U.S. law, it is no wonder that companies that once exploited sweat shops in Mexico, China and S.E. Asia are returning to exploit the prison labor available in the U.S. penal system.
Photo of anonymous artwork by Katayun.
When you consider that crime has been on a two-decade long decline, it seems strange that incarceration rates have increased by over 300% in the past 30 years. Not coincidentally, an explosive growth in for-profit prisons and privatization of the prison systems parallels the increase in rate of incarceration. Because a private prison cannot turn a profit unless it is kept full, the prison industrial complex has a vested interest in keeping prisons overcrowded and pressuring lawmakers and judges to increase the rate of convictions and enforce more harsh "mandatory minimum sentences" for minor offenses. Over 70% of U.S. prisoners are locked up for non-violent, drug related offenses, and 79% of the growth in drug-related convictions in the 1990s came from arrests for marijuana possession.
Michael Moore's recent hit documentary Capitalism: A Love Story further exposed the lengths to which privately owned corrections centers will go to guarantee their profits. In Wilkes-Barre, PA, Luzerne County judges Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael Conahan are awaiting trial after admitting to accepting $2.6 million in kickbacks from two privately run detention facilities in exchange for helping secure $30 million in county contracts and wrongly convicting and sentencing hundreds of juveniles to serve time at the facilities. The case has made national headlines as a federal corruption investigation has now expanded to members of local school boards, and a class action law suit has been organized on behalf of the scheme's juvenile victims.
These and many other examples have become typical in an age of the dismantling of the public sector and the social safety net. In the current crisis of capitalism - and for decades before - massive cuts and privatization schemes, the capitalist class' answer to the decreasing rate of profits, have ravaged the "welfare state" and all the concessions won by the American working class through organized struggle in the post-war period of economic growth.
Even as both major political parties pour billions in taxpayer dollars into wars on poor people in foreign lands, and into our domestic prison industrial complex, they are carrying out a slash and burn policy toward funding for public education, health care, public works, job creation, infrastructure, and social investment; the very factors essential to changing the conditions which lead to crime in the first place.
It may seem as though some lawmakers are beginning to soften their "tough on crime" stance. For example, in California, where, in February, a federal judge ordered that the state must reduce the number of inmates in its prisons by 40% to put an end to the violation of prisoners' constitutional rights. However, this has little to do with any "change of heart" and far more to do with the crushing financial burden on the state in keeping these people locked up in the midst of epic budget crises. As America learned in the 1980s under the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, the state turning desperate people out onto the streets does nothing to solve the bigger problems which lead them there to begin with.
To eliminate crime we first have to address the conditions which lead to crime: unemployment, desperation, poverty and despair. We must fight for quality, stimulating jobs at a living wage, free cradle-to-grave education, affordable-quality housing and free, quality health care and access to healthful, nutritious food for all. We must struggle to put an end to the exploitation of labor in the prison system, as well as in the work place.
Ultimately, we must put an end to the greatest crime of all; the appropriation of the wealth created by the working class by the capitalists and their laws, police, troops, political parties, courts and prison system. Of course, only by fighting for and achieving Socialism can we truly put an end to this state of affairs and build a better world for all humanity.
Democrats Use Their Control Of The National Government to Shakedown Businesses And Sell Out The People.
You know how they used to have all those movies about the Mafia, the Mob, the Dons, the Rackets, how they ran criminal enterprises and made money and killed anyone who got in their way.
You know why you don't hear about the mob so much anymore? Because they all put on nice suits and ran for Congress. They do the same things they always did, just in very expensive clothes.
For example, the Shake-Down. This is how it worked. Guido and Carmine would pay a little visit to the enterprising young family man whose entire family had come together and put up the money to open a pizza place in the neighborhood. Sal's Pizza signs were painted on the window, the floors were washed down, and a new business opened its doors. Then Guido and Carmine would stop by and explain how it worked: "We'd hate to see someone burn your place down, Sal, but if you pay us protection money, we'll make sure that doesn't happen. Say 10% of your gross." If Sal pays every week, everything's okay. If Sal doesn't pay, Guido and Carmine will send a friend to burn down Sal's Pizza. It's just that simple.
And that is the business model for the politicians in Washington D.C. The Democrats have perfected the model under the leadership of Bill Clinton who argued that the Democratic Party should take money from corporations and do their bidding, and abandon the working people, the poor, the excluded, the minorities, the unions, the traditional Democratic base. Bill's thinking must have been like this: "The corporations are the ones with all the money. If we want money, we need to go join their side."
I've said all along that the Democrats are just doing shake-downs since they got into office. First they had the big "Credit Card Reform" shakedown. They went out into the public and got the unwashed masses all riled up saying that Congress was going to get tough, they were going to pass some laws to "reform" the credit card industry. Then the Democrats went to the credit card industry, which is really the loan shark industry except the people wear more expensive suits. And instead of busting your kneecaps, they take the food off your kids' plates.
But the Democrats went to the credit card loansharks and said Look, either you pay us off bigtime or we will pass some laws to "reform" your loansharking industry. Thus the fix was in, the deal was made, the people betrayed. And instead of "reforming" the credit card and loansharking industry, in the only significant way needed, which is to limit the amount of interest they can charge, the Democrats made some meaningless administrative changes that will help no one. From now on, the loansharks have to send you a letter before they come over to your house to bust your face in. "Notice" is what you get. Thanks for nothing.
This whole "health care reform" craziness we've been hearing about for months now? Wash, rinse, repeat. It's the same deal as the credit card reform. Even worse, actually. The Democrats met secretly with the major corporations in the medical care industry: doctors' lobbies, health insurance industries, hospital owners, pharmaceutical companies (aka drug dealers) and cut a deal with them within 2 months of taking control of the national government. It was a shake-down.
The Democrats held a series of secret meetings with the health care corporate industry and cut deals with them starting in April of this year, set up phony organizations, got money to fund them, all to promote a health care "reform" written by the corporations which will get them Billions of dollars more every year, and which will get nothing for the citizens. There will be no healthcare reform to help the people of this country. Instead, the Democrats promised they would compel, by order of law, 40 million more people to buy health insurance. Do you know how much money that is? Say $5,000 per person per year. That's Two Hundred Billion Dollars that the Democrats promised to deliver to the healthcare corporations. Say the health insurance industry takes 30% off the top (which they do), that's Seventy Billion Dollars to them, with an additional One Hundred Thirty Billion Dollars to be paid out to the doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical drug dealers. What a con. For the citizens, we get nothing.
You know what else the Democrats promised the health insurance industry? First, the Democrats will pass a law forcing all Americans to buy private health insurance, even if they can't afford it, and even if the coverage they get is worthless. But next, the Democrats also promised the health insurance industry that there would be no limits to the amount they could charge citizens for premiums every month. In other words, if the insurance company decides to charge you $10,000 per month as a premium, that's perfectly okay with the Democrats. After all, they get bribes and kick-backs from the insurance companies, so it's in their best interest to help their corporate friends loot the American public.
Who do you think came up with this brilliant idea of the secret meetings? Secret organizations set up between the White House and the health insurance industry and given phony misleading names like "Citizens for Healthcare Reform," to fool and deceive the public? The first ShakeDown meeting was in April, maybe two months after the Democrats took control of the government. They clearly had this in mind. But who? Rahm Emanuel is my guess, because he opposed healthcare reform all along, he wants to stay on the good (receiving end) side of corporate America because he plans to run for Senate, then the White House, and because the guy from the White House who attended all the planning meetings, got this whole thing going, was Jim Messina, who works directly for Rahm Emanuel.
By the way, I don't see the benefit of spending too much time berating Obama. He's Faust. He sold his soul to get the top spot, but he's had no effect whatsoever on changing anything. The people who run the Democratic party are the ones who bring in the most bribes from the corporations. That's it. End of story.
I mostly blame Congress, but hold Obama equally accountable because he's going along for personal self-aggrandizement: he wants to be reelected, he wants to claim that he got "credit card reform" and "health care reform," that he "won" the wars. I assume that when he leaves office, he wants the corporations to give him hundreds of millions of dollars, just like Bill Clinton got. His vanity and ambition seems to guide his every move. Any commitment to the public that ever did exist is no longer apparent.
The effect of the 2008 election is clear: Instead of having the Capone Family terrorize and exploit the public, we've now got the Gambino Family in charge. For your average working person, there is no change: a bunch of criminals stealing, lying, cheating, bribing law enforcement, making our lives miserable.
P.S.: the article below refers to Jim Messina from the White House being involved in these meetings. Messina works under the direction of Rahm Emanuel. Rahm Emanuel, when he was still in Congress, was known as Wall Street's favorite politician because he took more Wall Street money than anybody else. He is rumored to be planning to run for Senate from Illinois in 2012, and likely wants to run for President in 2016, and will want to have control of the big corporate money for his campaign: Wall Street (who he has protected by making sure the Obama administration gives them lots of money and does nothing to hold them accountable). And now he surely is going after the money from the medical corporations by opposing health care reform.
Emanuel already has a lock on the defense money because he supports war, loves wars, wants more war. He volunteered to work with the Israeli military during the first Gulf War but oddly chose to never serve in the U.S. military. Rahm Emanuel, chosen by Obama, is a corporate Clintonista pro-war Democrat in Name Only. As soon as Obama brought him into the White House, we should have known it was already game over. Actually, that and the decision to bring in Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, Tim Geithner, Larry Sumners -- actually almost every person selected by Obama to serve with him in the White House is a pro-war pro-Wall Street money-grubbing corporate sell-out. We expect change from this gang of thieves?
"At a meeting last April with corporate lobbyists, aides to President Barack Obama and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) helped set in motion a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign, primarily financed by industry groups, that has played a key role in bolstering public support for health care reform."
"The role Baucus's chief of staff, Jon Selib, and deputy White House chief of staff Jim Messina played in launching the groups was part of a successful effort by Democrats to enlist traditional enemies of health care reform to their side. No quid pro quo was involved, they insist, as do the lobbyists themselves."
[NOTE: THIS STATEMENT, "NO QUID PRO QUO" IS REALLY PART OF THE COVER-UP. THE LAWS WHICH CONGRESS WRITES TO GOVERN THEMSELVES SAY THAT THE POLITICIANS CAN TAKE MONEY OR SOLICIT MONEY FROM ANYONE AS LONG AS THERE WAS NO "QUID PRO QUO" INVOLVED IN THE DONATION. WHAT THAT MEANS IS THAT THE POLITICIANS DON'T SAY OUTRIGHT "GIVE ME MONEY AND I'LL VOTE TO GIVE YOU TAXPAYER MONEY, OR PASS WHATEVER LAWS YOU WANT." INSTEAD, THEY ALWAYS PRETEND THAT THESE TWO THINGS ARE SEPARATE: THE POLITICIAN SAYS I WILL VOTE AS THE CORPORATION INSTRUCTS; AND THE CORPORATIONS SAYS WELL, JUST COINCIDENTALLY, WE WILL GIVE YOU HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS FOR THE DEMOCRATIC OR REPUBLICAN PARTY, BECAUSE BOTH PARTIES OPERATE THE SAME WAY].
"The result has been a somewhat unlikely alliance between an administration that came into power criticizing George W. Bush for his closeness to Big Business and groups such as the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and the American Medical Association."
"The previously undisclosed meeting April 15 at the offices of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee led to the creation of two groups - Americans for Stable Quality Care and a now-defunct predecessor group called Healthy Economy Now - that have spent tens of millions of dollars on TV advertising supporting health reform efforts."
[NOTE: THE MEETING WAS HELD AT THE DEMOCRATIC SENATORIAL CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE OFFICES. YOU KNOW WHAT THAT IS? THAT IS THE GROUP THAT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR RAISING MONEY FOR DEMOCRATS IN THE SENATE IN CONGRESS. I WONDER IF THE DEMOCRATS TOLD THE CORPORATE LOBBYISTS TO JUST BRING WHEELBARROWS FULL OF CASH. IT'S THAT BLATANT WHAT'S GOING ON.]
"In the most recent ad sponsored by Americans for Stable Quality Care, Obama speaks directly into the camera for 60 seconds, extolling the virtues of health care reform, while text at the bottom of the screen encourages viewers to visit the websites of the White House and the Finance Committee, which this week approved a 10-year, $829 billion health overhaul."
[OBAMA IS AN ON-CAMERA SPOKESPERSON FOR THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY, BUT THE WHOLE THING IS BEING COVERED UP BY CREATING THIS PHONY GROUP THAT IS SUPPOSEDLY "SUPPORTING" HEALTHCARE "REFORM," WHICH IS REALLY JUST A GIVEAWAY OF TAXPAYER MONEY. THE FUNNY THING IS THAT OBAMA WOULD PROBABLY NEVER HAVE GOTTEN THE GIG IF ED MCMAHON HADN'T DIED. I THOUGHT HE HAD A LOCK ON THE COMMERCIALS SELLING CRAP TO THE PUBLIC.]
... "Days after the meeting, Healthy Economy Now's website address was registered, and meeting attendees began receiving unsolicited calls asking for cash for the coalition from Baldick, whose firm - Hilltop Public Solutions - had been hired to run Healthy Economy Now. In addition to PhRMA and the American Medical Association, the strange-bedfellows coalition included AARP, the American Cancer Society, the Business Roundtable, the advocacy group Families USA and the Service Employees International Union, as well as trade groups for biotech and medical device firms." [AARP IS AN INSURANCE SALES GROUP THAT FRONTS AS A PRO-SENIOR GROUP. THE FACT THAT THE SEIU WAS INVOLVED IS UNFORTUNATELY NO LONGER A SURPRISE, SINCE THAT UNION SEEMS TO ALWAYS BE ON THE SIDE OF THE CORPORATE RULERS, NEVER ON THE SIDE OF THE PEOPLE].
[THE ARTICLE ALSO SAYS THAT PHRMA, THE LOBBYING GROUP FOR THE PHARMACEUTICAL/DRUG DEALERS, AGREED TO GIVE A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF MONEY IN EXCHANGE FOR THE DEMOCRATS AGREEING THEY WOULD NOT TRY TO FORCE THE DRUG COMPANIES TO LOWER THE PRICE THAT THEY CHARGE AMERICANS FOR THEIR DRUGS. WHAT A DISGUSTING DISCLOSURE].
"Allison [someone speaking on ethical issues] said that ... "What you've had was the Senate and the White House sitting down and cutting deals with special interests," he said. "I don't think that's quite what the American people signed up for when the Obama campaign said that they were going to limit the influence of special interests in this White House."
[THE COMMERCIALS FOR THESE PHONY GROUPS WERE CREATED BY]"AKPD Message and Media, which was founded by White House senior adviser David Axelrod, still owes him $2 million and employs one of his sons - and GMMB."
So we are now finding out the answers to some of our questions about which members of Congress actually represent We, the People...and which ones represent, Them, the Corporate Masters.
We have seen a Democratic Senator propose a policy that would put people in jail for not buying health insurance and a Democratic President who has taken numerous public beatings from those on the left side of the fence for his inability to ram something through a group of people...and yes, folks, the entendre was intentional.
But most of all, we've been asking ourselves: "why would Democratic Members of Congress who will eventually want us to vote for them vote against something that nearly all voting Democrats are inclined to vote for?"
Today's conversation attempts to answer that question by looking at exactly how money and influence flow through a key politician, Montana's Senator Max Baucus-and in doing so, we examine some ugly political realities that have to be resolved before we can hope to convince certain Members of Congress to vote for what their constituents actually want when it really counts.
The battle for Health Care is already over. It was over the minute the Democrats took single payer off the table. Now it's just a tug of war between the lobbyists and the legislators to see how fake this fake reform will really be.
Did anyone really think that a political system as corrupt as ours could possibly produce anything but a corrupted product? Does anyone really believe another Obama speech is going to alter this fact?
Sometimes miracles do happen. So I've kept my mouth shut as this calamity has played out. But I accurately predicted all the way back in the campaign that a health care reform effort would, at best fail epically, and at worst actually make matters worse.
How did I know this? Am I an oracle from the netherworld? No. I predicted it because I am not insane. And by insane I mean doing the same thing over and over and over again while each time expecting different results. I mean WTF did people expect?
Progressives need to focus on one single issue for the rest of their lives if necessary: banning campaign contributions and other means to bribe politicians.
This is separate from campaign finance reform. There are a thousand ways we could finance elections. I'm sure we could come up with a few hundred that would be just, equitable and of benefit to the functioning of democracy.
The real issue is not how we finance elections. It is how we do not. We need a constitutional amendment to prohibit ever giving a penny to a public servant or candidate for office. It's that simple.
This would be the second American Revolution and this country will continue to fail until it occurs. It will fail on health care reform, it will fail on climate change. It will fail on everything, just as it is failing now.
Removing the money from politics won't solve all our problems. But it will at least eliminate the primary impediment that prevents us from solving those problems.
Imagine politicians elected on the merit of their ideas instead of their ability to raise cash. George Bush would have never been governor, much less president.
Some day, historians will look back on this era as an absurdity - the way we look back on the days when monarchs enslaved the people or when we enslaved Africans.
Why wait?
Every other issue liberals and progressives care about, with the partial exception of civil rights, has one single source: the corruption of money. And yet we continue to attempt change without addressing this issue.
NOTHING WILL CHANGE until we get the money out of politics. There is no other issue that compares in importance. Not even close.
At Netroots Nation last week, I saw a lot of friends of mine from various progressive circles, and one conversation-starter many of them ask me was "what's going on for you besides health care?" To which I talk about The Progressive Revolution (I manage the press, website and book tour) some other work I'm doing at Progressive Strategies, my boyfriend, etc. Lots of my friends ask what I think about Creigh Deeds' race, to which I kind of give them a funny stare. I think they're wondering because here in DC, I'm 10 minutes from Virginia. But in terms of a major race that I actually care about, it's not VA-Gov, where a conservative Democrat is running. It's NJ-Gov.
So I tell them that I'm concerned about Corzine, that he's way down in the polls, and why I think it's important to re-elect the only other major gubernatorial candidate I can think of in recent years- aside from Eliot Spitzer, my home-state governor, and Deval Patrick- who speaks on the stump about the importance of marriage equality and pledging to sign a bill. Oh, and Spitzer was doing it while he was on his way to winning with 69% of the vote, and Patrick on his way to an easy victory as well.
1) "Ehh, he'll be fine, Democrats always close late in New Jersey. Look at Menendez vs. Kean Jr. in 2006. New Jersey folks flirt with Republicans but always come back to the Democrat."
2) "Ehh, he'll be fine, he'll just dump another $60 million into the race and swamp Christie on TV."
More on why those two assumptions are wrong- and an announcement- in the extended entry.
The Democrats Have Received Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars In Bribes To Make Sure They Will Not Pass A Law To Provide Americans With Health Care.
It's suddenly become popular to speculate about what on earth is going on with the Democrats. Why haven't they just written and passed a law to provide all Americans with healthcare. Something simple such as Medicare for All, for example. Anyone who wants to can buy into Medicare, with premiums presumably much lower than what private insurance charges. Also sliding scale or subsidized for low-income people. Anybody who wants private insurance is free to keep it. Why not do what is most obvious, simplest to do, and would solve the problem?
We hear silly speculation while people ignore the obvious. For example, I've heard that the Democrats "have no stomach" for confrontation with the Republicans. Someone has suggested that the Democrats are just too nice, they don't want to pass a law unless their Republican friends will support it. Another theory is that the bedrock of Obama's presidency is a desire for bipartisanship -- a belief that unless the Republicans support a policy, he won't sign the bill. I've also heard that the Democrats have "lost their way," the poor dears, have suffered a "failure of will," or simply "do not have the spine" to stand up to the Republicans. I've now begun hearing that the Republicans have "won" on this issue. Really? How is it possible that the Republicans can win anything when they've only got 21% of the country supporting them?
I actually got an e-mail yesterday from Barbara Boxer's son, who is apparently involved in politics, and is trying to raise money for some Democratic candidates who want to run for office in 2010. He had the nerve to start his e-mail solicitation by explaining to me that the Democrats currently have a razor-thin majority in Congress, a slim advantage, and we must send more money to the Democrats so they can win more seats. And then, when they've got 80%, or maybe 90% control, then maybe they'll actually do something to help the people. My response, too vulgar to be repeated here, was that I would not send one penny to any Democrats, and am seriously thinking about campaigning to throw them all out of office. It's like the rich people on Wall Street whining that their bonuses aren't as big this year. These people just don't understand how bad it is out here in the real world.
But anyway, I have no time for such speculation, nor am I inclined to participate in such nonsense.
The Democrats never intended to pass a program to provide healthcare for the citizens. It was just a slogan for them. Under Clinton, the Democrats abandoned the working people and became the party of the corporation. Corporations give them money, and the Democrats do whatever the corporations tell them to do. The Democratic Party is a criminal enterprise and we're the victims. Their motto should be "Show Me The Money."
Go ahead -- complain to somebody. It's like the cops are coming into your little corner business and shaking you down every week for money. What're you going to do? Call a cop? We're in the same position. The Democrats are involved in a criminal enterprise, looting the treasury, robbing us blind, selling their votes, betraying the constitution and their oath of office, hiring consultants at millions of dollars to prepare slick campaigns to fool us into thinking they really like us.
Have you ever known teenagers who truly believe that some teen heartthrob "likes" them. They can tell because when they saw the heartthrob, it seemed like he was looking right at them? Harmless fantasy. But our whole society is infected with it, well past the teen years, it has passed from amusing distraction to psychotic delusions. If you think that anyone in the Democratic party "really" cares about you or your life, or your credit card bills that you can't pay down, or your old refrigerator that is making such weird noises but which you cannot afford to replace, about the aching tooth that you can't get fixed, about the soft tires that may kill you on your commute, about your aching back and insomnia and grinding despair because you cannot dig out of this hole -- if you think the Democrats, or even one of them, cares at all about you or your problems, you are delusional.
The criminal enterprise works like this. First, No-Change Obama held secret (they called them "private") meetings with the big-money boys in the Medical Industry. First he met with the health insurance big-boys in a secret meeting. What was discussed? Is it possible, dare I be so cynical as to suggest that they negotiated a shake-down, a pay-off. The insurers agree to give a certain amount of money to the Democratic politicians if the politicians promise they will not even consider single-payer, Medicare for all, or anything that will cut into the profits of the insurance industry. Is that what was discussed? If not, why was the meeting secret?
Next, No-Hope Obama held secret (they called them "private") meetings with the Drug Dealers of America, who call themselves the Pharmaceutical Industry. Another shake-down and sell out. I believe there were also meetings with God -- the AMA, the representative of all the doctors in this country who think they are God because they have succeeded, through propaganda, in convincing the public that they are God, and they need to steal millions every year from every community in this country while providing routine, uninspired services to the local population, and bribing politicians to pass laws so they can't be sued for their too-frequent malpractice.
The Democrats refuse to pass any law to provide healthcare for Americans because they have taken so much money in bribes from the Medical Industry, and have been promised millions more in the future. The Democrats are corrupt. They are criminals. They are running a criminal enterprise, deceiving and selling out the public while they make themselves rich. So sad, but ultimately true.
We can't afford to buy the Democrats' loyalty because we're not as rich as the corporations. The only way we can get anything out of our government would be massive civil disobedience -- massive work shut-downs, a general strike, a confrontation between millions of our citizens and the bureaucrats who are selling us out. There is no other way.
(From the Center for Responsive Politics):
The group of people known as "Health Professionals" give more money to politicians, as a group, than all but four other categories. Health Professionals include doctors, dentists, pharmacists, nurses, everyone providing health-care services as well as their "profesional" associations. What do they want? More Money. That's why they keep paying so much in bribes to our politicians. They want to be paid more from Medicare. They want the government to pay them more for everything they do.
They want laws passed making it impossible for any victim to sue any doctor or healthcare professional for malpractice, even if they cut off the wrong leg, even if they kill somebody, even if they were drunk at the time they provided the services. And most important of all, they want to prevent the government from setting up a program that would provide healthcare for all Americans, subject to a compensation scheme established by the government. These people paid $82 million to politicians during 2008. What did they get for their money? We're seeing the results right now: no healthcare program to help the citizens of this country.
http://www.opensecrets.org/ind...
But that's not all. The insurance industry paid $47 million to the politicians in 2008. What is it they wanted in return for that money? Well, just to start, they don't want a single-payer healthcare system which would put them out of business. They don't want a public option which would allow Americans to opt out of the private insurance field. And guess what? For $47 million, it appears that they were successful in bribing the politicians to do exactly what they want. http://www.opensecrets.org/ind...
But that's not all. This is like one of those game shows where they keep telling the winner about more and more prizes that they've won. That's not all. In addition to all the bribes paid to our politicians as described above, they also got a whole bunch of money from the Drug Dealers of America aka the pharmaceutical companies. You know. The ones that keep telling us that they're going to cure cancer, but instead we keep seeing commercials on TV with supermodels pushing drugs that will make our eyelashes thicker. They kicked in an additional $30 million in bribes to the politicians in 2008 to make sure that nobody passes a law to require discounted prices on any drugs sold to Americans. Or maybe, better put, would be to say that Congress could pass a law saying the Drug Dealers can no longer charge Americans three times, or ten times what they charge people in other countries. http://www.opensecrets.org/ind...
I hope the progressives voices in the media stop all this silly speculation about what might explain the refusal of the Democrats to do what is right, obvious, apparent, and most cost-efficient: let everyone buy into Medicare.
The reason the Democrats won't do it is because they have negotiated shake-downs with the big-boys from the medical industry, they have taken bribes and arranged for future bribes of hundreds of millions of dollars, and they don't care that Americans cannot afford healthcare and so end up living in pain and misery, suffering, and dieing young.
Why is it the Republicans keep showing up at public meetings, often brandishing weapons to suggest they will violently overthrow the government if some of us are allowed to buy into Medicare? How did this get so crazy so fast? Why aren't these people being arrested and who is encouraging Americans to bring guns out in public to terrorize their neighbors? All of this is happening because the Democrats have allowed it to happen, I suspect they even want it to happen, so they can now go back to the public in September and say "Well, we tried to pass healthcare reform, but the Republicans wouldn't let us.
I've got a better idea. Let's just have a general strike. The Democrats keep ignoring us. I don't have enough money to bribe them, but I'm sure willing to go sit down somewhere, in a road or an office or in front of a building, and see if I can get their attention that way.
Amid all the health care reform goings-on in the last few weeks, it has been fun to take a break from that and watch the walls (hopefully) closing in on Karl Rove. Today it's reported in all the major outlets that he was much more deeply involved in the U.S. Attorneys' firings than he said he was, and even Harriet Miers is pointing fingers at him. Whether or not this means Fitzmas or something close to it again, I am unsure, but he may finally be getting what's coming to him, even if it takes many more months.
The more immediate impact is on the NJ-Gov race, where progressive governor Jon Corzine has been trailing Chris Christie recently. There hasn't been much discussion at OpenLeft about the race, but Chris Christie is this supposedly apolitical U.S. Attorney who engineered prosecutions and convictions of many high-profile NJ politicians, Dems and Republicans alike. Well, as Sam Stein reports today, he wasn't really all that apolitical. Rove has been advising Christie on making connections to start his run at the governor's mansion.
In an on-the-record interview with the House Judiciary Committee on July 7, 2009, the former Bush strategist acknowledged that he had held several conversations with current GOP candidate Chris Christie over the course of several years regarding the possibility of running for the governor's chair.
Christie, Rove said, was interested in mounting a bid and "asked me questions about who -- who were good people that knew about running for governor that he could talk to."
This damning news sure as hell raises a lot of Nixonian questions about Christie (per the Corzine camp's ad), including how his gubernatorial strategy was linked to who he decided to prosecute. If even Harriet Miers says Rove called New Mexico Attorney David Iglesias a "serious problem" and that he wanted "something done" about it, what direction did Rove give Christie on who should have been prosecuted in NJ?
How much of what we see on TV, hear on the radio and read in newspapers or online as "conservative" or "centrist" opinion is actually paid for by corporate interests? In fact, how much of what we think of as "conservatism" itself is actually just paid corporate PR?
The American Conservative Union asked FedEx for a check for $2 million to $3 million in return for the group's endorsement in a bitter legislative dispute, then flipped and sided with UPS after FedEx refused to pay.
For the $2 million plus, ACU offered a range of services that included: "Producing op-eds and articles written by ACU's Chairman David Keene and/or other members of the ACU's board of directors. (Note that Mr. Keene writes a weekly column that appears in The Hill.)"
This follows the story the other day about the Washington Post and then reports of other media outlets selling "access" to lobbyists.
I have followed this stuff for some time, and I venture to say that most -- not all but most -- of what I see coming out of the so-called "conservative movement" appears to have been little more than corporate pay-for-play for many years.
I started thinking about this back when the "conservative" position was pro-logging. Remember how they mocked the spotted owl? (The spotted owl is an "indicator species," or a shorthand way to judge the health of an entire ecosystem.) I wondered why the logging industry was a cause for conservatives, but not the fishing industry, which was greatly harmed by the logging practices advocated by conservatives. The answer turned out to be that a guy who ran a corporation that had made a ton of money looting S&Ls (how come no one remembers the S&L Crisis?) had bought a lumber company and was destroying all the old-growth redwoods was hookedinto (i.e. paying) the conservative movement. (Please read the links and follow the links there!) And so the "conservative" opinion became that logging old-growth forests was a good thing. Cash payment was the reason for this core pillar of conservative ideology. (The whole thing ended up paying off even more handsomely, probably thanks to more conservative movement backscratching.)
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