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Political Armageddon
Author: velveeta jones    Date: 01/24/2010 14:22:54

In case you missed this little tidbit: The Supreme Court recently handed control of our government, the one that is "by the people, for the people" to Walmart, Google, Haliburton, Bank of America, and quite possibly, The Bin Laden Company.

Not that this hasn't been happening previously - the corporations just had to do it in the form of PACs - and with a bit of red tape, now of course, the doors are open and they can freely give, or BUY, to their little hearts content. Exxon-Mobil may one day have their own President of the United States. Won't that be lovely? Drill baby Drill.


A recent blog by Greg Palest sums it up best:

But under today's Supreme Court ruling that corporations can support candidates without limit, there is nothing that stops, say, a Delaware-incorporated handmaiden of the Burmese junta from picking a Congressman or two with a cache of loot masked by a corporate alias.

Candidate Barack Obama was one sharp speaker, but he would not have been heard, and certainly would not have won, without the astonishing outpouring of donations from two million Americans. It was an unprecedented uprising-by-PayPal, overwhelming the old fat-cat sources of funding.

Well, kiss that small-donor revolution goodbye. Under the Court's new rules, progressive list serves won't stand a chance against the resources of new "citizens" such as CNOOC, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation. Maybe UBS (United Bank of Switzerland), which faces U.S. criminal prosecution and a billion-dollar fine for fraud, might be tempted to invest in a few Senate seats. As would XYZ Corporation, whose owners remain hidden by "street names."


My biggest worry is that corporations that take government funding will find their pot-o-gold. A company that makes war machinery will be hankering for a never ending war to keep their board of directors fat and happy.

This decision must be overturned. NOW.

We seen hints from the past of what can happen as Greg explains:

The potential for foreign infiltration of what remains of our democracy is an adjunct of the fact that the source and control money from corporate treasuries (unlike registered PACs), is necessarily hidden. Who the heck are the real stockholders? Or as Butch asked Sundance, "Who are these guys?"
We'll never know.

Hidden money funding, whether foreign or domestic, is the new venom that the Court has injected into the system by its expansive decision in Citizens United.

We've been there. The 1994 election brought Newt Gingrich to power in a GOP takeover of the Congress funded by a very strange source.

Congressional investigators found that in crucial swing races, Democrats had fallen victim to a flood of last-minute attack ads funded by a group called, "Coalition for Our Children's Future." The $25 million that paid for those ads came, not from concerned parents, but from a corporation called "Triad Inc."

Evidence suggests Triad Inc. was the front for the ultra-right-wing billionaire Koch Brothers and their private petroleum company, Koch Industries. Had the corporate connection been proven, the Kochs and their corporation could have faced indictment under federal election law. As of today, such money-poisoned politicking has become legit.

 

5 comments (Latest Comment: 01/26/2010 21:39:13 by Raine)
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