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I would normally be crowd surfing or moshing right now.. But Hurricane Bill shut down Firefly cold… So I’m doing this because sleep is out of the question…. I’m calling tonight….. Fireflop…..
But sometimes great events happen because outside influences jump up and change ones direction. That sort of happened today as I stumbled on a link I rarely have perused….
One percent of One percent gave 29% of all fundraising for the off election of 2014…… This is the cataclysmic failure of Citizens United, which said undisclosed cash was the same as spouting off the mouth: free speech and no limits could be applied…
Which is purely ridiculous…
Because if I say…. you’re crazy and you say to me… no, your crazy… we have some sort of balance or equality… But if you say you’re crazy $1.18 billion times more than I do…. then saying the two are equal is like saying a glass of water and Lake Superior are both equal, because they are both made up of water…
Which is purely ridiculous….
Who are these people?
Just 3…. of them, gave over $10 million. 57 more, gave over $1 million…. which puts us up to $87 million of the $1180 millions that made up 29% of all money spent. The other 31,916 donors, or one percent of one percent of the population, averaged out $34,250 apiece to the candidates of their choice…..
They’re mostly male, tend to be city-dwellers and often work in finance. Slightly more of them skew Republican than Democratic. The last election cycle set records as the most expensive midterms in U.S. history, and the country’s most prolific donors accounted for a larger portion of the total amount raised than in either of the past two elections. The 29 percent disclosed to the Federal Election Commission in 2014 is a greater share of the total than in 2012 (25 percent) or in 2010 (21 percent)….
These deep pocketed donors were increasingly playing the role of “political gatekeepers.” Candidates needed their backing — and cash — as did the parties and super PACs that depended on the support of the politically active elite. So unless one receives their select approval… one is doomed from the start…..
What this means… is everyone we elect, must do the bidding of this small group of people if they wish to continue in office… Now it does not take a rocket scientist or political genus to figure out that in the battle between the wealthy and the middle class, whose side these donors will be on……
Which should make it clear why everyone you know and talk to, thinks our representatives are crazy for voting the opposite of how we think they should vote… “What’s wrong with him?” we mutter.
Well, nothing is wrong with him, except for the fact that he wants to get re-elected…. and he therefore has to vote the way his benefactors want him to vote, even if it goes against the majority of his constituency’s wishes…. Because he knows their is a good chance you will forgive him and vote for him again, and again, and again, because that is what you have always done… But piss someone off who gave you $1 million? You know that $1 million is going into the campaign fund of someone who will run against you… and you can’t match it….
So Citizens United has destroyed democracy and free speech; not risen up to save it…
Which is why, if we wish democracy to continue to be our form of government…. we need to seriously get behind the Constitutional Amendment to overturn Citizens United, and regulate how much wealthy people can spend to control our government…..
In the now classic words of Mitt Romney…..it is obvious that “you don’t matter”.
Recently a study showing the damage the Bush Tax cuts did, emerged… It was offered to all major publications who refused to publish it. Hence is emerged through what has become one of the best news sources in America today… Al Jeezerah…
The author won a Pulitzer Prize in 2001… David Cay Johnston
The Bush tax cuts, touted as a harbinger of prosperity by the Republican Party, actually robbed each American taxpayer of $48,000 in pre-tax personal income during the twelve years of their existence, for a total of approximately $6.6 trillion dollars.
In other words, you do not have $48,000 you should have had… because of that party that does nothing… How much of a difference could that $48,000 have made to you? It would have been there too, but… sigh, well, you know, you can’t go back in time and give Al Gore the presidency….
“it would have been enough to pay off all the student loans in United States ($1.26 trillion), all the automobile loans ($892 billion) and all the credit card debt ($827 billion),” he noted. “After paying all that debt off and taking taxes into account, Americans still would have more than $2.4 trillion left in their pockets and bank accounts.” Per filer, that $2.4 trillion left would be a cool $17,454 dollars…!
What you CAN do is understand that as long as Republicans have enough people to block legislation anywhere, state, local, national, from changing this… It will continue. Republicans still, at this late date, only care about the top 1%…..(For example after fighting tooth and nail to keep $10 billion that was paid for from being used on our broken down bridges, the Republican House flipped and just passed a bill to add $267 billion dollars to the national debt in the form of a tax cut for the top 0.01% of taxpayers…. ) A $267 billion dollar tax cut for the elite of the top 1%, charged directly to the debt… Meaning your children for years will be paying back this debt for no other reason than make them even richer than they are now… But we can’t have our $10 billion to fix America’s worst bridges because that is too much debt…
These same people, Who, btw… received one whole third of all the accumulative wage increases from 2001 to 2012… a total of under 16,000 households…. roughly 16 city blocks in one city, somewhere in the entire expanse of America….
The rich got richer; the poor get poorer, and the Republicans get kookier…. So are you going to do something about it?
You can. Let everyone know you aren’t voting for anyone who still says we need to cut taxes… because it is your money they are taking.
Oh, can I borrow some of the $48,000, please?
What? You don’t have it?
kavips 