Gleaning Facebook: Money In Politics

And those gifts were a mere pittance to each of those 132 givers. For contributions that, relative to their wealth, are negligible to the plutocrats, they are purchasing (really stealing) our government from us. I have not figured it out this time around, but in 2012 this old school teacher donated much, much more in percentage of wealth to candidates than Sheldon Adelman or the Koch Brothers, or Soros or Blumberg.

With the forgotten change they can figuratively dig from under the sofa cushions they can fund the lying direct mail and TV ads that gin up angry votes for Tea Party extremists who, in Congress, keep minimum wage low, deplete our national resources, warm our climate, and block many reforms that have massive public support in our supposed republic. As was recognized by Roosevelt and Taft a hundred years ago, we must reduce the influence of great wealth in our public affairs.

If it takes a Constitutional amendment we must rid our nation of the obscene Citizens United ruling. And each of us must read more than the simplistic hit-pieces and hear more than the lying TV campaign ads or listen to the talk radio/24 hour "news" folk whose living depends on inflaming us.

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Comments

Howard Smith This President has done more to restore America's economic well being than any President since FDR. Those on the right that continue to berate his performance are in denial. Whether its based on party or race or misinformation, they fail to accept the fact that pulling us out of the Great Recession of his predecessor GW Bush is second only to FDR lifting us from the Great Depression. And, one glaring difference is obvious...FDR was able to garner bipartisan support for his policies. President Obama has faced an opposition party that has publicly declared its intent to obstruct him for political gain.
Michael J. Burton Why the disconnect?
Raymond Atkins Seriously, Mike?
Joe Kidd My God, did McDonald's really hire over 200,000 burger flippers??
Laurie Craw I'll flip burgers when the minimum wage gets hiked to at least $10.10. The State of Georgia pays a LOT of its employees LESS than that!

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Comment

Laurie Craw

We need a similar poster for women. This is an pivotal election for women's rights, women's health and economic well-being. While no woman's suffrage leader that I know of was martyred, many spent time in prison, on hunger strikes and endured humiliation and assaults. My own grandmothers for most of their lives did not have the right to vote. My mother was 11 years old when the right was finally secured. Like the anti-slavery and civil rights movements, the women's movement was a long hard struggle and it continues. Let all the women you know who might not vote know that their rights rest on the struggles and sacrifices of many women who went before.

Gleaning Facebook: Money in Politics (and more)

The party label is not all, but it is important.

If you love….

• gridlock,

• potholes,

• crumbling public schools,

• closed state parks,

• government shutdowns,

• meaningless saber-rattling,

• continued concentration of wealth in the bank accounts of the 1%,

• tying the hands of law enforcement in the fight against gun violence, and

• more Supreme Court decisions like Citizens United,

… then vote for the Tea Party Republicans

As for me, I'll vote for…

• liberty

• compromise

• good public schools

• great state parks open to the people who own them

• an open government

• tough diplomacy

• policies that promote the general welfare

• sensible gun policies that protect gun rights and the people, and

• overturning Citizens United and McCutcheon

… I'll vote Democratic.

Laurie Craw Eloquent as always, TS.

Jane Jameson Neither side accomplished anything, so having lofty ideals are unproven!

James Grant I would vote democratic but I think we need a third party as the two we have now are both corrupt and are are beholding to big business and big $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Michael J. Burton Seems a lot of Americans have a misbegotten notion that someday they will be billionaires. Duped again.

Terrell Shaw Billy, in a perfect world. But we have a two party system. There is no doubt that in 2000 the majority of the people preferred Al Gore to George W. Bush. But because some thought there needed to be someone who compromised less with the right, a significant number on the left voted for third party candidates like the very improbable Ralph Nader. So instead of an imperfect Al Gore, they got the shallow George W. Bush who embroiled us in two wars, cutting taxes while we were at war, appointing two extreme economic conservatives to the Supreme Court, and ignoring the environment, civil rights, and terror warnings. Al Gore might have infuriated the far left, but there'd be no Citizens United or McCutcheon atrocities, or abandonment of voter rights by the Supreme Court. The attacks of 2001 might have happened anyway, of course, but we'd have had a better chance of catching them with a President who respected the anti-terror effort that was in place. The extreme tax cuts would not have happened, and the Great Recession would not have happened IMO, but if it did, stronger measures would have been taken to overcome it, etc., etc., etc. In the real world, support the mavericks all you want up till the general election, but in the general, vote Democratic or you are, in effect, voting Tea Party.

Raymond Atkins What amazes me more than anything is how many "just folks" in the economic sense see their interests as being better served by the party of plenty (the Republican Party), when in fact the politicians aligned with that party enact legislation that harms regular people over and over again.

June Lovenbury Warfield Raymond, there are many people (on both sides) who base their decision on where the candidate stands on abortion and same sex marriage. The tea party side seems to want less government control in financial affairs and more government control in bedrooms. The democratic side seems to want more government control with things like contribution limitations (i.e., financial affairs) and less government control in bedrooms. Two quadrants are missing (more government in both financial and bedroom issues/less government in both financial and bedroom issues). IMHO

Raymond Atkins I think hot button issues such as abortion and same-sex couples are just that: hot button issues that are used as smoke screens. "Look over here while I vilify same sex marriages and don't look over there while I rob you blind."

James Grant Terrell I usually do vote Democratic because of what you stated However my hope is that people will see that the two parties are just the right and left of one party that owes its existence to maintaining the status quo. A system that maintains the influence of corporations and the ultra wealthy over the government that is now in all accords a “oligarchy'' a government of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%. What we need to do is get money out of the election system and stop treating corporations as if they have the same rights as people. Sen. Bernie Sanders has proposed a constitutional amendment to restore the power of Congress and state lawmakers to limit campaign donations. I would also say that third parties have had a major influence on U.S. policy and political debate. The Socialists popularized the women’s suffrage movement. They advocated for child labor laws in 1904 and, along with the Populist Party, introduced the notion of a 40-hour work week, which led to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

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From Robert Reich:

At a time when American democracy seems to be drowning under big money and a Supreme Court indifferent to its corrupting effects, as well as the distortions of gerrymandered districts and efforts by some states to suppress the votes of minorities, it's worth pausing to consider what Afghanis have just accomplished. Despite murderous Taliban attacks and vows to punish anyone who participated (identifiable for days by the ink on their fingers), long walks to polling stations followed by hours of waiting in the cold and rain, and a legacy of electoral fraud, Afghans have turned out in large numbers to vote for their next president and representatives. Just as remarkable: despite threats and intimidation, two women are running for vice-president -- the first time women have ever run for national office there -- and more women than ever are on provincial ballots.

Democracy is fragile but the determination to be heard is not. America is the cradle of modern democracy, and we are not going to allow it to succumb to the greed of a handful of billionaires or the bigotry of a handful of throwbacks. We're going to get big money out of our politics and protect every citizen's right to vote. We're going to return our democracy to the people. You with me?

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Terrell Shaw
The rulings of the Roberts court are corrosive to liberty.The greatest potential harm of the Bush presidency, so far, has come after he left office. The Iraq war was a horrible, tragic, mistake. But we'll recover.The Citizens United/McCutcheon rulings may destroy our liberal democracy and replace it with an oligarchy. Soros? I am opposed to oligarchy even should the oligarch occasionally agrees with me. I do not want even a benevolent king.

Brian Barcomb
But wait.... The left cheer Roberts w his decision on Obamacare.

Terrell Shaw
Roberts got one half-right. 

Terrell Shaw
Do you support the Citizens united and McCutcheon rulings, Brian?

Raymond Atkins
In spite of this obviously flawed ruling, I am encouraged these days. The super rich were not able to buy the last two elections and I don't think they will be able to buy the next. I think the rest of us have reached the tipping point. We have had enough.

Terrell Shaw
You are correct that they failed to buy the last two presidential elections, … but they made great strides toward winning all sorts of other elections. Koch money is going to all sorts of races and influencing state and local legislation. And our government has been practically crippled by the 2010 Tea Party takeover of the people's House, enabled by GOP Gerrymandering, in turn enabled by the nationalization of even very local races. When I get a political or push-poll phone calls I alway chat up the guy/gal on the other end and find out where they are --- and they are low-paid folks who are usually happy to tell you. They are almost always in other states or even other countries. Money/publicity/advertising for Floyd County Republican candidates often comes from far away.

Neal Brackett
George Sorros and Warren Buffet are not super rich? I guess I wouldn't know. I have never played golf with either one... But our president has, many times. You never see Obama in the hood, just on the golf course.

Terrell Shaw
Repeating: "Soros? I am opposed to oligarchy even should the oligarch occasionally agree with me. I do not want even a benevolent king."
I also am not so stupid as to unilaterally disarm wile the Roberts court allows the other side to corrupt the system … at least Soros is working to limit the obscene political contributions that he is making toward those ends! Hows that for a paradox. But the Kochs have much greater resources and are much more secretive about their activities and have outspent Soros. Still I long for the day when we find a way to maximize disclosure and minimize the influence of money in politics. Until that day I hope Soros and others will continue to make donations on "my" side.
And our President gets to the "hood" more often than the avg chief executive, for heaven's sake. The party of the Bushes attacks the biracial kid that grew up in a broken home as somehow "elite". Sheesh.

Laurie Craw
Having great wealth, either inherited or earned, would be, it seems to me, a great responsibility. What I object to is using one's great wealth to buy political power when that wealth could do so much good. And I don't mean charity. The very wealthy have business skills and business contacts they could use to create new businesses that are models of social good on all levels while also being profitable. We could have full employment at living wages and little need for government welfare programs. We could have clean energy and virtually pollution-free and waste-less industry. The billions of private dollars spent on elections if redirected by wealthy people with a vision and a commitment to the betterment of society could solve most of the problems our governments are being forced to deal with.

Raymond Atkins
The hood?

Michael J. Burton
Travesty in the making.

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Jane Jameson
You honestly believe this?

George Barton
It's called equivocation. The debt is still increasing, but at a slower rate, maybe. Read between the lines here, http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_deficit_chart...

USGOVERNMENTSPENDING.COM

Terrell Shaw
Yes, Jane, I more than believe it, after 67 years of breathing and over fifty years of observation, I know: the trickle-down faith of the let-free-enterprise-be-unfettered crowd does not work. Period.
Providing support to the real job creators (the consumers of the middle and lower classes) DOES raise all ships. In the period after WWII when unions were strong and taxes progressive we reduced deficits, the middle class grew and prospered, and America became the envy of the world.
When Reagan's "revolution" turned us away from that path we began a decline, during which the middle classes stagnated, the poor increased, and the rich cornered an ever increasing share of overall wealth. Without the partial reprieve of the nineties under Clinton, and the stimulus efforts of the Great Recession recovery under the last suddenly wide-eyed bit of W. and the first years of Obama, we'd be in even worse shape. That recovery has been greatly hampered by the obstructionism of the Blind-Faith-in-Trickle-Down Tea Party Republicans.

Raymond Atkins
Maybe we should begin with "we had money in the bank at the end of Bill Clinton's term" and work forward from there...

Terrell Shaw
I'll take Clinton's lies about abominable personal behavior, and Obama's overstatement about keeping bad insurance for a very small minority in a program that would greatly improve coverage for almost all, to the lies about WMD, aluminum tubes, Iran/Contra, and trickle-down of Reagan & Bush.

Howard Smith
Terrell Shaw, all of your friends that don't believe President Obama, swallowed hook, line and sinker the lies about WMD's in Iraq that cost us over two trillion dollars, thousands of American soldiers lives and tens of thousands more wounded and disabled, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in Irag for whose death we bare responsibility. At the same time they fail to give credit to President Obama for not losing even one American soldiers life in a war he started....which is zero wars. All of these folks that can't believe President Obama has reduced spending, decreased unemployment, created jobs, helped the stock market reach new heights, seen the housing market recovery and the auto industry saved, have no trouble rejecting the notion that during the failed Bush presidency our economy all but collapsed, our national debt soared and our standing in the world community took a big hit.....just as they never seemed to realize that calling something "enhanced interrogation" is just another name for torture. The mind can certainly play funny tricks on true believers. Soon, I suspect, they will be purchasing reprints of his paintings to hang in their homes and call it great art.

Jane Jameson
To each his own.

Raymond Atkins
To be fair, Howard, W is a better artist than he was a president...

Jane Jameson
Tell the people of Detroit how Obama saved their city. I am sure they would be understanding. So many move here to our area seeking employment and a better life. Our industries are glad to have them in our GOP state!

Howard Smith
Raymond Atkins, you got me there. And, Jane Jameson, I never said he saved Detroit, although, he did stop the bleeding caused by years and years of GOP economic policies that almost destroyed the city. The right wants to say it was labor unions, but anyone who has actually studied the cause of Detroit's problems knows better. And, regarding our GOP state, and other GOP states like ours, those are the ones as I am sure you know that are most dependent on federal handouts....the transfer of federal tax dollars is from the Dem states to the GOP states...go figure.

Gleaning Facebook: Myth Laid to Rest

“The prevailing myth in America has been that the rich have a right to buy more homes, more cars, more gizmos, vacations and leisure. But they don’t have the right to buy more democracy. The Supreme Court has just laid that myth to rest, and the new gilded age roars in triumph.” - Bill Moyers 

Comments:

Wanda Mulkey Dagraedt
It's unbelievable.

Laurie Craw
Oh golly gee. Looks like we the people are going to have get off our duffs and do some democracy work in the next election.

Ruthy Countryman

ugh... 

Gleaning Facebook: Democracy in Trouble

 From my friend and first principal:

"Our democracy is in trouble, and here's why. In the 1960s, the Supreme Court in Baker v Carr determined that election districts had to be of proportional size, and the principle of one person, one vote was established in law. This week, in McCutcheon, and four years earlier, in Citizens United, the Supreme Court now says that rather than one person, one vote, we now have one dollar, one vote. Money constitutes speech, and the two brothers named Koch now have the equivalent of 94 million votes - what they spent last year in political contests. This is wrong and a corruption of our democracy. "

---Denis Smith

 

Gleaning Facebook: Money in Politics

From Terrell's Facebook:

And today we learn that Joe Ricketts, who has more money than all but 370 other Americans, will finance a campaign to smear Michelle Nunn, the daughter and frank disciple of Sam Nunn (not exactly a wild-eyed liberal) as a reckless spender. Boy and girls, it is time for Americans of all stripes to learn that commercials for happiness enhancing drugs or drinks or dream machines and commercials for (or against) political candidates, however plausible-sounding, heart-rending, or flag-draped are bought and paid for by folks with more money than love and goals that have nothing to do with your well-being.

Comments

Terry Lewis
The Democrats and Republicans are all about more money for more power. My Democratic party sends me an email nearly every day from either Mrs. Obama, Joe Biden, Our Party, or someone running for office wanting more money. There should be a law to limit fund campaigns to the millions that are provided to the two major parties!!!

Terrell Shaw
I'm not sure of the best method, but we must do something to counter the corrosive effect of money in politics. One thing we might start with is a very strict full disclosure law to make it impossible to keep political contributions private. If you ask for my vote you should tell me exactly who is bribing ….errr…. supporting you.

John Countryman
Don't vote for your own subjugation, people!

Rob Friar
Of all people, John McCain and I think it was Feingold on the Dem side tried like the dickens to get campaign finance reform done several years ago, and they were nearly run out of town on a rail...I seriously can not see when this will stop unless folks get their heads out of their butts, stopped being bribed for their votes based on one or two key social issues that their elected officials really intend to do nothing about (abortion is still legal, and gay marriage is slowly gaining acceptance) and vote for people who are willing to put a stop to this unlimited "bribery".

Terrell Shaw
I might phrase it less graphically, Rob, but yes. 

Sam Burnham
Money follows power because it buys the influence of the powerful. If power was taken from government and returned to the people, money would follow. Every time the government gives itself more power it draws more money.

Anne Edwards Langley
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely

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From Terrell's Facebook: 

A little math (not my first love but I think it's right):

• Sheldon Adelson gave (using round numbers) $100 million to political candidates in the 2012 election cycle. That is roughly 0.0025% of his net worth. A very minor daily dip in the stock market would cost him much more. Chump change folks.

• If a person with a mere million dollar net worth gave $2501 dollars he would have borne a greater sacrifice for his beliefs.

• If percentage-of-net-worth given to political candidates rather than raw dollars is the measure Sheldon Adelson is nothing compared to me.

Reckon y'all will be reading in the papers about a parade of 2016 hopefuls to Avenue A Rome, Georgia?

There is something fundamentally obscene about our election campaigns being primarily fed by crumbs from Soros-Koch-Gates-Adelson types' tables. Whatever your politics, surely you can see the coercive, evil effect upon our system that entails.

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Robert Reich must've read my posts this morning.

From Robert Reich's Facebook:

This is no April Fool’s joke. Today, in a 5-4 decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court in “McCutcheon vs. Federal Election Commission,” went beyond “Citizen’s United” to strike down overall limits on how much an individual may contribute in one election cycle to innumerable federal candidates and to party committees. Overturning 40 years of national policy and 38 years of judicial precedent, the Court’s decision allows federal officeholders to solicit and individual donors to pour as much as $3.6 million directly into federal campaigns every election cycle – buying unparalleled personal influence in Washington and drowning out the voices of ordinary citizens. (It gives me no satisfaction that I testified against John Roberts at his confirmation hearing years ago.) This is the most brazen invitation to oligarchy in Supreme Court history.

In my view, we must amend the Constitution to establish once and for all that (1) money is not speech under the First Amendment, (2) corporations are not people, and (3) we the people have the right to set limits on how much money individuals and corporations can spend on elections. You with me?

Comments:

Laurie Craw
 I actually think this ruling that political donations are "speech" might be just the thing we need to reduce the unfair influence of very rich people on our democracy. If making a donation is "speech," then no donation to a candidate, political party, or political action committee or any organization that makes contributions to a candidate or political party or otherwise acts to influence an election should be anonymous. You give the money, you put your name on it for all to see. I'm not up on all the "back door" ways that wealthy individuals give money to campaigns without their names being disclosed, but that's where we ought to be looking. I have little money to give to support a candidate, but If I say something in public, if I write a letter to the editor for public reading, the people who hear me or read what I wrote know who I am. And there may be personal consequences for me from people who strongly disagree with my opinions. It should be the same for people who give money to influence elections by way of advertising, underwriting campaign expenses, getting out the vote on election day, etc. If money is their "speech," they need to own it and take the consequences. 

Terrell
Yes. We should totally close loopholes and demand immediate public disclosure of every donation. Secret money should be absolutely outlawed.

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