What voters fail to understand is that the entire election process is rigged and was never intended to be a We the People thing. I'm not even defending democracy which I consider unlimited majority mob rule where 51% of the people get to trump the rights of the other 49%. However, in America today the general theme on the right and left is always about our failed democracy. Guess what? Democracy is working as it was intended to work - to concentrate wealth and power. The establishment Republican and Democrat elites who are actually representatives of banksters, defense contractors, NSA contractors and other assorted special corporate interests are masters at getting folks to vote away their liberty in exchange for some perceived benefit.
When most American votes, they are actually voting for the police powers of state violence to rob and plunder some other citizen at the point of a gun to give them what they want and think they deserve. Republicans vote for big bad government, the squashing of civil liberties and the endless wars that they worship like a god. Democrats also vote for the wars and anti-civil liberty laws but they tend focus on preserving socialist entitlements, taxation and redistribution of wealth.
At the end of the day, the rich get richer, the poor get poor and the middle class is wiped out.
While I'll never be convinced that anything beneficial to humanity has ever existed in any democracy, the American democracy is especially repugnant and vile because nowhere in human history have the rich politicos and their corporate sponsors managed to bamboozle over 317 million Americans, here, or over 207 million eligible voters, here. Granted, far fewer actually vote and American voter participation continues to decline.
Getting back to 'democracy' and elections, America has 2 major impediments. 1. Big corporate special interest money controls the RNC and DNC money machines and 2. The elites of the RNC and DNC machines literally ban We the People from control of the primary process by loading it up with super delegates, congress critters and DNC/RNC officials.
Primaries
Every Ron Paul supporter knows how the Ron Paul delegates were treated at the RNC Convention by the Republicans. They were marginalized, shunned and prevented from voting. So much for fair and honest primaries. It doesn't exist in any party.
This is deliberate and explains why the primary system is such a freaking farce. The truth of the matter is that neither the RNC or DNC machines trust We the People. The primary process was supposed to be a We the People event where We the People selected candidates. It doesn't work that way and probably never has. The Nazi strong arm tentacles of the RNC and DNC machines have effectively banished We the People from the primary process.
This week, the RNC voted to further squash We the People consisting of Tea Party folks, liberty activists, Paulites and Libertarians.
RNC tightens 2016 primary calendar, rules The Hill
A series of changes aimed at tightening the GOP presidential primary calendar sailed through a vote at the Republican National Committee's winter meeting, giving the party new tools to control its nomination process.Mort Blackwell is one of the good guys who has supported the Tea Party, Paulites and Libertarians. Blackwell and liberty were dealt a decisive blow by the RNC. Moreover, the 153-9 vote is proof that the establishment GOP elites are still very much in control and not threatened in the least. However, while the Republican elites may smirk that they struck a mortal blow to the liberty activists within the party, the GOP will ultimately pay the price for its insufferable arrogance in general elections because the liberty activists are bailing like crazy. They are so fed up that they couldn't ever hold their noses and vote Republican.
The new 2016 rules will make it much harder for states to cut in line in the nomination process and will help Republicans avoid a repeat of a drawn out, bloody primary many believe damaged Mitt Romney's chances in 2012 of defeating President Obama.
After a contentious Thursday hearing on some rules changes, few members joined Virginia Committeeman Morton Blackwell in objecting to the final package — the landslide vote was 153 in favor, with 9 opposing.
Campaign Finance Money
This week, conservative activist journalist Denesh D'Souza was indicted by a federal grand jury for violating campaign finance laws. Specifically, D'Souza was charged with illegally raising $20,000 for a conservative candidate. Politico reports:
The facts of the case remain hazy: The indictment states that D’Souza reimbursed associates who donated $20,000 to a campaign and also caused the campaign to misreport the source of its contributions.I'm no fan of D'Souza and consider him a typical Republican theocon-neocon statist. That said, the charges against him are outrageous and politically motivated by the Obama Department of Justice because $20,000 is an incredibly puny amount of money swimming in the vast oceanic cesspools of political money.
Politico had a far more interesting piece in May 2012, before the 2012 election. Yes, Politico is a statist leftist rag and never goes after the Dems on their fund raising schemes but the article disclosed accurate money facts regarding Republican fund raising.
GOP groups plan record $1 billion blitz
Republican super PACs and other outside groups shaped by a loose network of prominent conservatives – including Karl Rove, the Koch brothers and Tom Donohue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – plan to spend roughly $1 billion on November’s elections for the White House and control of Congress....The cost of the 2012 presidential election was a staggering $2 billion according to the Huffington Post and this doesn't include congressional races.
POLITICO has learned that Koch-related organizations plan to spend about $400 million ahead of the 2012 elections...
Restore Our Future, the super PAC supporting Mitt Romney, proved its potency by spending nearly $50 million in the primaries. Now able to entice big donors with a neck-and-neck general election, the group is likely to meet its new goal of spending $100 million more.
And American Crossroads and the affiliated Crossroads GPS, the groups that Rove and Ed Gillespie helped conceive and raise cash for, are expected to ante up $300 million, giving the two-year-old organization one of the election’s loudest voices.
2012 Presidential Election Cost Hits $2 Billion Mark
The Obama and Romney campaigns each mobilized competing squads of ultra-wealthy fundraisers, sought aid from free-spending allied super PACs and deployed multimillion-dollar media broadsides and armies of organizers.
The final thrust of fundraising included a massive late surge of $33 million in donations to pro-Romney political committees from a single billionaire, Las Vegas casino owner Sheldon Adelson. In all, Adelson and his wife, Miriam, gave Romney and other Republican candidates $95 million during the election season, closing in on the gambling magnate's vow to give $100 million to GOP causes.
The new campaign finance filings covered the final few weeks of the race, when campaign organizations for Romney and Obama, along with a slew of super PACs, raised and spent millions toward the long-expected $2 billion milestone.By law, an individual can only contribute $2,500 to a candidate. Even if ordinary folks could afford a $2,500 campaign contribution to a candidate, which they can't, the lion's share of political money comes from PAC's, special interests, banksters, defense contractors etc. and these are the folks who own and control the RNC and DNC machines.
While the Huffington Post reported that the 2012 presidential election cost $2 billion,Politico reported that the cost of the 2012 presidential and congressional elections was $6 billion, here. Open Secrets, an organization that specifically tracks political money, also reported that the 2012 presidential and congressional elections cost $6 billion, here.
It's clearly evident that the rich and powerful hijacked and now own our election system. The RNC and DNC machines are nothing but money laundering machines for special interests.
If an individual voter can only contribute a maximum of $2,500 to a candidate and if Denesh D'Souza is being prosecuted for his role in a puny $20,000 campaign finance fiasco, how is it that the Koch Brothers can legally pony up a staggering $400 million and casino magnet Adelson can pony up $100 million to influence election outcomes?
Every campaign finance reform bill passed by congress over the decades has served to increase special interest money in the election system. Though a complicated maze of legal PAC's, dark money, dirty money, corporate money and other schemes and scams, just about every politician in America is bought and paid for.
This money is controlled by the RNC and DNC machines who pick and fund the candidates. Those candidates who refuse to be bought and bribed lose in primaries because nobody can compete with the big bucks of special interest dough, the RNC, DNC, their PAC's, their bundlers and their formidable fund raising machines.
If elections are going to ever mean anything as We the People initiatives to raise, fund and elect We the People candidates, then the special interest dough that owns our elections must be outlawed. The PAC's must be outlawed. Bundling must be outlawed.
No one should be allowed to contribute money to any campaign except voters. Furthermore, the most destructive aspect of our corrupt political system is the fund raising authority of the RNC and DNC. Americans should support outlawing their ability to fund raise because it embodies the systemic corruption the permeates our election process.
Here's what a politician really looks like:
Photo source: http://www.isights.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/sponsors.jpg
Whatever the flaws of democracy and despite the fact that few folks even vote with their brains, I doubt that they intentionally voted for folks who are compromised, bribed, bought and paid for.
Until We the People directly fund candidates, control the primary process and get corporate money out of elections, there really is no sane reason to vote R or D. Voting 3rd party makes far more sense. At least it's a repudiation of Republican and Democrat treason and tyranny and allows somebody to scream "I'm here, I'm aware, I'm politically actives and I reject you warmongering, bankster loving traitors who sellout the poor and middle class".
A more perfect election process would ban all fund raising by anybody except the candidates and they should only be allowed to raise money from individual voters. Moreover, it would be even more fun to allow unlimited individual campaign contributions so long as they are legally required to post all campaign contributions on their websites for voters to checkout. Really, who cares of Soros gives a billion or more to Obama or if the Koch Brothers gives a billion or more to Mittens? At least voters would know who fund candidates and to what extent.
I guarantee you that campaign financial disclosure in real time would totally freakout dishonest candidates who sell themselves to the highest bidders. To call them whores would be an insult to decent and hardworking whores everywhere. Full disclosure would go a long way in providing voters with highly relevant information.
Meanwhile, so long as the big R and D money machines control elections, voting is truly a waste of time unless a vote is a 3rd party vote. For the election process to ever be meaningful, primaries must be 100% We the People initiatives and the dark and dirty special interest money must be expunged from the system.
Nothing about the State of the Union speech...?
ReplyDeleteIf I was a Dem, I wouldn't bring it up either.