rt.com/usa/seven-billion





Purchase of the Legislative Branch:

The process has progressed similarly in Congress. In 1978, outside groups spent $303,000 on congressional races. In 2012 that was up to $457,000,000. That is over 1,500 times the level in 1978. It would be funny, if it was so blatant and terrifying. By many accounts, our leaders in Congress spend 50% or more of their time working the phones or fundraisers rather than trying (and failing) to actually do the peoples business.

Lets also take a minute to appreciate the hypocrisy of anyone that pretends that the money doesnt influence our government. Businesses do not give to politicians for charity. This is a payment for services that has proven exceedingly reliable and profitable. The ROI for money invested in purchasing Congressman is what CEO dreams are made of.

No wonder the incentive is to invest in Congress rather than R&D or marketing. There are very few places in the world or times in history where you can find ROIs in the thousands, or even the tens of thousands.

In addition, increasingly those who work on Congress (and regulators) were previously employed by these large corporations or expect to work there later. A recent example is Chris Dodd who left the Senate the head lobbyist for Hollywood at the MPAA, the guys behind SOPA and PIPA, but there are many many others.

Review: Congressmen beg for money to get elected, make sure to vote the way your benefactors would like, consequently get more money to get elected again. If at any point they do lose or quit, they take the big payday to work for those who have been paying them all along.

Legislative Branch, Check!

www.cnn.com/2013/07/11/politics/congress-election-costs







Judicial Branch Endorsement of the Purchase of Government:

Last but not least, we have the enabling Judicial Branch. It only took a few purchased presidents to ensure the appointment of a majority of free market and pro-business judges. For instance, and disgracefully, Clarence Thomas was once legal counsel for Monsanto, but has not once recused himself from any cases involving Monsanto and always votes in their favor.

These radicals have now fully endorsed and enabled the influx of money used to purchase the other branches. Specifically, 2 major decisions have completely opened the floodgates, Citizens United and McCutcheon. The first allowed unlimited contributions of corporate money into elections and brought us the notorious declaration that corporations are people and that money is free speech.

This was more recently followed up with the private wealth equivalent in McCutcheon. In this ruling, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said as part of his majority opinion (presumably with a straight face)  nor does the possibility that an individual who spends large sums may garner influence over or access to elected officials or political parties.

And with this, the Supreme Court has fully endorsed both major sources of immense wealth to purchase our elections and consequently our government.

Review: The rich fund Presidential elections, Presidents nominate business-friendly judges and then the bought Congress approves their nominations. New judge then votes to ensure even more money is allowed to purchase elections.

Judicial Branch, CHECK!







3. A Faux Republic Dependent Upon the Funders and Not the Voters

The Founders Hope and the Sad Reality:

Acknowledging where we are as a country, it is often helpful to look to where we started for some perspective. Unsurprisingly, this type of problem was not overlooked back in the 18th century. In 1776, James Madison stated that his goal was to design a republic in which powerful interest groups would be rendered incapable of subduing the general will. Madison hoped, perhaps naively, that factions would be thwarted by competing with other factions.

Sadly, we are now in a time where factions (aka wealthy special interests) subdue the will of the people and ensure the government responds to them alone on those issues where they have a special interest and consequently asymmetric stakes in the game (Charles Hugh Smith). As a result, these groups essentially collude to allocate their resources to their own issues, but do not thwart or compete with other factions as they do the same. Its a pretty great system, as long as youre one of the wealthy few who can use their money to drown out the poor and voiceless many.

And just like that, what was once a Republic has become a corrupt shell of its past self. All the signs are still there; votes, elections, campaigns, branches of government, etc., but behind the scenes the only ones represented are those who can afford to be heard.

Summary: This massive consolidation of wealth, combined with the removal of any limits on money in campaigns, has allowed for the purchase of our government, or as Dick Durban once stated, frankly they [the banks in this case] own the place. If money = free speech, then those with all the money, have all the free speech.





What Might Help?

Now that I have likely and thoroughly depressed the reader, lets bounce around some ideas for what can be done. As stated in the beginning, this is not an unknown problem and many people are promoting a number of ways to fix or at least ameliorate the problem. I will briefly describe just a few which I think provide some direction any of us could easily implement or support.

Change the Rules: Laurence Lessig of Harvard Law has put forward a visionary proposal for re-writing the way that campaigns are financed in his book, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It.

Put simply, he would like to empower every voter with a stipend, say $150 per election to give to whatever candidate or candidates they prefer. If you would like to accept this money, you would need to forgo any other contributions or support (one would hope including the indirect PAC kind). This would actually provide even more money than is used in current elections, but would effectively democratize the funding process. While there would still be a funding election that takes place before the actual election, the funding would not be unequally provided.

Lessigs work has only begun, as this sort of bill or likely constitutional reform is nearly impossible to achieve, but he has undertaken and I assume will continue to implement many brave and creative ways of bringing about the change all Americans should support.

Most recently he has suggested we begin to fund, ironically enough, a Super PAC to end all Super PACs. It would be funded with the solitary goal of changing how money impacts our elections.

Please support them here: www.mayone.us/

Change Our Day-to-Day: At the more micro level, Charles Hugh Smith believes that we will inevitably see our overly centralized and inefficient system erode away as it is replaced by more resilient, local and efficient businesses and societies outside of the current system. With that in mind, he recommends that all anyone can do is the basic things--lower our energy footprint, stay healthy and avoid unnecessary medications and procedures, support local businesses, organic food growers, etc. In other words, what we can do is support local businesses that are part of the emerging economy rather than support corporate cartels.

Your Vote Does Matter: Do you live in Ohio, Florida or New Hampshire? Probably not. Despite what we are told every 4 years, there are actually states outside of the swing states, and even more surprising, the very large majority of Americans live in those states where your vote doesnt matter. New Yorkers an Californians all know their state will turn Blue no matter who the candidates are and either dont vote at all, or often vote for the Blue team in order to feel like they are on the winning side.

The truth is that if you see the election as Red vs. Blue, you vote probably doesnt matter. But here is the trick, if all the people who think their vote didnt matter decided to vote for whom they might actually believe in, then their votes just might matter.

What if all the growing number of Independents (who usually still vote Blue), chose to vote for a third party? What if a third party candidate won a state like New York or California? What if that candidate was one whose primary promise to the voters was to champion a change to the role of money in government (perhaps in line with what Lessig proposes)? Would you vote for such a person? I would argue you should. If California alone (with 55 electoral votes) were to vote for a 3rd party that would likely prevent either Red or Blue candidate from winning the requisite 270 electoral votes.

Think about the message that would send to both parties. I would predict that both sides would start to bend over backwards for an endorsement from that 3rd party and they would have to get it by taking up the same primary cause for reforming money in government. Consequently, at the root of our corrupted system which is perpetually ignored as both sides might suddenly become the big issue of the election. Then maybe we might begin to turn things around.

Sources: Charles Hugh Smith (oftwominds, Surivival+, etc.), Yves Smith (Naked Capitalism, Econned), Laurence Lessig (Republic Lost, multiple TED Talks), Matt Taibbi (blog at Rolling Stone and now at The Intercept), Zero Hedge, John Robb, Max Keiser, Clay Shirky (Cognitive Surplus), Aldous Huxley (Brave New World, Brave New World Revisited), George Orwell (1984), Michael Lewis, Daniel Kahneman (Thinking Fast and Slow), James Richards (Currency Wars), Han Joon Chang (23 Things They Dont Tell You About Capitalism) and Joseph Stiglitz (Mismeasuring Our Lives)



Thank you, Y. Falkson, for a comprehensive presentation on the capture of the political machinery by enormously concentrated financial wealth.

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