Elections Are Meaningless In a Corporatocracy

This week the Huffington Post reports that “A Republican Funding Surge” is providing the right with a crucial advantage in the last days before the midterm elections. Last week in a piece written for Politico, Ken Vogel reported that, “A massive $4.2 million ad buy announced Tuesday by American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS erases any doubts that the groups, conceived by veteran GOP operatives Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, have the cash to be major players in next month’s election.”

The President is urging Democrats not to lose hope. Others in the Democratic Party maintain that the media may be overstating the GOP advantage. We’ve carried a few articles here in the LA Progressive that counter the doom and gloom predictions coming from the GOP. But, in the wake of Citizens United, with corporations pumping in unprecedented amounts of money through front groups – like the US Chamber of Commerce, the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity, and Karl Rove’s American Crossroads – we need to do more than hold on to hope. As reporter Sylvia Moore asserted in her piece of the same name, it’s “Time for a More Militant Left“.

Regardless of the outcome of the midterm elections, the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United is one that can’t be ignored. Joe Palermo called the impact of the Citizens United decision a “game changer“. Commenting on the conservative members of the Supreme Court, Palermo says, “Alito and his four fellow Justices were not only wrong about the potential effects of Citizens United they greased the wheels for a corporate takeover of the governing institutions of the country. We’re in unchartered territory now. The five Justices knew exactly what they were doing”.

The impact of the Citizens United decision is already becoming evident. In short order, it will make no difference if you are a Republican, Democrat, Independent or member of some other party — the corporate take over of our country will be sealed if we sit back and allow the Citizens United precedent to remain unchecked and unchallenged.

I am writing this article as I sit in the waiting room of a hospital in Virginia while my daughter is upstairs, in labor, about to deliver her first child. When my first grandchild arrived, I wanted this country to be better than it was when my daughter came into the world and much better than it was when I came into the world. Today’s headlines and even the video below tell me we’ve got a lot of work to do to make that a reality. But we still have opportunities that, if seized, can reverse the damage we see around us. So please, watch the video below, click on the links to sites that are carrying a banner for this issue, forward this article to your friends, and yes . . . .Please VOTE because we don’t live in a corporatocracy or a fascist state, yet — so let’s work together to keep it that way!

Here are links to sites that are taking action on this pressing issue. If you have more information or links to other sites, please post them in the comments section.

Public Citizen – Stand for Democracy

The Other 98%

Will They Get What They’re Paying For – by Paul Loeb

Move to Amend

Sharon Kyle

Sharon Kyle is the publisher of the LA Progressive. She is also a soon-to-be (within the next few hours) grandmother of one.