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What a week. Call it the Shock Doctrine in reverse: The Massachusetts election and yesterday's Supreme Court ruling may force the Democrats to move to the left to ensure their political survival. They're now faced with a choice they clearly didn't want: forcefully reject the corporate agenda, or risk losing to opponents who can attract an unlimited flow of corporate dollars.
...the Supreme Court's ruling that corporate campaign contributions could not be limited because corporations are "persons." Don't try to understand the tortured logic, since this decision was clearly as cravenly political as Bush v. Gore. "Persons"? Here's my test for "personhood": Every person I know has had their heart broken at least once, then spent the night listening to sentimental songs. The only tune that moves corporations is that Motown classic, "Money."
Yes, if a corporation were a "person" it would have a heart.
ReplyDeleteAs for "throwing the bums out," don't you just love it when the voters rise up in mighty indignation and throw a bum out only to replace him with a worse bum?
There were more than two million votes in Massachusetts. How many of these voters voted for the candidate or intended to send a message? Those intending to send a message strutted up the voting booth to deliver it. What was the message? There were more than two million votes. You figure what that voter's specific message was. Wouldn't it make more sense to vote for the better candidate than "send a message" to Washington? Or to your Uncle Fred in the Catskills?
"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" Fine. Now have a drink and go back to watching television.
SCOTUS took us back to the nineteenth century, to the Gilded Age, with this vote. We have made a link with the mentality of the trusts back then which, of course, put business above everything else. Even slavery was condoned in some quarters and in the 1880s there must have still been some nostalgics looking back on the good old days.
"The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."
That's from the 1886 Santa Clara decision.
As a "Masshole," I'm supremely embarrassed by this election result, and afraid that the sackless Democrat apparatus will spin this as a "signal" to move to the right, when it's so transparently a repudiation of their rightward slide to date.
ReplyDeleteWe progressives need to get vocal at least, active at best, and perhaps even violent in pursuit of the People's Agenda. Until the National Mall is filled from end to end with pitchforks and torches, we're not going to change this landscape.
It appears, my dear Runt, that the Dems have decided, yet again, that expediency is the better part of valor. With a big dose of discretion.
ReplyDeleteThe Big O wants 90 billion from the banks? A drop in the bucket (14 tril went to Wall Street) but it looks good. The MSM, ever concerned over appearances, calls it his "new populism." Breathlessly, they ask, will it work?
O wants to freeze discretionary spending? Now, isn't that a nice rightwing idea. Just what we need during a time of high unemployment.
Rename Bernanke as head of the Fed? Sure, who would know better than an architect of the debacle just how the debacle works. Anyway, to prove his concern, O wants to get 90 bil from the banks.
Health care? Let Congress figure it out.
Another stimulus? Forget it.
Yeah, it appears as if many of the Dems see the win as a "signal."