Trump is the natural consequence of our anti-democracy decade

[nitpicker]

Last edited Tue Dec 10, 2019, 04:56 AM - Edit history (1)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/08/donald-trump-citizens-united-anti-democracy-decade

Trump is the natural consequence of our anti-democracy decade

Robert Reich

Sun 8 Dec 2019 06.00 GMT Last modified on Sun 8 Dec 2019 06.02 GMT

We’re coming to the end of what might be called the anti-democracy decade. It began on 21 January 2010 with the supreme court’s shameful decision in Citizens United vs Federal Election Commission, opening the floodgates to big money in politics with the absurd claim that the first amendment protects corporate speech. It ends with Donald Trump in the White House, filling his administration with corporate shills and inviting foreign powers to interfere in American elections.

Trump is the consequence rather than the cause of the anti-democratic decade. By the 2016 election, the richest 100th of 1% of Americans – 24,949 very wealthy people – accounted for a record-breaking 40% of all campaign contributions.

That same year, corporations flooded the presidential, Senate and House elections with $3.4bn in donations. Labor unions no longer provided any countervailing power, contributing only $213m – one union dollar for every 16 corporate.

Big corporations and the super-wealthy lavished their donations on the Republican party because Republicans promised them a giant tax cut. As Lindsey Graham warned his colleagues, “financial contributions will stop” if the GOP didn’t come through.
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The investments paid off big.
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[True Blue American]

1. The question is

Can we turn it around?

We had a Teddy Roosevelt in the Gilded age. An FDR after the Republican Depression. Obama after the Bush recession.

Then the idiots fell for an Orange, fake haired, lying Con Man.

Who will it be this time? We need to expand the Supreme Court, make Roberts and his flunkies useless, or bring charges against them. Get rid of Moscow Mitch and his co-horts. Can we do that?

I say yes. Elect a Democratic Congress and President, put OBama and Hillary on the Supreme Court. I could go on, but that is a start.

[Aristus]

2. Give a man a gun, and he can rob a bank.

Give a man a bank, and he can rob the world...