2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumJoin the spreading rebellion against the Big Money political game -- by Jim Hightower
Jim Hightower
June 5, 2015
I think we can all agree that news stories about the ever-rising flood of big money in politics do not tend to have a lot of laughs in them.
But a recent item from the New York Times unintentionally got a guffaw from me.
It was a seriously serious piece about how Karl Rove's Super-PAC of corporate political cash has been surpassed both in cash and clout by the billion-dollar electioneering network of the Koch brothers.
The reporter stated that the Kochs have "leapfrogged" Rove.
There's nothing factually funny in that, but the image of the multi-billionaire brothers, Charles and David, laughing and leaping over a bent-over Karl Rove is the delightfully-ridiculous stuff of slapstick.
In fact, today's whole political game, run by an absurdist's nightmare of moneyed elites,
is ridiculous -- a game in which corporations are people and money is magically empowered to speak; candidates trek to the corporate suites and secret retreats of the rich, shamelessly selling their political souls; super-wealthy interests clandestinely pump unlimited sums of money into disgustingly-negative campaign ads that turn off most voters; candidates "win" with only a small minority of the electorate choosing them; winners then claim to have a democratic mandate to enact the plutocratic agenda.
This could be hilarious in a slapstick routine, but it's tragic in a country with democratic aspirations.
But don't despair; for a backlash is building all across the country among voters who're fed up with the money-rigged game that excludes them.
One group called the New Hampshire Rebellion is bird-dogging presidential candidates in that state to demand action to get Big Money out of politics.
To help start your own rebellion, you can get a free, on-line toolkit from these modern-day Paul Revere's by going to:
http://www.nhrebellion.org
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)is to donate $100 to Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign.
red dog 1
(27,820 posts)but there are many Sanders supporters who can't afford to donate $100, or $50, or even $25
Like Howard Dean a few years ago, when many thousands of people donated as little as $10 each
FSogol
(45,491 posts)PS: Fuck Rand Paul too.