kpete
kpete's JournalA letter from Bill Moyers: "The Plutocrats Are Winning. Don't Let Them!"
The Plutocrats Are Winning. Don’t Let Them!The vast inequality they are creating is a death sentence for government by consent of the people. This is the fight of our lives and how it ends is up to us.
BY BILL MOYERS | DECEMBER 22, 2015
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Can we at least face the truth? The plutocrats and oligarchs are winning. The vast inequality they are creating is a death sentence for government by consent of the people at large. Did any voter in any district or state in the last Congressional election vote to give that billion dollar loophole to a handful of billionaires? To allow corporations to hide their political contributions? To add $1.4 trillion to the national debt? Of course not. It is now the game: Candidates ask citizens for their votes, then go to Washington to do the bidding of their donors. And since one expectation is that they will cut the taxes of those donors, we now have a permanent class that is afforded representation without taxation.
A plutocracy, says my old friend, the historian Bernard Weisberger, “has a natural instinct to perpetuate and enlarge its own powers and by doing so slams the door of opportunity to challengers and reduces elections to theatrical duels between politicians who are marionettes worked by invisible strings.”
Where does it end?
By coincidence, this past weekend I watched the final episode of the British television series Secret State, a 2012 remake of an earlier version based on the popular novel A Very British Coup. This is white-knuckle political drama. Gabriel Byrne plays an accidental prime minister – thrust into office by the death of the incumbent, only to discover himself facing something he never imagined: a shadowy coalition of forces, some within his own government, working against him. With some of his own ministers secretly in the service of powerful corporations and bankers, his own party falling away from him, press lords daily maligning him, the opposition emboldened, and a public confused by misinformation, deceit, and vicious political rhetoric, the prime minister is told by Parliament to immediately invade Iran (on unproven, even false premises) or resign. In the climactic scene, he defies the “Secret State” that is manipulating all this and confronts Parliament with this challenge:
Let’s forget party allegiance, forget vested interests, forget votes of confidence. Let each and every one of us think only of this: Is this war justified? Is it what the people of this country want? Is it going to achieve what we want it to achieve? And if not, then what next?
Well, I tell you what I think we should do. We should represent the people of this country. Not the lobby companies that wine and dine us. Or the banks and the big businesses that tell us how the world goes ‘round. Or the trade unions that try and call the shots. Not the civil servants nor the war-mongering generals or the security chiefs. Not the press magnates and multibillion dollar donors… (We must return) democracy to this House and the country it represents.
Do they? The movie doesn’t tell us. We are left to imagine how the crisis — the struggle for democracy — will end.
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https://twitter.com/BillMoyersHQ/status/679458423805620224?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
http://billmoyers.com/story/the-plutocrats-are-winning-dont-let-them/
Wisconsin State Representative calls upon Wisconsin citizens to execute one another via firearms.
http://thewheelerreport.com/wheeler_docs/files/1221gannon_01.pdf
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/12/22/1462700/-Wisconsin-Lawmaker-Calls-for-Citizen-Executioners
82-year-old woman tells police she heard "ISIS is good" during neighbor's sex.
Police: Woman Chants "ISIS is good, ISIS is great" During Sex
Posted: Dec 21, 2015 12:32 PM PST
An 82-year-old woman called Brown Deer Police Sunday night requesting police because she heard someone chanting, "ISIS is good, ISIS is great" while having sex.
The incident took place in the 4400 block of Dean Road.
Police advised the woman to call back if she heard the chanting again.
When asked about the incident, Brown Deer Police Chief Kass replied, "maybe taking see something, say something a little too far?"
http://www.cbs58.com/story/30802530/police-woman-chants-isis-is-good-isis-is-great-during-sex
Horrible scene from War on Christmas Internment camp
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-horror-horror-waronchristmasatrocit.html
WHOA! Virginia will no longer recognize concealed carry permits from 25 states that have reciprocity
WHOA! Virginia will no longer recognize concealed carry permits from 25 states that have reciprocity agreements http://wapo.st/1QVH2FD " (behind firewall)
Herring said severing the out-of-state agreements can prevent people who may be dangerous or irresponsible from carrying a concealed weapon.
“To me, this is a commonsense step that can help make Virginians and our law enforcement officers safer by ensuring that Virginia’s laws on who can and cannot carry a concealed handgun are applied evenly, consistently, and fairly,” he said in a statement provided to The Washington Post.
The State Police superintendent accepted Herring’s recommendation to sever agreements with those states, effective Feb. 1, according to Herring’s office.
The states are: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Agreements will remain with West Virginia, Michigan, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2015/12/22/virgina-to-drop-long-held-concealed-carry-reciprocity-agreements-with-other-states-n2096229
The story of the Trump candidacy has very little to do with Donald Trump.
......the GOP spent a 40 years and billions of dollars carefully breeding an army of reliably angry, paranoid, racists chumps. And they have been so successful at completely re-engineering the Right's ideological digestive system that they can no longer process any information which does not come to them in the form of Fox-approved Benghaaaazi goo.
In other words, in order to win elections and rake in vast fortunes, the Conservative brain caste has painstakingly created the perfect feeding-ground for con men and demagogues like Trump, the louder and more bombastic the better. And from David Brooks and the Wall Street Journal and "Meet the Press", to Ann Coulter and the Washington Free Beacon and the Breitbart Collective, in one way or another, virtually everyone in the media makes bank by flattering Conservative meatheads and pandering to their delusions.
They are the GOP's premium leads, but however abundant and renewable a resource the Conservative meatheads may be, come Presidential election time, there is never enough room at the trough for every rapacious Republican hog. This is why every few years we have these Little Red State Fundy moments; that delicate time when the knives come out and the various species of Conservative con men start cutting each other's balls over who gets to pluck the wingnut pigeons...
...while trying desperately not to call attention to the fact that their entire political system depends on pandering to the army of reliably angry, paranoid, racists chumps which the GOP has worked so long and hard to cultivate.
MORE:
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2015/12/on-breaking-of-records.html
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