As the World Burns, Our Political Class Whoops It Up with the Plutocracy

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/world-burns-our-political-class-whoops-it-plutocracy

There shall be eternal summer in the grateful heart, a poet wrote, and as this year’s summer winds toward its end and elections approach, gratitude is indeed what our politicians have flowing from that space where their hearts should be.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is grateful to his friend Rick Anderson, the CEO of Delta Airlines. In late July, a week after McConnell treated him to breakfast in the Senate Dining Room, checks for McConnell’s super PAC came winging their way from Anderson and his wife, as well as Delta’s political action committee.

“This is the kind of rare access that most of us will never experience.” That’s Sheila Krumholz, executive director the Center for Responsive Politics, the campaign finance watchdog. She was talking to National Journal about Delta’s boss dining in first class with McConnell: “Who makes a good enough breakfast companion for a sitting senator in a highly competitive reelection campaign to take time out of their busy day? It never hurts if the person can follow up with a donation, and all the better if it can be a sizable one.”

McConnell’s even more grateful to the Brothers Koch, and so are some other conservative Senate candidates — Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Joni Ernst of Iowa and Colorado’s Cory Gardner. All of them gave command performances at the Kochs’ secret annual retreat and strategy conference in June. Billionaires, millionaires and the officeholders and seekers who love the cash the superrich can offer gathered to celebrate the privileged.

[Vattel]

1. I hate to be deterministic about this, but it is hard to see how

an electoral political system in which lots of money but no expertise is needed to win an election could fail to be dominated by money.

[Cosmocat]

8. Oh, it is going NOWWHERE

90+% re-election rate ...

No motivation whatsoever for these clowns to make the changes that would get money out of it.

It is disturbing and it burns me to no end.

I will vote, but I did all that I could possible do and I was a gnat on a windshield.

[zeemike]

11. And when the gnat dies on the windshield.

they wash you off with a hose.

[cantbeserious]

2. The Oligarchs, Corporations And Banks Own And Control The Politicians That Own And Control Us

eom

[Laelth]

3. k&r for the truth, however depressing it may be. n/t

-Laelth

[Enthusiast]

4. +1. All made possible by a one sided, biased media.

[Dustlawyer]

7. And either apathetic, ignorant, or heartless bastards!

[onethatcares]

5. Since I am out of his district

I went to his homepage and tried to email him asking if he ever quibbled about price.

That gave me a big round nothing. It seems I don't have enough money to even let him know my positions.

[heaven05]

6. super corrupt political system

that is passed off as a democracy "of the people, by the people and for the people" or some order of that. of, by and for the rich people. What a joke. I hate the hypocrisy of human beings passed off as,"Oh deal with it, it's just human failing". Yeah something human choose to be.

[whereisjustice]

9. If you aren't good enough to be a hooker, there's always Congress

[HoosierCowboy]

12. There are certain things

that a lady of the night won't do, they leave that to Mitch.

[justhanginon]

10. McConnell bought breeakfast and

Mr. Andersen may well have bought himself a Senator. Sounds like a fair trade in that whore house dining room.

[Scuba]

13. I take it "political class" is a euphemism for "expensive whore".

[grahamhgreen]

14. war money power