woo me with science
woo me with science's JournalWell, well, well. Lying and publicizing good intentions in the budget,
while working behind the scenes to do exactly the opposite.
This is your government corrupted by corporate money.
Good fucking god, we are bought and sold.
+1000000 To pretend that politics today is about one party versus another
is to entirely miss how corporatism works and fall for the theater and the con game. All these corporate thieves donate to both parties, and they live in both parties now.
The driving motivation of corporatists is not to side with one party to beat the other party. It is to use the parties in whatever way works to ensure continuation of the corporate agenda that grows corporate wealth and power.
Emotional infatuation and loyalty to party are for the masses, to keep us divided and tribal and distracted from the real bipartisan corporate agenda. The only loyalty corporatists have is to their own empowerment, and they happily work across party lines to achieve that.
The goal is never majorities. The goal is always closely divided government,
and both corporate parties will work hard to ensure continued closely divided government.
Corporatists depend on the illusion of gridlock to sustain the excuse of being unable to stop the corporate agenda. A party with strong majorities cannot continue to claim to be unable to respond to the will of the People.
The con game is very familiar by now:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=337938
For so long we mysteriously fell short of Democratic votes for filibuster reform.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021809132
The Democratic Partys deceitful game
http://www.salon.com/2010/02/23/democrats_34/
The Democratic Partys deceitful game
They are willing to bravely support any progressive bill as long as there's no chance it can pass
By Glenn Greenwald
Democrats perpetrate the same scam over and over on their own supporters, and this illustrates perfectly how its played:
.... Rockefeller was willing to be a righteous champion for the public option as long as it had no chance of passing...But now that Democrats are strongly considering the reconciliation process which will allow passage with only 50 rather than 60 votes and thus enable them to enact a public option Rockefeller is suddenly inclined to oppose it because he doesnt think the timing of it is very good and its too partisan. What strange excuses for someone to make with regard to a provision that he claimed, a mere five months ago (when he knew it couldnt pass), was such a moral and policy imperative that he would not relent in ensuring its enactment.
The Obama White House did the same thing. As I wrote back in August, the evidence was clear that while the President was publicly claiming that he supported the public option, the White House, in private, was doing everything possible to ensure its exclusion from the final bill (in order not to alienate the health insurance industry by providing competition for it). Yesterday, Obama while having his aides signal that they would use reconciliation if necessary finally unveiled his first-ever health care plan as President, and guess what it did not include? The public option, which he spent all year insisting that he favored oh-so-much but sadly could not get enacted: Gosh, I really want the public option, but we just dont have 60 votes for it; what can I do?. As I documented in my contribution to the NYT forum yesterday, now that theres a 50-vote mechanism to pass it, his own proposed bill suddenly excludes it.
This is what the Democratic Party does...Theyre willing to feign support for anything their voters want just as long as theres no chance that they can pass it. They won control of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections by pretending they wanted to compel an end to the Iraq War and Bush surveillance and interrogation abuses because they knew they would not actually do so; and indeed, once they were given the majority, the Democratic-controlled Congress continued to fund the war without conditions, to legalize Bushs eavesdropping program, and to do nothing to stop Bushs habeas and interrogation abuses (Gosh, what can we do? We just dont have 60 votes).
The primary tactic in this game is Villain Rotation. They always have a handful of Democratic Senators announce that they will be the ones to deviate this time from the ostensible party position and impede success, but the designated Villain constantly shifts, so the Party itself can claim it supports these measures while an always-changing handful of their members invariably prevent it. One minute, its Jay Rockefeller as the Prime Villain leading the way in protecting Bush surveillance programs and demanding telecom immunity; the next minute, its Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Schumer joining hands and breaking with their party to ensure Michael Mukaseys confirmation as Attorney General; then its Big Bad Joe Lieberman single-handedly blocking Medicare expansion; then its Blanche Lincoln and Jim Webb joining with Lindsey Graham to support the de-funding of civilian trials for Terrorists; and now that they cant blame Lieberman or Ben Nelson any longer on health care (since they dont need 60 votes), Jay Rockefeller voluntarily returns to the Villain Role, stepping up to put an end to the pretend-movement among Senate Democrats to enact the public option via reconciliation.
TWENTY-THREE PERCENT.
It was not a recovery. It was a deliberate restructuring to benefit the One Percent.
No, the chocolate ration has not been increased. First goal is to get corporate money out of politics and government so that
1) the two corporate parties stop working aggressively on behalf of corporate interests and against the interests of the people[/font color]
and
2) they start pouring resources into actual help for the 99 percent [font color=brown]instead of into relentless advertising to put lipstick on this pig of a corporate agenda: protection of criminal banks, corporate schools, Monsanto, drilling, nukes, wars of choice, austerity, TPP, TISA, etc, etc., etc. ad nauseum.
The "new normal" of oligarchy.
I remember feeling sick in the pit of my stomach the first time I heard that term, " the new normal," on a Sunday talk show years ago.
Whoever used it was lambasted for being a doomsayer.
Many of us knew better. As bvar22 has written here many times, what has been done to this country, massive transfer of wealth and power to a very few, does not happen by accident.
Profile Information
Member since: Tue Jan 13, 2004, 10:24 PMNumber of posts: 32,139