Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Super PACS- Another Tool for the Governing Elite

Here is the situation. We have a worthless Congress choking on its self made problems. It has an all time low 12% positive rating by the citizens. We are saddled with an ineffective executive branch which is baffled and outmaneuvered by the worthless Congress. The entire mess is managed by two self serving, and corrupt political parties whose primary interest is to stay in power with the status quo. The national ruling elite have no answers to this status and little inclination to try to find any. They are awash with tired ideologies that have been proven not to work 20 years ago. Our great country is being wasted and unable to serve its citizens. It is so serious that the citizens are beginning to occupy the streets in serious protest.


We need productive change to our governance. We will only get it when we elect effective governments. For that we need truthful and useful information on the candidates.

Working against truth and balanced discussion is a 2010 decision by the Supreme Court that allowed corporations to make unlimited contributions to Political Action Committees (PACS) directly from their treasuries. They cannot make these contributions directly to a candidate so they make them through “super PACs” that are formed especially to create large political expenditures for political purposes. This allows corporations to provide then with unlimited funds. With these resources they can instantly create floods of negative media against reform candidates.

For an example of the role super PACS can play consider the Republican Party primary elections. Of the six potential candidates there are two that are proposing several anti statist solutions for consideration. In view of the shortage of productive ideas with which the part y has been plagued you would hope that the party would welcome an informed discussion of these ideas. No so. When polling showed that the citizens were swinging strongly toward both of the candidates it caused a panic throughout the Republican establishment. Gingrich took a commanding lead over the statist Romney, while Paul also climbed rapidly in the polls.

The statists immediately released a barrage of super PAC funded negative media directed at the two unflavored candidate. Those shown in Iowa are loaded with ignorance, misquotes and half truths related to events going back over 20 years.

They were effective. Gingrich admitted the difficulty of countering the cash rich super PACS media supporting Romney. NPR reports that the attempt to counter with positive ads is not working. Within a week the Gingrich large leads in the polls have disappeared.

We have just put another powerful tool in the hands of the governing elite. They are apparently anxious to use it to further muddy up our already weakened election process. Regardless of your candidate this is bad for democracy.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Two Important Events Last Week

Occupy Comes to DC

The 99% have come to challenge what many people feel is the primary obstacle to reform.  The corrupt Congress of the United State and the special interest lobbyists that feed them. The lead organization is Occupy DC which is a solidarity partner with OccupyWallStreet.
Their intent is to call attention to all of the Washington landmark institutions that are favoring the 1% to the detriment of the 99%. First actions were marches to the lobbyist’s offices on K Street, the Capitol Building, the White House, and the Supreme Court. There are additional actions on many more Washington landmarks.

They have been tightly controlled by police. A temporary building installed near K Street was forced to be dismantled by the police. Lots of arrests but the occupiers have been peaceful-no violence. The effort to shut them down seems to be underway.

They say they will stay until the government responds. It will probably be a long visit. We wish them luck.

Newt Gingrich Takes a Commanding Lead in the Republican Presidential Race

This really has the leading elite and their media confused

Newt has a distinguished list of enemies. He is hated by the party elite, the media, and those who were his colleagues in Congress. Considering the job this bunch have been doing Newt may be just the person we need.

Remembering his activities in the 90’s It is hard to imagine that once elected he would follow the irrational do nothing policies of the current Republican party. Surely with his pride he will be looking for aggressive and radical solutions to our problems. Backed up by his intelligence he could apply some major reforms to the party and our whole corrupt system. But there is a predictability problem. At this point we don’t know his real intentions because they are masked by the stupidities he must spout to win the primary.

Those 90’s years when he was leading the House do look pretty good in comparison to today. Granted, he used a lot of hypocrisy to reach his goals. Working with a Democratic President he brought us a balanced budget, got rampart welfare under control, and is a rare Republican that favors cutting the oil company subsidies. The House of Representative that he led with Clinton as President makes the current Congress look feeble. He certainly is not a run-of-the-mill politician.

The Democrats say they would love to run against him, but they had better be careful.

His 20 yr old personal baggage that they hope to use against him seems pretty mild when compared to our current embedded government corruption. You can review his personal history in Wikipedia and reach your own conclusions.

Both important events to watch.