That would be the one that you don’t get to vote in. It’s the one that picks who you get to "choose" from when it’s your turn to have some democracy. It’s the primary that happened last weekend when you were busy having heated discussions about ballgate.
The Koch brothers held their first round of auditions to determine who you get to choose from next year, when it’s your turn to nibble on the scraps of democracy that trickle down to you from their table. The contestants who put on their prettiest gowns and tiaras on, and did their prettiest twirl for the Koch brothers in round one were Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz.
You won’t be deciding on whether to give Mitt Romney a third bite at the apple because the Kochs have already decided they’re not interested in any more Mittens. But don’t despair, he can still get in the game if he can land himself a Sheldon Adelson, who hasn’t held his primary yet. Or Mitt could land himself Mitt, although Mitt seems to greedy and risk averse to invest in someone like Mitt so that’s not really likely. Mitt likes to invest in sure things, what with being a vulture capitalist and all. That’s too bad, cause the people who think that losing twice means you have no chance at all really don’t know much about Ronald Reagan. Third time was a charm for that two time loser. But he finally won on his third try, which subsequently led to the rest of us losing. But I digress.
The Kochs have budgeted 889 million dollars to buy the 2016 elections with. That’s not just the presidential race, that’s congress too. That 889 million dollars of democracy they’re going to enjoy is roughly equal to what each party has to spend on the elections. So two guys who inherited a fuckload of Stalin money from their sugar daddy (literally) have one third of the total cash in the coffers to fund the next American election. Isn’t freedom of money speech great? If you have a problem with this form of speech, let me give you some words of wisdom from Mitt Romney; just go get some money speech from your parents so that you can level the playing field.
When I said, "If you have problem with…" I meant, "you obviously have a problem with this form of speech. It doesn’t matter what you call yourself; democrat, republican, independent…you all have a problem with it.
Wanna know who that 22% of republicans who love the money talks system are? Here are some quotes I compiled for you to peruse so you can see for yourself.
“All Citizens United did was to level the playing field for corporate speech…. We now have, I think, the most free and open system we’ve had in modern times.” – Mitch McConnell
“The exposure to this group and to this network and the opportunity to meet so many of you — that really started my trajectory." – Joni Ernst
“I’m really proud of this Supreme Court and the way they’ve been dealing with the issue of First Amendment political speech.” – Mitch McConnell
“I believe in freedom of speech: I think that political spending and political activism is a form of protected speech,” – Marco Rubio
"[The Citizen’s United verdict}a big win for the First Amendment" – John Boehner
"Judicial activism occurs when judges abandon constitutional or statutory meaning and impose their policy preferences instead. A decision that faithfully applies the First Amendment is not activism but rather a proper exercise of the judicial responsibility to keep Congress within its constitutional bounds." – Anthony Dick writing for The National Review
"A vote to oppose these reforms is nothing less than a vote to allow corporate and special interest takeovers of our elections. It is damaging to our democracy. It is precisely what led a Republican President named Theodore Roosevelt to tackle this issue a century ago." – Barack Obama
"Today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision on campaign financing is a shameful step backward toward big money special interests exercising too much influence over American political campaigns." – Senator Mark Begich (D-AK)
"The Supreme Court’s decision represents a step backward for the American people and our nation’s political process." – Nancy Pelosi
"Allowing corporate influence to flow unfettered into federal campaigns will only undermine the confidence the American people have in their government, and serve only to stack the deck further in favor of special interests at the expense of hardworking Americans." – Senator Michael F. Bennet (D-CO)
"With this ill-advised spate of judicial activism, five Supreme Court justices have struck down the distinction between individuals and corporations in election law and opened the floodgates to a hostile corporate takeover of our democratic process." – Representative Rosa L. DeLauro (D-CT)
"The Supreme Court in essence has ruled that corporations can buy elections. If that happens, democracy in America is over." – Alan Grayson (D-FL)
"Today’s Supreme Court ruling is yet another nod to the wealthy corporate interests in this country. This ruling now allows big corporations to spend large amounts of money to influence elections far beyond the ability of individual Americans. The free market free-for-all announced by these justices makes me wonder, ‘What’s next?’ If today’s ruling isn’t legislating from the bench, I don’t know what is." – Mazie K. Hirono (D-HI)
"Today’s decision by Supreme Court is a triumph for special interest and judicial activism at its worst. Overturning the ban on corporate spending on political campaigns opens the floodgates for the corrupting influence and the dominant hand of special interest groups." – Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL)
"I think we need a constitutional amendment to make it clear once and for all that corporations do not have the same free speech rights as individuals." – John Kerry
"The effects of the decision will be to undermine existing law, flood the airwaves with corporate and union advertisements, and undercut landmark reforms that I and many others fought to secure to put elections back in the hands of the American people. In short, today’s decision was a serious disservice to our country. – "Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME)
"The best long-term solution is a constitutional amendment that would prevent the Court from overturning sensible campaign finance regulations." – Senator Tom Udall (D-NM)
"[The] activist element of the Supreme Court struck down key protections of our elections integrity, overturned the will of Congress and the American people, and allowed all corporations to spend without limit in order to elect and defeat candidates and influence policy to meet their political ends. The consequences may well be nightmarish." – Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
"The ruling will, to a significant degree, give control of the political process in the United States to the wealthiest and most powerful institutions in the world and the candidates who support their agenda. Instead of democracy being about one-person one-vote, it will now be about the size of a company’s bank account." – Senator Bernard Sanders (I-VT)
Do you see a pattern here? No you don’t, cause everyone knows that both parties are exactly the same. There is no difference between them at all, right?
At this moment, democrats are being outspent by republicans to the tune of two to one. What do you think they’re going to have to do to level the "speech"? Could declining to prosecute a single banker for tanking the world’s economy perhaps be the only path forward?
Look, I don’t know how many democrats are earnest in their desire to give us back our democracy, but I know that we’ll never find out until we actually get money out of politics. I’m not going to attribute things like Obama’s inaction on regulating Wall Street to corruption, until we see him actually make a choice. You cannot call democrats hypocrites until they are in a position of making a choice to serve corporations, rather than the people. They don’t have a choice right now so we can’t really tell how many of them are genuinely corrupt (there are a significant number who are, I’m not kidding myself about that) and how many are just forced to play the money speech game.
Or maybe both parties are exactly the same and you should not bother looking for differences or even voting. Become a libertarian……………like the Koch Brothers. Oh, wait.
