Saturday, August 09, 2003

The Corporate Cancer on Democracy     Convicted car thief and California congressman Daryl Issa spent over $1 million  to hire paid agents to overturn the results of the California gubnatorial election of 2002.  When it turned out that he would be a midget in the field of candidates, and his criminal record would get wide play, he withdrew.  Now the people of California have to pick up the mess, at a cost of millions of dollars, not simply for the election, but in higher payments across the board because the recall has damaged the state’s credit ratings.   During Bill Clinton’s term, political enemies not satisfied with the outcome of the election were bankrolled by Richard Scaife, who alone was largely responsible for the attacks on Clinton via Whitewater and the Paula Jones attack, which led to the whole Lewinski scandal.    So it is not hard to argue that a significant part of the political turmoil that has wracked the U.S. over the past decade, including the take over of the Republican party by anti-democratic totalitarians like Tom Delay, has largely occurred because of the financing of political attacks by secretive fascist like corporate manipulators.   The root of the problem, the single thing that exposes democracy to this mortal danger in the U.S., is the acceptance of the corporation as having the same political rights as individuals.  Corporations, despite being limited in name only, are actually the primary source of money in politics---they pay salaries and bonuses that have no relationship to any value, and then the executives who receive these riches, turn around and funnel money to their candidates, investigations, and causes that will further enhance the profits and power of their corporations.   So, we have a vicious 8 year long attack on Bill Clinton, funded by corporate money, the funding of attacks on the Florida recount which gave Bush the presidency, and now the overthrow of the 2002 election in California, again bought and paid for by corporate money.    Both political parties are useless in restoring a balance, because they are equally addicted to paying expensive legislative favors to rich backers who fund their campaigns.   To restore a people’s democracy, we need to disenfranchise corporations and limit the power of the wealthy to political speech commensurate with their status as one out of 250 million individuals.   The attacks we are witnessing today, such as the one in California by Daryl Issa, are no less a threat to American democracy than were the attacks on the Weimar republic in Germany in the 1930’s.  Then, those who wanted to destroy it attacked the Weimar republic as dysfunctional.  Today the right wing anti-democrats are willing to use tools of democracy to destroy democratic values.  They want to destroy any political choice of the American people different than their own, so they can substitute their own ideological conservative agenda:  that government itself is the enemy.  This is the work of totalitarians, not democrats.  10:45:38 PM   comment []

© Copyright 2003 Toby Sackton. Last update: 9/27/2003; 4:51:43 PM.