Oligarchs are ruining America. They are ruining the economy through their rampant theft and corporate welfare handouts. They are ruining our social structure with their billions used to buy and sell politicians as well as entire Presidential elections. They represent an existential threat to the Republic and the cancer needs to be addressed at once.
Oligarchs now control both phony political parties. On the Democratic side, we have Warren “tax loophole” Buffett and George Soros. On the Republican side, we must become increasingly aware of casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who boasts an estimated net worth of around $37 billion.
For those still daydreaming that the GOP may nominate a more libertarian-leaning candidate in 2016, rather than the typical big government, warmongering neo-con, the biggest obstacle in your way is Sheldon Adelson and his billions. This threat was on clear display this past weekend in Vegas when Chris Christie, Paul Walker and Jeb Bush all made the pilgrimage to “kiss his ring.”
The serious threat to our political system posed by Adelson was covered by both “left-leaning” and “right-leaning” commentators (although I hate those terms). First, Juan Cole writes at Bill Moyers that:
A series of pro-corporation Supreme Court decisions and the latter’s disingenuous equation of money with speech, including Citizens United, have turned the United States from a democracy to a plutocracy. It is not even a transparent plutocracy, since black money (of unknown provenance) has been allowed by SCOTUS to flood into elections. These developments are not only deadly to democracy, they threaten our security. It is increasingly difficult to exclude foreign money from US political donations. We not only come to be ruled by the billionaires, but even by foreign billionaires with foreign rather than American interests at heart.
The perniciousness of this growing plutocracy was on full display on Saturday, as GOP governors Scott Walker, Chris Christie and John Kasich trekked off to Las Vegas in an attempt to attract hundreds of millions in campaign donations from sleazy casino lord Sheldon Adelson. Since Adelson is allegedly worth $37 billion, he could fund the Republican side of a presidential election (which costs $1 billion) all by himself. In the last presidential election he is said to have donated $100 million.
One important thing he thing he failed to mention was that Jeb Bush was also there, featuring prominently at a private dinner with Adelson and others.
The case of Adelson exhibits all these issues of corruption and eccentricity. Much of his current fortune is recent and derives from the Macao casino, and Adelson has admitted to “likely” breaking Federal rules against using bribes to do business in other countries. (A reference to allegations that his company was involved in rewarding legislators of the Chinese Communist Party for supporting his Macao project.) There was a time when this admission alone would put the donor off limits for mainstream politicians.
Adelson has a right to vote and advocate for his candidates. But the idea that he and his like should choose the next president is too awful to contemplate. One person, one vote isn’t one person, $100 million worth of votes. That isn’t democracy…
CBS has also chimed in with some interesting commentary:
Both Christie and Bush are cut from the same mainstream Republican cloth: well liked by the donor class and viewed suspiciously by conservative activists. If they both compete in 2016 — and to be clear, neither has decided on a bid — they’ll be fighting for the roughly same slice of the Republican pie, and perhaps more importantly, many of the same donors.
But as Christie stumbled, Bush soared. The former governor was feted at a private dinner on Thursday to kick off the weekend. The dinner was held at Adelson’s private airplane hangar.
Bush delivered brief remarks at the dinner, and after one attendee urged him to run for president, the crowd of donors burst into applause, according to a report in the Washington Post.
That report described how many of the GOP’s top money men are giving Jeb Bush a fresh look in light of Christie’s recent struggles.
“He’s the most desired candidate out there,” Brian Ballard, a prominent bundler for both John McCain and Mitt Romney, told the Post. “Everybody that I know is excited about it.”
Finally, conservative pundit Patrick Buchanan notes:
Victor Chaltiel, a major donor and Adelson friend who sits on the board of Las Vegas Sands, tells us Sheldon “doesn’t want a crazy extremist to be the nominee.” Adds Shawn Steel, a big California GOP money man, Sheldon is a “very rational guy.”
Perhaps. But last fall at Yeshiva University, this “very rational guy” gave this response to a question from Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on whether he supports U.S. negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program:
“No. What do you mean support negotiations? What are we going to negotiate about? What I would say is, ‘Listen, you see that desert out there, I want to show you something.’ … You pick up your cell phone and you call somewhere in Nebraska and you say, ‘OK let it go.’
“So, there’s an atomic weapon, goes over ballistic missiles, the middle of the desert, that doesn’t hurt a soul. Maybe a couple of rattlesnakes, and scorpions, or whatever.
“And then you say, ‘See! The next one is in the middle of Tehran. So, we mean business. You want to be wiped out? Go ahead and take a tough position and continue with your nuclear development.
Those are the words of the guy who is likely to determine the Republican Presidential nominee.
It’s incredibly disturbing that what we may end up with is another Bush running for the White House in 2016. Meanwhile, we all know Hilary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. Of the hundreds of millions of Americans, why must we stick to two families (let’s not forget how Jeb Bush presented the “Liberty Medal” to Hillary Clinton last summer).
Face it, America today is far more similar to feudalism than a democracy or a republic.
It’s well past time we rein in the oligarchs.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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I always like a good conspiracy theory, especially because of the long record of successful ones. Many people, pointing to the similarity of the East India Tea Company flag, and the US flag, conclude that the situation you describe has *always* been operating.
What’s different is that now they are exposed, and that exposure is approximately permanent.
“It’s well past time we rein in the oligarchs.”
How, exactly, do you propose to do so?
The System: Deserving Contempt, Resistance and Undermining–
The thing is Farnish’s goal for undermining goes all the way– to the point that the industrial world is totally undermined and no longer working. That would put people in a situation where they depended entirely on local resources. He says that’s necessary .
“… we need to be looking smaller, yes we need to be banding into communities that are self sufficient, there’s no way we can exist in using any form of mass anything, which is destructive. Therefore we have to start breaking things down into smaller chunks.
We need to be more self controlling. We need to understand that global government and even national government are only in it for the interests of the greater corporate world. But once you start getting local, we call it local government, local administration, then you get a lot more control back. So I can see the argument and that is an inevitable outcome of undermining these great industrial worlds.”
So I say to you. What are you doing with the rest of your life? What can you do to make humanity better? What can you do to make the world a little bit better for your children and your grandchildren?
The answer is, a hell of a lot. My hope is that this article will stretch the boundaries of your imagination. You have the potential for a bigger vision and you’ll have to fight for it. Many of the tools of disconnection that Farnish refers to are built to restrict and limit your imagination. You can do ANYTHING. Some of those anythings may cost you more than you are willing to pay. But at the least, please, please expand your view and think of all the possibilities. Snowden was not the first whistleblower. Neither was Daniel Ellsberg.
And please, don’t try to do this alone. Connect, connect, connect. That’s the way bottom-up change is made to happen. Simply connecting in new ways to the same or new people in your communities can be revolutionary, can be undermining can be resistance. Like Jim Scott says. Do something every day. Raise your voice. Expose the lies of the dominating system. Take public the secrets that the billionaires, the corrupt politicians hold tight. Refuse! Refuse to follow the rules that most people accept as mandatory. A few years back police were arresting people who shot videos or photos of them. But people kept at it, exposing their acts, rejecting their orders to stop, REFUSING to give up their rights. Now, not only has the law made it clear that you CAN videotape police, but the police are beginning to record themselves. I’m sure it will be a battle, getting public access to ALL police recordings. But it could happen. Stand up and refuse. In his brilliant book, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, James C. Scott says, “Any public refusal, in the teeth of power, to produce the words, gestures, and other signs of normative compliance is typically construed– and typically intended — as an act of defiance.” Scott points out, “ON very rare occasions when what has been orchestrated as a mass public demonstration of domination and enthusiastic consent erupts into a public display of repudiation from below, the ‘formidable shadow of general impotence’ becomes what can only be described as a symbolic rout.”
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-System-Deserving-Cont-by-Rob-Kall-Bottom-up_Resistance_Revolution_The-Machine-140331-587.html
start here… spread the word, buy local avoid mnc when you can, help others.
To the degree that people can find a local market, and pull a profit, more power to them.
! But “going local” isn’t actually an option for everyone, nor is it always the least resource-intensive.
Local lobster in LA would require massive cooling systems for the cold water such creatures need to live, using far more fuel and material and highly-demanded space than just shipping grown lobsters from up the coast. Of course that is just one of literally millions of examples.
In short, our massively intricate division of labor is absolutely required to support billions of people, and some of those connections are thousands of miles long, and should be.
We can’t grow back into the womb, and we don’t need to.
If wasting fuel and resources is the primary consideration, then our top priority should be putting domes over all the major cities. Not only would it decrease our national heating bill by 90% (which is the primary use of energy in developed nations) we could also start capturing billions of tons of ‘pollution’ that could be recycled for the industrial processes that produced it. Nope, not kidding – the math makes that conclusion inescapable. That’s not even talking about the massive savings a city could reap, keeping out the weather and avoiding the snow-removal, storm damage, etc.
“Going local” with respect to political power has a lot to recommend it, however, for precisely the same reason: I want politicians limited in their scope. Simply comparing the dollar amounts spend by massive companies versus massive bureaucracies makes that case – those Leviathans need to be cut back.
Anyone seeking to serve humanity or save the planet absolutely must contend with the master, Konosuke Matsushita:
“As Henry Ford demonstrated, once production of goods in large quantities is possible, their price can naturally be reduced by that much, and we followed in his footsteps.”
He’s also the one who explained why it’s morally wrong to fail to make a profit:
“If we cannot make a profit, that means we are committing a sort of crime against society. We take society’s capital, we take their people, we take their materials, yet without a good profit, we are using precious resources that could be better used elsewhere.”
http://www.quoteswise.com/konosuke-matsushita-quotes.html
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152219709367726&set=pb.5978057725.-2207520000.1396378665.&type=3&src=https%3A%2F%2Fscontent-b-sea.xx.fbcdn.net%2Fhphotos-ash3%2Ft1.0-9%2F1897023_10152219709367726_1128801286_n.jpg&size=308%2C306
I really can’t believe the audacity of these oligarchs to have a Bush and Clinton in the running again. Simply amazing.
Sheldon as a Pres candidate? If I read that right I’d have to say it’s a laughable proposition. If he bribed the 125 million Americans who voted in 2012 with $250 each thereby burning through most of his personal stash, he’d still get slaughtered. Of course he’d more likely give $1million to 30,000 key movers & shakers and just steal the thing in the usual way.
It kills me that so many authors make such great points in their articles, but continue to foster the notion that this country is or ever was a “democracy”. It was founded as a constitutional republic which was undermined in short order by corporatism and plutocracy. Democracy is nothing more than mob rule. We don’t have that…yet.
Pressing ‘Democracy’ was a deliberate plant of the Communists back in the 50s and 60s.
It might be the excess of democracy that enabled the corporate buyout by Machiavelli, Machiavelli, Atoms & Oil, who are quite prepared to prove the completely legal nature of their purchase.
What if presidents and senators were once again chosen by the state legislatures? Can’t sell the rubes if the rubes aren’t calling all the shots.
Some might even say it’s time to use the ‘democracy’ to start a constitutional convention (and declare open season on any federal parties who try to take a hand.)
What if juries across the US simply refused to convict when the law in question couldn’t be understood by anyone in the room?