United States of America – model of the free world
For Sale to the biggest liar and the highest bidder
Contact: Elmer Gantry, P. T. Barnum or Charles Ponzi
Ted Folkert
October 31, 2014
This is a costly but curable disease. No, I’m not talking about Ebola. You can tune in to any TV channel, newspaper, or magazine and get nonstop coverage about Ebola. We all know plenty about it. It is a terrible contagious disease which deserves all of the efforts underway to control and overcome it. There is nothing we can add to that conversation.
The costly disease we need to focus on is the contagious, democracy-threatening, disease of inequality, fueled by corporate-inspired, right-wing expounded, special-interest financed, avaricious, hyperbole which is being drummed into the heads of those of us who are unable or unwilling to investigate and educate ourselves on the true facts of the issues that will determine the future of the working class in this country and the sustaining economy upon which our future relies.
The campaign of falsehoods, miss-truths, out-of-context statements, misleading advertisements, and outright lies makes our famous fictional and real swindlers look like beginners. You remember Elmer Gantry, the bible thumping con man, evangelist selling religion to small town America. You member P.T. Barnum, the carnival, circus guy who said: “there’s a sucker born every minute”, and “every crowd has a silver lining’, as he removed money from your pocket and put it in his with his hoaxes. How about Charles Ponzi, well-known for the Ponzi scheme, a clever selling of big paying investments fueled by paying dividends to former investors with new investors’ money, a scheme still quite popular today, particularly on Wall Street.
The shenanigans of Gantry, Barnum, and Ponzi look like chump change compared to the high-stakes game being administered by the corporatists, through the efforts and co-conspiracy of the Republican Party today. The would-be aristocrats today have hooked them up and reeled them in with offers they couldn’t refuse, offers that make the Godfather’s small time crime look like chump change.
We are talking big bucks now. I don’t know how much, but I read about part of what they are willing to spend to get the laws they want and the enforcement of the laws they want.
Check these numbers out: 2014 campaign expenditures for House and Senate races almost $1 billion to date (FEC). This is the money they are willing to spend, not the reward they expect to get from the investment. And the candidates are willing to sell their ideas in order to enjoy the power of office and the monetary rewards down the road for having held the office.
As far as enforcement of our laws is concerned, states who elect judges are now experiencing huge increases in campaign contributions for election of the best justice that money can buy. Not to be casting aspersions upon our elected judges, but how else can we interpret this inevitability. Since the year 2000, $288 million has been the cost of judicial elections. (FEC)
The only way we can break this enormous obstacle to our progress toward democracy is by getting the money out of political campaigns, getting the money out of judicial campaigns, and restoring the intended method of election, candidates running on their merits and on their integrity and on their principles.
As we now know, this won’t happen without a constitutional amendment. But we can start it in the right direction by electing better leaders. And we can start that next Tuesday when we select our choices and cast our votes.
Vote for Democratic candidates. We know where they stand. They stand closer to the working class, closer to the proletariat, further from the plutocrats, further from the corporatists, further from the aristocracy.
Think about it!
Please help us elect better leaders!