Repost by Jared Drucker : Yesterday the Senate voted down a bill that proposed to reform campaign financing, effectively overturn Citizens United, and restore what little democracy we have left in this country. A pro-corporate Supreme Court has, for the last century, slowly chipped away at the boundaries that prevent corporate wealth from hijacking our government and left us with legal precedent that now allows wealthy private special interest to donate unlimited amounts of money to candidates. What this effectively does is 1) places those who receive these donations (which, mind you, is all politicians) in a position where they are forced to repay their donors special interest with favorable legislation; & 2) requires politicians to spend the majority of their time fund raising and not focusing on their job which is to represent you, their constituents who voted them in office. Although the vote was 54:42 in favor of passing the bill it was not enough, and though the vote was down partisan lines in the Senate, this is an issue that will affect us all liberal, conservative, democrat, republican, progressive, libertarian alike. With out the power to effectively take part in our own democracy, we all loose to those who can afford to effectively buy our politicians. Ill give you one blatant example of our loss of democracy. Regardless of your stance on the 2nd amendment, after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, polls indicated that 90% of the American people want SOME form of gun legislation passed, big or small, to prevent incidents like that from happening in the future. With 90% of voters in agreement, getting change should have been in the bag - yet nothing changed following those events due to highly influential, highly motivated, and very well funded lobbyist that represented the gun manufacturers who stood to loose money if gun laws were passed. 90% of the populous was in agreement, and nothing changed because a small group had power and influence, namely money, to prevent it. This is not propaganda, this is happening right now. Educate yourselves and take action. This is not democracy, it is plutocracy. m.thenation/blog/181590-senate-tried-overturn-citizens-united-today-guess-what-stopped-them
Posted on: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 18:05:34 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015