Government for the People, By the Corporations!!!!

Look, it's no secret that the $10 million dollars spent by the Healthcare Insurance industry did the trick in blocking and true, substantial healthcare reform (I don't GIVE A FUCK, what Obama and the White House says in the coming days and weeks, we The People, have been had).

But what's even more insidious is the court case going up to The Nine as the new term begins. Chief Justice Roberts begged to have the Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee get examined. This is the court case revolving around that smear video that was released during the Democratic Primary that made Hillary Clinton look unworthy of public office. The crux of the case is that Citizens United wants corporations to have GREATER rights that the average (or even above average) American Citizen. Citizens United wants to enable corporations to have unlimited campaign finance contributions during the last 30 days of an election cycle. Citizen United wants to Corporate Speech even MORE POWER to sway voters and influence the outcome of elections!

It's been clearly stated, proved and other proclaimed as fact that Corporate Speech (wtf?) is corrosive and distorting from jump!

If you want to hear the actual arguments from both sides in front of the Supreme Court, check out NPR's Supreme Court primer. I don't know how many times, if any, that you've heard people argue in front of the Supreme Court, but I never have... and I found it fascinating. Not being a legal scholar, many of the cases cited were beyond even me, but you'd easily get the drift (and I think the Oral Arguments are released as transcripts later, so you can do your own specific research).

The lawyer arguing for the right for Corporations to be make political campaign contributions that far outstrip what citizens can dig into their wallets and drop. In addition, Corporations can write off the contribution and/or borrow the money at interest rates that normal citizens can't get, therefore their political contribution power is WAY distorting.

The one thing I see, or rather hear, is that the GOP-backed Citizens United wants to hand over control of our electoral process to Big Business lock, stock and barrel. It's some complete bullshit that no Senator or Representative wants to supreme attack campaign finance and/or give the Federal Election Committee near autonomous power to re-regulate the elections in this country. The election cycle for these large scale offices shouldn't be more than 3 months tops! And the money needs to be capped and provided by the government, fuck allowing ANY private citizen or corporation to make any contributions to a candidates war chest.

If corporations obtain the power they're after, we could see foreign sovereign wealth funds buy up US corporations and be able to actively influence the way out country is governed!

The sad thing is I can't even urge you to pester your Congressperson and Senator about blocking this unholy opportunity, because the Supreme Court will be making the ruling that will decide the fate of democracy in this country. If the Nine allow corporations to actually have more rights and privileges that Joe Sixpack, then what's the point of having a Constitution?

Speaking of the Supreme Court, we're coming up on 20 years of having Uncle Tom Clarence Thomas on the bench, and he's been Scalia's lapdog for far too long. And since he's ineffectual, why doesn't he step down? He's gonna be one of these bastards that dies in office...

Their Power Is Unparralled

We don't even really know how tight the Corporate Power Structure

There was a recent episode of Warren Olney's Show Which Way L.A. in which he was discussing the fact that most medical students avoid being general practitioners because the pay is so low and the cost to run an office and deal with the bullshit insurance bureaucracy siphons off any kind of cash that they may make. This doctor from the heartland of California was talking about how specialists get three and four times the amount, when a regular internist can provide the same care. And another doctor was stating that the drug companies pay kickbacks and bonuses to doctors who prescribe their pharmaceuticals... or the sales reps for the expense ass machines like MRIs also pay kickbacks when those machines are incorporated in part of the regimen for ATTEMPTING to deduce what is wrong with someone. The fact that all these doctors and hospitals are in the pocket on the Drug Companies isn't shocking, it's appalling. It makes you wonder if you can really trust the diagnosis, because the doctor making the claims could be making enough cash for the mortgage on his vacation home by slangin' oxycontin or xanax or God knows what other drug is being prescribed (like all the fucking anti-depressant drugs that are on the market. There's even boost Anti-Depressants that extent the reach of shit like Zoloft.

Americans need to be very afraid of the Corporate Power Structure, it's not just the military industrial complex that we need to be vigilant about, it's the financial-industrial-chemical complex that is standing with its foot on our neck, and must people are just too dumb to realize it.

Paul Krugman's NYTimes Editorial excoriated the right-wing/GOP/Confederates and the outright lies that they're offering the public as the alternative to Obama-care; these lies serve who? You guessed it!

But Krugman makes some interesting points about how potentially ungovernable the nation is (just like California has proven to be), because of the lines drawn in the sand by the members of the Republican / Confederate party, "Given the combination of G.O.P. extremism and corporate power, it’s now doubtful whether health reform, even if we get it — which is by no means certain — will be anywhere near as good as Nixon’s proposal (you have to read the whole article for this explanation), even though Democrats control the White House and have a large Congressional majority.

And what about other challenges? Every desperately needed reform I can think of, from controlling greenhouse gases to restoring fiscal balance, will have to run the same gauntlet of lobbying and lies.

I’m not saying that reformers should give up. They do, however, have to realize what they’re up against. There was a lot of talk last year about how Barack Obama would be a “transformational” president — but true transformation, it turns out, requires a lot more than electing one telegenic leader. Actually turning this country around is going to take years of siege warfare against deeply entrenched interests, defending a deeply dysfunctional political system."

So where are we when it comes to uncuffing the LLC Shackles? When these idiots in the town hall meetings scream that they want their America back, I somehow doubt they mean the pre-70s America, when corporate lobbyists and interests didn't steal the governing from Main Street and put all the decisions in the hands of Wall Street and those sitting in boardrooms smoking cigar and sipping brandy, chuckling gleefully as they continue to bad their pockets at the expense of the hard working people who make up the dramatically dwindling middle class.