Over at a fantastic "just working folks" blog, Campaign For America's Future , Dave Johnson responds to Whirlpool's response to Dave's post last week titled
"Whirlpool Bites Hands Of American Taxpayers That Feed It".
It's a great read and from the what it's worth department, my response is below.
I agree completely with Dave's response to Whirlpool's "clarification", we do indeed have only ourselves to blame - I fear the damage to our Democracy may be irreparable.
The 1976 Buckley V Valeo Supreme Court decision, assuring "he who has the gold gets to speak", was the deathblow to 40 years of societal progress and the The New Deal; as Rehnquist and the Republicans intended.
They realized that just funding blatant propaganda outlets and employing every Randian hack they could find was hardly enough to implement the radical change they yearned for, so, much like the recent Citizen's decision, ideologues on the court determined that those who sole goal in life was to advocate for the rich, powerful, and rapacious, needed a little hand up in order for the wealthy to be treated fairly by the unwashed masses.
The only correct solution, the one that everyone avoids going back many, many years, is passing a Constitutional Amendment banning all private campaign contributions with full public funding.
The very notion that the left and unions could compete with billionaires and corporations, notwithstanding Obama's fundraising machine, is ridiculous and always has been.
Scalia, Roberts, and their ilk want the voices of the masses drowned out. Not one single issue facing Americans (see 290 bills waiting in the Senate) will be addressed on the merits until our elected representatives don't have to pander virtually on a daily basis for the means to keep their jobs.
It's appalling, it's stupid, and it's not going to get better until "We The People" stand up.
We bemoan Whirlpool's acts righteously, for their otherwise justifiable cold hard business decisions in a market that long ago determined the best bang for their buck (outside of outsourcing), was buying off politicians equally victimized by this asinine election system.
How many of you, dear readers, were aware of the fact that in the eighties Dan Quayle was head of something called the Executive Council or some such thing - I can't remember exactly - where he went to corporations and offered tax incentives (our money), to encourage them to shut down and move to the Carribean?
Bartlett & Steele of the Philadelphia Inquirer (at that time) wrote a series of books in the mid-nineties that laid all of this out in painful detail ("America - What Went Wrong?", "America - Who Really Pays Taxes", and "America - Who Stole The Dream?").
About how we were selling our country to the highest bidder with predictable results, subsidizing horse racing for the wealthy and granting tax exempt status to cruise lines deriving all of their income from the U.S., etc, etc, etc.; while missing no opportunity to transfer the cost of running the country to the backs of the middle and lower classes and hold down wages.
I would advise Whirlpool and their ilk thusly:
Be ahead of the tsunami of populist rage when the masses finally figure out how to wrest our Democracy back from your minions, implementing rules that once again make it MORE profitable to both make and spend your profits in America.
Be real afraid if the "Reagan Democrats" and other poor people, after voting against their interests for a generation, suddenly realize what dupes they've been - as well as traitors to their class.
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