Tag Archives: Citizens United

Cry me a river, mitch…

Well…you know I’ve railed about the oozing hypocrisy that coats everyone on the right and gets worse every time one of these morons opens his or her mouth…and now we have the hypocrite in chief, ole moscow mitch, crying his eyes out that corporations are being mean to repubs by opposing their attempts to suppress votes of black and brown people by speaking out against them…and the hypocrisy is not just oozing from ole mitch but is flooding out as fast as the pollution from the retention ponds in Florida. Let’s take a little walk back to 2011 when mitch was full of glee that the SC ruled that corporations had free speech rights to spend as much money as they want in an election in the Citizen’s United decision….and ole mitch couldn’t heap enough praise on it since he knew that most companies would give more to repubs than dems…but now? The hypocrite mitch is howling that companies should shut up and not interfere in the political process…but only if it goes against what the repubs want…and he has gone so far as saying that companies will “pay” if they keep it up…a not so subtle or legal threat that the tax breaks, etc. that the repubs have lavished on companies over the years might be at risk if they keep telling the truth about the repubs efforts to cheat in the 2022 elections. Suck it up, mitch…you can’t have it both ways…and companies are looking at the demographics of their customer base and it is more than just the old white people that the repubs serve….and you can bet they won’t want to alienate much more than 50% of their customers who are now black, brown, and lgbt people….just keep it up mitch…you’re speeding up the death of the repub party by this crap and that death can’t happen soon enough….

Less than two weeks to go…

Well….it’s less than two weeks to go until the election and I am happy that the season is almost over….one of the takeaways from this one is how corrosive Citizens United is to democracy….and the fact that dark money from the repub side is flooding into senate races to the tune of 25 million dollars for the last two weeks for just 6 seats just shows that they are poised to buy the election…but, the simple fact is that if we vote, we win…no matter how much money the other side spends…if we vote, we win. I really do hope that Trump is toxic for the down ballot races here in Michigan so we have at least a chance of taking back the house here to stop the tea party idiots and Snyder from doing more damage…..first they tax my retirement and give it to Ceo’s, then they poison an entire city and think it’s okay since they are not republicans….just need everyone to get out and vote…we need the supreme court to go back to following the constitution, not ideology…geez…

Need to start thinking about catching up…

Well…it’s only halfway through the month and I’m already thinking about being behind so I thought I’d do one more right now and then the world cup one later….I am still stewing about the Hobby Lobby decision that gives employers the right to control their workers when not on the job…and it is so against the first amendment that I think the 5 catholics on the court that made the decision should be impeached….but, not only for this case, there is also the citizens united case that gave corporations free speech rights to spend as much they want to buy elections, and that overturned a hundred years of precedents…and, these are not aberrations, they are the ideology that these guys are pushing…that the rich and corporations are just a little more equal than the rest of us…just like the pigs in “Animal Farm”…..a cautionary tale that everyone should have read in high school…and that specifically had the point that inequality destroys societies…but these guys just don’t care, they have a vision of the rich running and ruining everyone’s lives and they are doing their best to make sure that happens…geez…

Go Harry…

Well…today is not much better than yesterday but I thought I’d better do something here or none of you will keep coming back here…so, I thought I’d touch on the new constitutional amendment being proposed by Harry Reid that will reverse the wrongheaded supreme court decisions in Citizens United and McCutcheon that allows unlimited dark money into political campaigns. He specifically said what we all believe…at least the sane of us…that corporations are not people and money is not speech….both of these decisions reversed a hundred years of precedent and negated laws that are really necessary if we are to protect our democracy from the corrosive effect of money as evidenced by the Kochs trying to buy themselves the senate; to ensure their dirty energy profits forever. I know that this amendment is tilting at windmills…the chance of its passage is remote at best…but the political use of championing it is necessary to put the repubs on the spot for supporting this unlimited money…and their constantly kissing the Kochs asses…geez…

They couldn’t see this?

Well…have been reading this week about how much money the Kochs spent in the last election cycle and it just makes me sick…412 million dollars…yep, you heard it right 412 million dollars from just two guys trying to buy themselves a democracy…and anyone that calls him/herself a tea partier, has had their seat in the congress bought by these two idiots…and, the one thing I want you to remember is that they are not just giving this money away out of the goodness of their hearts…they want something for it…they want what they have been given in Wisconsin for example…where their toady Walker and the rest of the repubs there have gutted the rights of the people to organize…they have been given right to work here in Michigan since the Kochs hate workers and unions….you get my drift…that just two brothers could do so much to damage the middle class and environment has one cause and one cause only…the supreme courts Citizens United decision that made unlimited money the new norm in elections…and made people like the Kochs just a little bit more equal than the rest of us….my question to the court is…”you couldn’t see this?” everyone else did and now our democracy is at risk because of the activist repubs on the Roberts court…what a bunch of crap…geez…

Blame Citizens United…

Well…I am going to try to get out of this funk I’ve been in by taking on a couple of topics that I have been reading about over the past few days…and one from Think Progress that kind of distilled it…there has been more of the false equivalency that is rotting the press over the past few days that is trying to shift the blame from the repubs who own this mess since they are the ones that wanted it…and it is heartening to see that it’s just not working with the poll numbers of the repubs tanking like never in history…but, that’s not what I wanted to talk about…I want to talk about this little tidbit I read this aft about an analysis of the money spent in the last election in the wake of Citizens United that allows unlimited money from the rich to buy elections…but it is not even the elections that is the problem, it is the threat of primary opponents for the repubs that have allowed these rich people to get their way since the only thing the repubs think of is keeping their seats, not doing what is right for the country. The worst of it all is that there are only 216 people that gave over 530 million dollars for the last election…and if you think that money is not buying influence, you are crazy as the right….so, we have the supreme court to blame for the gridlock and nastiness in Washington…and they are just loving it…geez…

Do we want five guys to decide the election?

Well…just a short one on some statistics that I find quite troubling…with the Citizens United decision and the unlimited money that it brings to the election cycle, another statistic caught my eye and emphasizes how the balance of power has shifted in the two years since. In the FEC filings that were released earlier this week, it was revealed the 5 guys gave over 25% of the money that that was raised for the repub primaries…that’s right folks, what used to be small donations from many, many people has become 5 guys attempting to buy an election…do you think they are doing this for fun? Not on your life…they are doing this to buy influence with their chosen candidate…do you think the candidates will listen to you when you can’t muster a 10 million dollar check to them? This corrosive effect has got to stop…or we are going to lose our democracy…maybe we already have…

Didn’t think about this one til now….

Well…I’ve had this idea rattling around in my head for a while but it didn’t take shape until today when in a flash of insight (I do have those, you know) put it all together. I know I was understandably upset and concerned about the Citizens United decision that gave corporations the same rights as individuals and allowed them to spend unlimited money on political campaigns without having to disclose where the money came from, and I have railed against the absurdity of the twisted logic that led to the decision. But, this new idea is the scariest one yet….what happens when a foreign government buys some small American company and then uses it to funnel money to candidates that will vote in direct opposition to the interests of the US? Without the disclosure law that the repubs killed, this has already happened and will continue to be one of the greatest threats to our democracy we have ever seen…much more so than the threat of radical Islam that rep King is so concerned about. The repubs have already sold off most of the country to business…are foreign governments next? Geez….