Thursday, January 26, 2012

SUPER PACs: Occupy The Courts, Colbert & The Fight for Free Speech

Video embedded below.

Posted by Andrew Berman at 1/26/2012 11:33:00 PM
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1 comment:

  1. Ian Dubrowsky1/28/2012 4:20 PM

    Ah yes CU and the Super Pacs, the American Right Wing's golden rule of politics realized: If the government is taking large destabilizing actions to benefit itself or the entities that control it (i.e. Billionaires, monopolistic corporations, the defense industry etc), such as invading random foreign countries and propping up foreign dictators, shifting the tax burden more and more from the richest to everyone else, and now, just enabling these same entities to control and operate our elections wholesale- than that instance of government action is great and good! You see the logic? More power for those with power already- Serve the Markets! Think about wealth and forget everything else! Soceity doesn't exist and the world is our garbage can! You see, if Sheldon Adelson doesn't have the freedom to just hand pick the candidates he wants, than we are restricting his freedom to determine our lives! (It would be funny if it didn't reveal a very disturbing disdain for an actual democracy of citizens and not subjects.)

    Anything else of course, merits a lot of Burkean introspection, and faux-intellectual concern trolling to the rest of us about the dangers of the government doing anything at all, except of course staying at a default pro-gangster capitalist position or taking the most radical economically destabilizing measures in order to protect corrupt concentrations of wealth and power. Inevitably, this means further clamping down on democracy and further marginalizing the public interest. It is hard to think of a more dramatic example of this logic in action than the Citizens United decision- where the so-called "libertarian" movement has again revealed itself as only being "libertarian" for America's natural aristocracy. Free to be born on third, and believe you hit a triple.

    Cato, Heritage, "national security" think tanks, the Republican and Democratic Parties, The corporate controlled media, the whole coterie of right wing, status-quo institutions in America- talk a big game about entrepreneurs and the business of doing business, when in fact, they just cater to the interests and concerns of bureaucrats and assorted risk-averse functionaries, public and private. Freedom for libertarians just means the freedom for people with wealth and power already and squelching the economic mobility of others on their behalf.

    In the business of actual capitalism, where individuals actually have to assume risk- the forfeiture of democracy this move represents very easily undermines long-term economic development in the US and will just create more and more bureaucrats of the corporate variety. It pushes the US closer to resembling China style state-directed socialism- where the economic elite is literally just the same as those controlling the political system and thus predictably guard their interests as such with a combination of propaganda, controlling information and the threat of force. Everyone outside the program, just be quiet, shut up, go back to work and do what your betters tell you to do unless we just drown your voice out in waves of propaganda. The only good protests are top-down hieracally directed and elite controlled protests with "leaders" that are designed - (if not originally conceived) to be co-opted by these same institutions. It's why you are so confused about what the "tea party" actually is, let alone actual conservatism and certaintly that the CU decision had anything to do with "freedom". If that is the case than you have a very peculiar conception about what freedom is.

    "a slave that never moves, never realizes he is dressed in chains"

    Great Bourbon by the way, I have to look into that. and great seeing you!

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