James Risen’s New Book Exposes the “War on Terror” The New York Times investigative reporter's 'Pay Any Price' is an instant landmark in the best of post-9/11 journalism. By Norman Solomon October 14, 2014 | No single review or interview can do justice to “Pay Any Price” -- the new book by James Risen that is the antithesis of what routinely passes for journalism about the “war on terror.” Instead of evasive tunnel vision, the book offers big-picture acuity: focusing on realities that are pervasive and vastly destructive. Published this week, “Pay Any Price” throws down an urgent gauntlet. We should pick it up. After 13 years of militarized zealotry and fear-mongering in the name of fighting terrorism, the book -- subtitled “Greed, Power, and Endless War” -- zeros in on immense horrors being perpetrated in the name of national security. As an investigative reporter for the New York Times, Risen has been battling dominant power structures for a long time. His new book is an instant landmark in the best of post-9/11 journalism. It’s also a wise response to repressive moves against him by the Bush and Obama administrations. For more than six years -- under threat of jail -- Risen has refused to comply with subpoenas demanding that he identify sources for his reporting on a stupid and dangerous CIA operation. (For details, see “The Government War Against Reporter James Risen,” which I co-wrote with Marcy Wheeler for The Nation.) A brief afterword in his new book summarizes Risen’s struggles with the Bush and Obama Justice Departments. He also provides a blunt account of his long-running conflicts with the Times hierarchy, which delayed some of his reporting for years -- or spiked it outright -- under intense White House pressure. Self-censorship and internalization of official worldviews continue to plague the Washington press corps. In sharp contrast, Risen’s stubborn independence enables “Pay Any Price” to combine rigorous reporting with rare candor. Here are a few quotes from the book: * “Obama performed a neat political trick: he took the national security state that had grown to such enormous size under Bush and made it his own. In the process, Obama normalized the post-9/11 measures that Bush had implemented on a haphazard, emergency basis. Obama’s great achievement -- or great sin -- was to make the national security state permanent.” * “In fact, as trillions of dollars have poured into the nation’s new homeland security-industrial complex, the corporate leaders at its vanguard can rightly be considered the true winners of the war on terror.” * “There is an entire class of wealthy company owners, corporate executives, and investors who have gotten rich by enabling the American government to turn to the dark side. But they have done so quietly. . . . The new quiet oligarchs just keep making money. . . . They are the beneficiaries of one of the largest transfers of wealth from public to private hands in American history.” * “The United States is now relearning an ancient lesson, dating back to the Roman Empire. Brutalizing an enemy only serves to brutalize the army ordered to do it. Torture corrodes the mind of the torturer.” * “Of all the abuses America has suffered at the hands of the government in its endless war on terror, possibly the worst has been the war on truth. On the one hand, the executive branch has vastly expanded what it wants to know: something of a vast gathering of previously private truths. On the other hand, it has ruined lives to stop the public from gaining any insight into its dark arts, waging a war on truth. It all began at the NSA.” Fittingly, the book closes with a powerful chapter about the government’s extreme actions against whistleblowers. After all, whistleblowing and independent journalism are dire threats to the secrecy and deception that fuel the “war on terror.” Now, James Risen is in the national spotlight at a time when the U.S. government is launching yet another spiral of carnage for perpetual war. As a profound book, “Pay Any Price” has arrived with enormous potential to serve as a catalyst for deeper understanding and stronger opposition to abhorrent policies.
America is all of that now, too. 50% of us are hampsters... busting our hump and paying for everything. 50% are parasites... voting for more and more handouts from the government in exchange for their vote to keep the elite oligarchy in power. Just the way the Progressives envisioned 100 years ago.
Keith M. Parsons How Did We Become a Society Suspicious of Science? Posted: 10/15/2014 I grew up in the heroic age of American science and engineering. In my lifetime, the space program put men on the moon, the interstate highway system connected the continent, Salk and Sabin conquered polio, and computers went from room-sized behemoths to hand-held wonders. In my youth, America clearly led the world in its ability to conduct large-scale science and engineering projects. True, some of these projects were morally disturbing. The Castle Bravo test of March 1, 1954, a 15-megaton thermonuclear blast at Bikini Atoll, caused radioactive fallout to rain down on unsuspecting victims. Yet the nuclear tests also represented scientific and engineering expertise of the highest order. When John F. Kennedy said in 1962 that we would go to the moon in that decade, he was not indulging in wishful speculation but was confidently projecting on the basis of proven success. Tom Hanks, playing Jim Lovell in the movie Apollo 13, said that it was not a miracle that we got to the moon. We just decided to go. Now our infrastructure is crumbling, we have to hitch rocket rides with the Russians, and every few weeks a new study asserts that our students don't know a protein from a proton. Have we lost our scientific mojo? I doubt it. We still have some of the finest science and engineering schools and departments and many outstanding individuals in the STEM fields (though we need more kids going into those fields). But something has been lost. Fifty years ago science was king. Science had respect; it was bigger than ideology. No longer. Radio blowhards contemptuously dismiss scientific findings and endorse ideological claptrap. Anti-science stalks the halls of Congress and kooky ideas are rife among Boards of Education. Formerly, all parties in public debate, liberal and conservative, displayed deference to science. Now we have Senator James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, openly denouncing the findings of climate scientists as a hoax. The Texas State Board of Education, which is dominated by religious fundamentalists, prefers the propaganda of ax-grinding cranks over the recommendations of hundreds of qualified scientists and scholars. How did this happen? How did bay-at-the-moon lunacy come to occupy a more prominent place in our public discourse than textbook science? How, indeed, has it ever come to be thought that there is still a scientific debate over evolution, or that pluperfect nonsense like creationism is worthy of a hearing? How did there come to be a multi-million dollar "creation museum" in Kentucky, with full-scale models of dinosaurs fitted out with saddles? (Why saddles? So Adam and Eve could ride them around Eden. Duh.) The left, like the right, has its own antiscientific ideologies. During the "science wars" debates of the 1990s, members of the "academic left" assailed the objectivity and rationality of science. Radical feminist science critics attacked scientific ideals of objectivity, brandishing the slogan that "objectivity is just what a man calls his subjectivity." Other critics belittled scientific achievements, claiming that so-called scientific discoveries were merely "social constructs." Some historians of science insisted that the course of science is driven by politics, not logic and evidence. Others claimed that scientific methods are nothing more than rhetorical devices to browbeat opponents into agreement. Even some philosophers got in on the act. Berkeley philosopher Paul Feyerabend's critique of scientific methodology caused some to label him "the worst enemy of science." Paul Feyerabend was not the worst enemy of science. Radical feminists and others of the "academic left" are not the worst enemies of science. Neither are the right-wing radio bloviators. Big money is the worst enemy of science. Big Tobacco found the way to fight science. What do you do if the science shows that your product is deadly, killing tens of thousands of your customers a year, yet that product brings you profits beyond the dreams of avarice? You deny the science. You hire your own "experts" to do science your way and reach the conclusions you require. It is easy. The comic strip Dilbert shows just how easy. In one strip the evil CEO Dogbert enters a business with the name "Weasels R Us." Dogbert says to the weasel behind the counter: "I need three bitter and unsuccessful scientists and a hundred lazy journalists." The weasel says, "Consider it done!" The final panel shows Dilbert reading the headline "Toddlers Thrive on Pollution." You can always find somebody with "Ph.D." after his name willing to say what you want to hear. So, the way to fight science is to set up an alternative "science" of your own. This tactic worked wonderfully. By generating doubt about the science, Big Tobacco avoided meaningful regulation for years. What worked for Big Tobacco now works even better for Big Oil and Big Coal. By funding obscurantist opposition to climate science, they have effectively scuttled any reforms that might threaten their profits. Indeed, as Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway show in their superb book Merchants of Doubt, manufacturing doubt about science is itself now a big business. Big corporations fund their own "research" institutes and "think" tanks to churn out junk science, skewed statistics, and self-serving disinformation. These institutions pose as communities of scholars, but really they are ideological propaganda mills that serve the agendas of the big money interests that fund them. Such organizations exist to construct a counter-narrative -- a specious alternative to scientific information -- and they are cynically confident that a scientifically ignorant public cannot distinguish their counterfeit from the real thing. Real science hardly has a chance against slick, lavishly funded flapdoodle. Again, how did we go from a society that once revered science to one suspicious of it? There are many factors we could cite, but to discover the biggest reason, follow the big money.
Yeah, the GOP is evil and will win — but the midterms are meaningless It's the Party of Fear's turn this year, and that blows. But the cast of clowns in D.C. don't really run the show ANDREW O'HEHIR A few weeks ago in this space, I brought up an apparent contradiction at the heart of American government, in current theory and practice. Barack Obama occupies the White House in an era of extreme and perhaps unprecedented executive power, a species of elected king who can spy on anyone in the world, order the killing of American citizens without due process and wage secret wars by remote control. Yet in terms of conventional Washington politics, he “can’t get anything done.” The legislative branch has been paralyzed since the middle of his first term, and political discourse has grown ever more toxic. His own party has no clear mission or agenda beyond being less pathological than the opposition party, whose appeal rests largely on racial panic, xenophobia and anti-government paranoia, and whose only visible agenda is obstructionism. It should be obvious to everyone who isn’t a profoundly deluded partisan loyalist that nothing that could possibly happen in the 2014 midterm elections will change any of that. Indeed, it is obvious to most people, which is why most people won’t bother to vote on Nov. 4. It’s Political Punditry 101 to view widespread public apathy as both cause and symptom of a diseased political culture, and that’s at least partly true. But declining to participate in an empty ritual that changes nothing is an entirely rational response, arguably more clear-eyed and realistic than investing it with meaning it does not possess. I wholeheartedly agree with my colleague Joan Walsh when she describes American politics in 2014 as “an endless feedback loop of futility: little or no policy change leads to a discouraged electorate, which ensures little or no policy change, which guarantees more voter apathy.” But I would further describe that as political reality slowly unveiling itself — “little or no policy change” is a key feature of our system, not a bug — and I do not share Joan’s glass-half-full optimism that pumping up Democratic turnout, or somehow saving the Democrats’ Senate majority, can do anything to correct that. Another factor in midterm apathy, although I don’t think it’s the most profound, lies in the fact that recent electoral politics have followed a cyclical and almost meteorological pattern. Despite the obvious fact that the pendulum will soon swing back the other way, we all have to pretend, at least momentarily, to believe that each incoming rainstorm or high-pressure front represents a permanent change in the weather. This year’s twist in the “Groundhog Day” plot of American politics was scripted long in advance. The big Obama-led Democratic sweep of 2008 came after eight years of Bush, six years of an increasingly unpopular war and a catastrophic economic crash. That Kenyan-Muslim Afrocentric coup was answered by the rise of the Tea Party in the “angry white man” backlash of 2010 — and after both of those elections we endured endless punditry about how this new political force was a world-conquering game-changer whose ascendancy would last forever. Apparently Republicans really are either stupid or insane, since they seemed surprised to learn that their rightward lurch into an all-white, anti-everything party of fear was a big loser in the 2012 presidential election. They promised to lick their wounds and think hard about immigration and “the Latino vote,” but that did not prove to be necessary, since they now find themselves in another midterm election with a bunch of spineless purple-state Democrats on the defensive and an electorate of “highly motivated” base voters, meaning the old, the frightened and the deeply Caucasian. Ebola and ISIS are pretty much the perfect issues for a GOP midterm victory: They’re scary things from scary foreign places that we don’t really understand and can’t do much about; they call forth alarmist rhetoric and the prospect of wasting lots of money in the name of national security. (All this was manna from heaven for Republican strategists, because Benghazi and Obamacare had pretty much stopped paying dividends.) Democrats can take comfort, of sorts, in Hillary Clinton’s status as the odds-on presidential favorite, and in the fact that the GOP will have to defend a bunch of vulnerable Senate seats during the 2016 cycle. Republicans have won the popular vote in exactly one of the last six presidential elections, and right now they have no obvious candidate who seems likely to reverse that trend. You don’t have to have Nate Silver’s computer chops to place your bets in Vegas: Democrats will lose their Senate majority this year, get it back in 2016 and lose it again two years after that. But that forecast, however depressingly accurate, is not the point. The horse-race analysis or pop sociology that views each of those shifts as momentous — driving a bazillion think-pieces and unreadable political-science tomes — only serves to conceal an underlying stasis: the politics of no change, the politics of permanent government, the politics of a neoliberal, pro-corporate economic policy and a national security state, both of which are enthusiastically supported by both parties and their funders, and almost never debated in public. (In different ways and to varying degrees, potential 2016 candidates Rand Paul and Elizabeth Warren deviate from the orthodoxy of the “Washington consensus,” which is exactly why the mainstream political caste views them as dangerous outriders.) Just to be clear, I’m not urging anyone not to vote this year, especially not in states or districts where the race is close. Every situation is different, and so is each individual’s moral calculus on this question. I’m not claiming there is some higher ground in a “great refusal.” If I lived in Kentucky or Georgia or wherever, I’d probably vote too. I’m also not arguing that there’s no difference between the two political parties, since that’s manifestly untrue, or that the current version of Capitol Hill paralysis won’t look like Periclean Athens compared to the theater of hate we’ll see come January. Purely on grounds of Schadenfreude, it would be delightful to see an odious and corrupt insect like Mitch McConnell defeated by a Democratic woman. It almost certainly won’t happen, and if it did the Democratic woman would turn out to be a corporate shill who refused to vote against the NRA or the third Iraq war or the “black budget,” while McConnell dried his tears with a $10 million gig on K Street. Still, I understand the appeal. But I’m also not going to serve as an adjunct of the Democratic Party’s get-out-the-vote campaign when it manifestly doesn’t matter, in larger historical terms, what happens in the midterm election. Nothing meaningful happened in the last Congress and nothing meaningful will happen in the next one, regardless of whether McConnell or Harry Reid sits in the majority leader’s chair. That contradiction I mentioned at the outset, between the immense might of the imperial presidency and the poisonous mire of Washington politics, requires us to understand where real power lies in the United States. The president is a powerful figure, no doubt, as are the leaders of the House and Senate. But those people come and go and are not necessarily the most important factors in the equation. At least nominally, they command and oversee the enormous underlying structure of permanent government known as the “deep state.” But it precedes them and outlasts them, and as the Edward Snowden NSA revelations and numerous other data points ought to tell us, the question of who really holds the reins of state power is debatable, at the very least. (cont'd)
The concept of the deep state has a variety of overlapping meanings, and a long heritage within historical and political analyses of famously top-heavy states like Turkey and Egypt, where powerful entrenched bureaucracies have subverted democracy or ignored it altogether. In the current American context, journalists Marc Ambinder and D.B. Gradyhave used it to designate the far-reaching national security apparatus that was expanded so dramatically after 9/11. In an influential essay published earlier this year (which helps explain why the Obama administration is sliding toward another Middle East war), former congressional aide Mike Lofgren uses it to signify something much larger, “a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out,” comprising not just the federal bureaucracy and the intelligence agencies, but also the bankers and corporate elites. If we were voting for or against candidates who were willing to address the power of the deep state, or at least to disclose and discuss it openly, then the midterm elections might mean something. As things stand, American electoral politics looks a lot like the circus staged to keep the kids entertained while the grownups pave over the fields and run the railroad through the middle of town. Can you blame the kids if they’re getting bored of watching the same clowns jamming themselves in and out of the same Volkswagen?
Why This Election Will Change Nothing October 24, 2014 | As America heads toward midterm elections, one of the few certainties is that progressive change is not on the horizon. Republican gains in Congress are a virtual certainty, and the main question is just how bad the damage will be. A pendulum swing to the right would be less troublesome if it were preceded by a swing to the left, but only the most delusional Americans believe that the country has actually experienced a liberal tide in recent years. Despite campaigning on slogans of hope and change six years ago, Barack Obama quickly surrounded himself with advisors from Goldman Sachs and, even if his rhetoric was sincere, has done nothing to challenge the fundamental nature of power in America. Everyone knows that Wall Street owns and controls the system, and not even Obama’s most enthusiastic supporters believe that his administration has changed that. As we approach the last phase of the Obama presidency, perhaps the most disappointing reality is that even the parameters of debate have not changed: one party offers an extreme conservatism that is often accompanied by wing-nut anti-intellectualism, while the other party offers a center-right agenda that itself accepts corporatist assumptions and paradigms. The fact that the entire spectrum caters to corporate interests, even when it sometimes appears that vigorous debate is occurring, speaks to how the plutocracy has mastered the art of control. Whatever happens in this election, nobody seriously believes that multinational corporate interests will be reined in, that labor unions are likely to begin flourishing again, that serious campaign finance reform will occur, or that any significant public initiative will address the root causes of widening wealth disparity. Indeed, even if Democrats fair better than expected, we can be sure that there will be no major reduction in American military spending, and only starry-eye optimists will imagine that these elections are somehow a step toward resolving the crisis of a failing educational system or society’s epidemic levels of incarceration. To be sure, America occasionally sees genuine social progress in some areas (gay rights being the obvious recent example), but any fair assessment of modern American progressivism would find that failures are much more numerous than successes. Working people increasingly live at the edge or poverty or worse – with degradingly low-paying jobs that offer no security, often through temporary employment agencies. In many communities of color, a school-to-prison pipeline has become a stark and defining social reality. In a sure sign of corporate dominance, deregulation and privatization have become the norm throughout the system. And thanks to activist social conservatives, reproductive rights have been under siege in much of the country – and not just abortion, but even access to birth control has become fair game for controversy. And unfortunately, few expect the midterm elections of 2014 to change any of this. **** If there is any reason for hope amid the ruins of American politics and public policy, it rests on the fact that the root of the problem has become more apparent, with all evidence pointing to one key culprit: excessive corporate power. Thanks to the financial crisis of 2008, the Citizen’s Unitedruling of 2010, and the obvious ongoing dysfunction of the American political system, the diagnosis is easy. If ordinary Americans are powerless, it is only because that power sits somewhere else – and that somewhere else is the corporate sector. Americans like the rhetoric of democracy, but the sad truth is that ordinary humans are no match for corporate “persons” in the struggle for power. Corporations not only have far more wealth, but also numerous other advantages: they have a singular focus on their goal of profit, and unlike real humans they are unhindered by moral concerns, family issues, outside interests, or even worries about health or mortality. If corporations are indeed persons – and the Supreme Court says they are – they are in many ways superhuman, exceeding real humans in both resources and vigilance. So real humans can aim for progressive goals – fighting for environmental sustainability, social and economic justice, workers’ rights, consumers’ rights, small businesses, and less militaristic foreign policy – but we should realize that almost all such efforts are destined to fail if they seriously threaten corporate power. Sure, some progress can be achieved when it happens to be consistent (or at least not conflict) with corporate interests, but we need to realize that much (if not most) of the progressive agenda is simply unacceptable to the corporations and industries that run the plutocracy. Indeed, even some issues that shouldn’t really matter to corporate America – such as a woman’s right to choose – have become controversial because corporate interests have built alliances with social conservatives for political gain. Those who run the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Chamber of Commerce – two enormously influential corporate political power centers – couldn’t care less about the rights of a ten-week-old fetus, but they learned decades ago that social conservatives will eagerly endorse their agenda if pro-corporate politicians tout anti-choice positions. Thus the strange marriage of Wall Street and the Religious Right in the modern GOP. Obama talked about hope and change as he road to victory six years ago, but it is becoming apparent that nothing can really change in America until corporate power is brought under control. Just in the last generation we’ve seen Wall Street – often with the backing of Democrats – successfully lobby to deregulate communications (resulting in industry-wide consolidation); deregulate banking (leading to reckless activities and the 2008 economic collapse); make persistent efforts to privatize public functions, from prisons to Social Security; and ramp up electioneering (thus giving corporate interests direct influence in electoral politics and disempowering real humans). Even the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003 can be linked to a corporate-dominated military establishment that thrives on a vulnerable and uninformed public. In the wake of all this, it has become clear that those who want public policy based on reason and the interests of real humans must unite in an effort to redefine and limit the rights of corporations. In fact, no matter where one primarily operates under the progressive umbrella – civil rights, peace, economic justice, environmentalism, etc. – the need to include the issue of corporate power in the agenda is not just desirable but necessary, for corporate power is the single issue that is relevant, in one way or another, to all sectors of progressivism. Ultimately, for long-term progressive success, the corporate personhood issue must be addressed at the constitutional level either by a more liberal future Supreme Court or by a constitutional amendment fueled by a widespread demand from a better-informed public. In the meantime, legislative efforts to rein in corporate power can be seen as temporary fixes at best. Most serious statutory efforts to control corporate power will ultimately prove inadequate, because corporations can use their endless resources to litigate or lobby any undesirable regulation into non-existence or irrelevance, and on key issues such as campaign finance the Supreme Court has already sided with the corporate sector. The good news is that the problem has become so clear that it is now easy to identify. The bad news is that to fix it sensible Americans need more than just an ordinary effort to pass a few pieces of progressive, reform-oriented legislation. Change at a high, constitutional level is ultimately needed, and the corporate opposition is immensely wealthy and extremely vigilant in its commitment to maintaining control. Dave Niose
In Big-Money Move, Corporations Seek to Make Congress a Wholly-Owned Subsidiary Posted: 10/30/2014 12:27 am EDT Updated: 10/30/2014 8:59 am EDT As Election Day approaches, two reports show us exactly how corrupted our political system has become. Unless voters come out in force, it looks like corporate money is about to buy itself another house of Congress. The Wall Street Journal analyzed filings from the Federal Election Commission and concluded that In a significant shift, business groups gave more money to Republican candidates than to Democrats in seven of the most competitive Senate races in recent months, in some cases taking the unusual step of betting against sitting senators. The Journal found that corporate PACs gave most of their donations to Democrats in the early part of the campaign. That fits with a longstanding pattern: big-business interests shower incumbents with money to encourage special treatment, both during the election year and in the upcoming term. But giving has shifted dramatically since June. The Journal discovered that Republican candidates received the lion's share of corporate campaign contributions in the July-to-September time period. The cash-generating power of incumbency had faded -- for Democrats. One reason for the shift, according to sources, is a sense that Democrats are the underdogs. "Wall Street expects return on investment," a brokerage executive told theJournal. "It makes no sense to contribute to a losing campaign." The other reason, of course, is ideologically-based. Corporations feel more comfortable abandoning incumbent Democrats than they do turning their backs on more reliably loyal Republicans. Mitch McConnell has been awash in corporate cash this year, for example -- thanks to his far-right stance, his chances of re-election, and the position of influence he would hold as Majority Leader if the GOP captures the Senate. In a related report, Public Citizen analyzed the flow of "dark money" (from groups which don't have to disclose their donors) and found that the United States Chamber of Commerce,the largest dark-money spender, "is leaving a huge footprint in almost every race it enters." As of October 25, the Chamber had spent $31.8 million on House and Senate races. The second-largest dark-money spender, Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS, had spent $23.5 million. Other big-spending dark-money groups include "Patriot Majority USA," the extremist "Americans for Prosperity," and the National Rifle Association. Public Citizen found that the Chamber was "the biggest spender among non-disclosing outside groups in 28 of 35 races in which it has gotten involved. It is the second-biggest non-disclosing spender in three races, and the third-biggest dark money spender in four races." This dark money is being spent in as lopsided a manner as that of the business PACs analyzed by the Wall Street Journal, with Public Citizen concluding that "almost all of the money the Chamber has spent has gone to aid Republicans or hinder Democrats ... The Chamber has not spent any money supporting Democrats." The Nation's George Zornick (who we interviewed about the election last week on The Zero Hour) notes that "the Chamber is a 501(c)(6) tax-exempt organization, meaning it doesn't have to disclose its donors." Zornick adds that publicly-available data reveals that "much of the Chamber's money has generally come from titans in the oil, banking and agriculture industries, among others." In the past, many Congressional Democrats were able to count on the power of incumbency to trump party affiliation or the "liberal" label when it came time to collect corporate cash. But as Republicans have become increasingly shameless in their subservience to business interests - remember "Washington is here to serve the banks"? - corporations may sense that the time is coming when no longer need to compromise with government at all. From the Wall Street Journal: "It's increasingly likely we're going to reestablish a pro-business majority in the Senate," said Rob Engstrom, national political director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which mostly backs conservative candidates. He said President Barack Obama and other party leaders had made Democratic candidates "vulnerable, so companies aren't going to write PAC checks to candidates who fundamentally don't represent their interests." If the incumbents in Washington haven't been representing corporate interests effectively, it's hard to imagine who could. Both corporate profits and the personal wealth of the 1 percent soared in the aftermath of a financial crisis which left most Americans worse off than ever before. Perhaps Engstrom meant to say "companies aren't going to write PAC checks to candidates who don't solely represent their interests." From the looks of things, Corporate America is no longer content with buying political influence. Now it wants to turn Congress into a wholly-owned subsidiary. And it may well succeed, unless the voters thwart them on Tuesday. For Democrats in Congress, perhaps the moral of the story is this: Don't chase their money, because they'll still betray you in the end -- just like they did on Social Security. Instead of kowtowing to them, fight them. You may not be able to outspend your opponents, but that option seems to be disappearing anyway. At least that way you'll have the voters on your side. For the American people, the moral of this story couldn't be clearer: If we don't get money out of politics, we'll lose our democracy altogether. Richard (RJ) Eskow
From a distance it looks like you are doing this for compensation. Have you any ideas of your own aside from thoughts on Judy Garland?
and snark? Come to think of it, does anyone remember when db posted a sizable paragraph of his own on any topic at all?
Romney must be wishing he is the nominee 2016. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mitt Romney: Obama Hasn't Given The Poor And Minorities Enough Gifts Mitt Romney accused President Barack Obama and his administration of failing low-income and minority Americans at a rally in Sioux Falls, South Dakota on Thursday, alongside South Dakota Senate candidate Mike Rounds, who appears to be coasting toward a victory in next week's midterm election. "He hasn’t helped the poor, hasn’t helped the minorities,” Romney said of Obama, noting the record level of poverty and food stamp enrollments in the aftermath of the 2008 recession. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/30/mitt-romney-barack-obama-poor-minorities_n_6076986.html