Today's output from Blogistan Polytechnic Institute’s state-of-the-art HEMMED (High-Energy Meta Mojo Elucidation Detector) machine is a horse who has bolted out of the barn and is now running out to pasture because the door was left open. Good luck getting him back.
While reading the news this morning, I happened upon an article in the Washington Independent titled Advocates Say Midterms Might Breathe Fresh Life Into the DISCLOSE Act.
Allow me to wax cynical here. Breathing "fresh life" into the DISCLOSE Act now is like fixing the voting machines after the 2000 election. We still had George W. Bush and eight long years of damage to our constitution, our country and our world.
It will be too late to undo the damage done by the introduction of corporate money --- undisclosed corporate money --- if that money turns the election and the Tea Party GOP takes over Congress.
In America, we still have one person one vote and the Supreme Court has not changed that (although they are probably eyeballing it). And how we vote is increasingly swayed by what we see on TV and in print ads. As the negative ads start going wall to wall (driving many of us to DVR everything in order to fast forward through the muck) it is not hard to see how this barrage could tip a close election. Campaign ads do not have to be accurate and the only fact checking for them is each citizen making an effort to locate a media watchdog web siteor to do our own research.
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Eugene Robinson in his column in the Washington Postpoints out just how much money we are talking about here:
American Crossroads says it will spend an astounding $50 million in this election cycle. And where is the money coming from? Silly of you to ask. There is no limit to the amount that an individual, corporation or trade association can give to American Crossroads -- but the group is not required to tell you who those deep-pockets donors might be.
By some estimates, there will be half a billion dollars spent by these kind of organizations.
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Of course you will be told that Democrats do it too. Why, yes, they do! And the labor unions who get their money from the rank and file members hard hit by the Great Recession are going toe to toe with billionaires who have plenty at stake in this election and lots of cash to drop into friendly coffers. Seems pretty equalto me!
The DISCLOSE Act (Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections), by the way, is a simple bill intended to counteract the awful Supreme Court decisionin Citizens United v FEC which granted more rights of personhood to corporations in the form of unfettered (or only slightly fettered) spending on campaigns. The DISCLOSE Act requires the corporations to "disclose" (get it?) that they are paying for the ads. The reason I call it simple is because it is. If you want to run an ad against a candidate, tell us who you are. If you make money as a government contractor, you can't run ads that may sway a candidate to favor you or your company. If you are a corporation owned by a foreign government, you can't run ads in our elections.
H.R. 5175was passed by the House of Representatives on June 24, 2010. It was sent to the Senate where it has languished (pardon me while I roll my eyes here...as though a bill "languishing in the Senate" is an oddity) ... being held hostage to the special interests that control that "legislative" body. On September 23, the bill failed to overcome a filibuster that would have allowed it to be voted on. In the upside-down world of the U.S. Senate, it "lost" by a vote of 59 for and 39 against.
The DISCLOSE Act was never going to become law before this year's midterm elections anyway because, of course, we have known about this awful ruling since January and we cannot rush anything through Congress unless it is to save the "life" of a brain dead woman.
It would be unseemly to rush through a bill that would do a crazy thing like save our democracy and preserve truth...justice...the American way and Apple Pie (hyperbole left intact).
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In Wisconsin, in the last few years, corporate money was responsible for installing two Supreme Court justices whose qualifications and ethics are questionable. But at least we knew who was behind it and we had a place to direct our outrageand the ability to shame them into thinking long and hard about getting that deep into electoral politics again.
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After the Citizens United ruling and the failure of Congress to pass the DISCLOSE Act, there can be no shaming because there is no knowing.
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As Eugene Robinson concludes:
The result is a system in which oil companies opposed to an energy bill that would begin to steer the country away from fossil fuels, or Wall Street firms that want to undo financial regulatory reform and return to the days of the Big Casino, or gazillionaires who want to keep George W. Bush's tax breaks, can all spend as much as they like to try to buy Congress for the Republican Party.
And they can do it secretly, in the dark, without anyone knowing. It's bad enough that public offices can be purchased. It's unconscionable that we can't even know who the buyers are.
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Once we lose our right to fair and honest elections, we have lost our vote and we have lost our democracy. It is as simple as that. And the rest of it does not matter.
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Update: After I wrote this on Tuesday, I realized I did not really have a happy ending for this HEMMED In or even anything positive to focus on.
So I am going to update it with the suggestion to remind your family, friends and neighbors that the ads they are seeing on TV should be taken with an entire bucket of salt this year and that groups named "Americans for A Chicken in Every Pot" may not be what they seem to be. Encourage everyone to question what they see and hear. And to Vote on November 2nd.
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Happy Tuesday Wednesday to everyone and fist bumps!
The BPI Campus Progressive agenda:
- People matter more than profits.
- The earth is our home, not our trash can.
- We need good government for both #1 and #2.
Crossposted from Blogistan Polytechnic Institute (BPICampus.com)
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