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Forum Post: Money in Politics: Where Is the Outrage?

Posted 11 years ago on Sept. 1, 2012, 10:56 a.m. EST by LeoYo (5909)
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Money in Politics: Where Is the Outrage?

Friday, 31 August 2012 09:38 By Bill Moyers and Bernard A. Weisberger, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11257-money-in-politics-where-is-the-outrage

We might wish the uproar from the convention halls of both parties these busy weeks were the wholesome clamor of delegates deliberating serious visions of how we should be governed for the next four years. It rises instead from scripted TV spectacles — grown-ups doing somersaults of make-believe — that will once again distract the public’s attention from the death rattle of American democracy brought on by an overdose of campaign cash.

No serious proposal to take the money out of politics, or even reduce its tightening grip on the body politic, will emerge from Tampa or Charlotte, so the sounds of celebration and merriment are merely prelude to a funeral cortege for America as a shared experience. A radical minority of the super-rich has gained ascendency over politics, buying the policies, laws, tax breaks, subsidies, and rules that consolidate a permanent state of vast inequality by which they can further help themselves to America’s wealth and resources.

Their appetite for more is insatiable. As we write, Mitt Romney, after two fundraisers in which he raised nearly $10 million from the oil and gas industry, and having duly consulted with the Oklahoma billionaire energy executive who chairs the campaign’s energy advisory committee, has announced that if elected President, he will end a century of federal control over oil and gas drilling on public lands, leaving such matters to local officials more attuned to industry desires. Theodore Roosevelt, the first great advocate for public lands in the White House, would be rolling in his grave, if Dick Cheney hadn’t already dumped his bones in a Wyoming mining shaft during the first hours of the Bush-Halliburton administration.

We are nearing the culmination of a cunning and fanatical drive to dismantle the political institutions, the legal and statutory canons, and the intellectual and cultural frameworks that were slowly and painstakingly built over decades to protect everyday citizens from the excesses of private power. The “city on the hill” has become a fortress of privilege, guarded by a hired political class and safely separated from the economic pressures that are upending the household stability, family dynamics, social mobility, and civic life of everyday Americans.

Socrates said to understand a thing, you must first name it. As in Athens then, so in America now: The name for what’s happening to our political system is corruption — a deep, systemic corruption.

How did we get here?

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Cannibalistic Capitalism and Green Resistance

Friday, 31 August 2012 00:00 By Craig Collins PhD, Truthout | News Analysis

http://truth-out.org/news/item/11173-cannibalistic-capitalism-and-green-resistance

In the first installment of this two-part article, we examined the notion that any future without globalization must be an improvement. But globalization and growth only constitute capitalism's expansionist phase, powered by abundant fossil fuels. As energy becomes scarce, boom turns to bust. But profit-hungry capitalism doesn't die; it morphs into its zombie-like, undead phase. Growth-less capitalism turns catabolic. The word catabolism is used in biology to refer to the condition whereby a living thing feeds on itself. Thus, catabolic capitalism is a self-cannibalizing system whose insatiable hunger for profit can only be fed by consuming the society that sustains it. As it rampages down the road to ruin, this system gorges itself on one self-inflicted disaster after another. Unless we forestall it, catabolic capitalism will leave its survivors rummaging through the toxic rubble left behind.

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[-] 1 points by LeoYo (5909) 11 years ago

It has been said that

"It takes nerve to be a Democrat but it takes money to be a Republican."

[-] 1 points by shadz66 (19985) 11 years ago

"Greed and Debt : The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital", by Matt Taibbi :

"How the GOP presidential candidate and his private equity firm staged an epic wealth grab, destroyed jobs – and stuck others with the bill"

I think that the article is a 'must read' & dovetails really well (imo) with your very interesting forum-post.

radix omnium malorum est cupiditas ...