|
|
|
|
filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 08/01/2008 : 17:18:22
|
There certainly is a lot of it in the higher and the lower realms of our government. This, including the comments, is a quite interesting article, although it doesn't even scratch the surface. | It may be tempting to look at the latest indictment of a Republican lawmaker and conclude, as my sainted grandfather did many years ago, that “all Republicans are crooks.” A loyal Chicago Democrat through and through, none of us had the heart (or courage) to mention to grandpa a few of the more brazenly corrupt scandals that had tainted the Cook County political machine run by Richard J. Daley, the current mayor's father. |
What it sugars off to is that the election process itself is responsible for a great deal of the corruption so prevelent in our government, as well as cheap thugs such as Tom DeLay. And it is noteworthy that Democrats are far from immune to it.
|
"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
|
|
|
Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 08/01/2008 : 21:53:47 [Permalink]
|
Yeah man. DEAD people used to vote in Chicago.
|
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
|
 |
|
|
HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 08/01/2008 : 23:20:53 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by Dude
Yeah man. DEAD people used to vote in Chicago.
|
The ultimate democracy: Necrocracy.
|
“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
|
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 08/02/2008 : 01:14:26 [Permalink]
|
Filthy.....
Corruption is endemic to politics, and because free enterprise and worship of the dollar in the United States are religions of higher importance than even the faiths that have nonsensical deities; money will always trump morality. The purchased vote and political services for sale are part and parcel of the very fabric of the American political system.
The basic problem is the essence of capitalism itself. Political favor is an integral part of the concept of the free market. Wiki says: | Capitalism is usually considered to involve the right of individuals and corporations to trade, using money, in goods, services (including finance), labor and land. |
The aforementioned services include, de facto in the committed capitalist mindset, political services. And in practice, it pretty much works out that way.
Politicians become elected officials and their powers are generally already sold to those who paid for their election, because a great amount of money is required to become an elected active politician - ostensibly a servant of the "government", but in actuality a servant of the sources that provided the money that put them in power in the first place. They come to their seats of power already obligated to those that put them there!
The reforms necessary to change this government of the plutocrat, by the plutocrat and for the plutocrat, are so vast and incredibly difficult to instigate and carry out, that I don't think that real reform is even possible without changing our entire "free enterprise, capitalist" system. And I don't think that is a very good idea, even if it was possible, which it's not!
The best that we can hope for is to elect a politician like Obama that professes a high degree of liberal idealism, together with candidates for the Congress who largely echo his professed opinions; and then hope for the best to actually happen.
It won't, of course. Politics as usual will largely prevail, as it has since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution; as it would in a Nader administration, or any other idealist President that one can imagine, and as it will for the foreseeable future, irrespective of the party in power.
But if we succeed in getting the administration of a professed Democratic liberal such as Obama, there is a pretty good chance that the enormous cardinal transgressions of the neocon dictatorship that we have suffered for the past eight years will ameliorate into expressions of greed of a somewhat more venial nature. At least that is the hope.
And that would be better, much better, than we have had for the past eight years. Nothing could be worse than a continuation of the neocon political philosophy of ceding all power to the almighty corporation, the almighty bribe, the almighty principle of government for sale!
McCain would undoubtedly continue the Cheney-Bush policies virtually intact and certainly would be subserviant to the same big-money, big-power, big corporation ruling cabal of the Republican party.
We can only hope to succeed in reversing to some degree the dominance of the neoconservatism conceived by Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Elliot Abrams; executed into foreign, domestic, military and economic policy by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales; blessed, aided and abetted by John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito; and of course all presided over by the boy Emperor himself, George Bush!
Obama, if elected along with a significant Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, will have the opportunity to begin this reversal. There is no way of predicting if he has the ability, determination and genius necessary to pull it off.
But I know one thing as sure as evolution made little green apples; he will try a hell of a lot harder than the heir to George Bush's Neoconservative Third Reich (Reagan, Bush 41, and now Dubya!) -John, the mythical maverick, McCain!
A vote for Obama is a vote for a good deal less corruption than we have had with the current reprehensible gang of Republican thugs, thieves, and toxic transgressors! |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Corruption.....
