“Welcome to the American Plutocracy”

From Wikipedia

Plutocracy (from Greek, ploutos, meaning "wealth", and kratos, meaning "power, dominion, rule") or plutarchy, defines a society or a system ruled and dominated by the small minority of the wealthiest citizens. The first known use of the term is 1652. Unlike systems such as democracy, capitalism, socialism or anarchism, plutocracy is not rooted in an established political philosophy and has no formal advocates. The concept of plutocracy may be advocated by the wealthy classes of a society in an indirect or surreptitious fashion, though the term itself is almost always used in a pejorative sense.

            Today April 2, 2014 Democracy died in the United States of America. I know some of you are shaking your heads and wanting to tell me to calm down and that I am over reacting. Most times you’d be right, I tend to have knee jerk reactions to situations which make me uncomfortable. I admit this… hell I’ll fucking own this.

            But today is different.

I don’t normally completely quote news articles in my essays but this time I felt it was needed. Also some people are going to scream that the Huffington Post is a slanted publication and they can’t take me seriously because of it. Well first I say… go fuck yourself, and second I read  dozen different articles and I though this one handled it the best.

From The Huffington Post - LINK

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down the aggregate campaign contribution limits, thereby opening the door to even more money in the political system.

The 5-4 ruling in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission was penned by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by justices Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia. The decision relies heavily on the assertion in the 2010 Citizens United ruling that influence and access are not a corruption concern.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a separate opinion that agreed to strike the aggregate limits, but also called for an end to the entire campaign finance reform system.

The victory for the Alabama businessman and major Republican Party donor Shaun McCutcheon, who was joined by the Republican National Committee in his challenge, means that a single donor will soon be able to contribute millions of hard dollars -- in limited contributions -- to political parties, candidates and political action committees.

"With the ruling, we continue to chip away at the long entrenched status quo from the grassroots -- a status quo that has kept challengers, better ideas, and new entrants to the political arena mostly locked out," McCutcheon said in a statement. "Ensuring that citizens are able to contribute to multiple candidates or causes who share their views only provides further support to a system in which 'We the People' hold the ultimate reins of power."

Campaign finance reform proponents were not so pleased.

"With its decision today in McCutcheon, the Supreme Court majority continued on its march to destroy the nation's campaign finance laws, which were enacted to prevent corruption and protect the integrity of our democracy," Democracy 21 president Fred Wertheimer said in a statement.

Public Citizen President Robert Weissman said in a statement, "This is truly a decision establishing plutocrat rights. The Supreme Court today holds that the purported right of a few hundred superrich individuals to spend outrageously large sums on campaign contributions outweighs the national interest in political equality and a government free of corruption."

Indeed, a single donor can now give more than $5 million in individually limited contributions to every House candidate, every Senate candidate, every state party committee, every national party committee and every leadership PAC connected to one political party.

For the 2013-2014 election cycle, Federal Election Commission rules state that a donor can give no more than $123,200 to all political committees, with two sub-limits of $48,600 to candidates and $74,600 to political parties and political action committees. Those limits are no more.

This will immeasurably help the Republican Party, which relies far more on large campaign donors who give the maximum campaign contributions. In the past year, Republican congressional political party committees have struggled to raise funds, as compared to their Democratic counterparts and the RNC. The court's decision now frees donors to make contributions of $32,400 to all three party committees every year.

"What I think this means is freedom of speech is being upheld," House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters on Capitol Hill in response to the ruling. "Donors ought to have the freedom to give what they want to give.

"All this goes back to this bizarre McCain-Feingold bill that was passed that has distorted the political process in ways that no one who voted for it ever believed in. Some of us understood what was going to happen. It's pushing all this money outside the party structure into all these other various forms.

"I'm all for freedom. Congratulations."

Roberts makes clear in his opinion that the ruling and the case brought before the court in no way challenges the base contribution limits, which currently limit individual contributions to $2,600 per candidate, per election; to $32,400 to political party committees per year; and to $5,000 per PAC, per year.

A lawyer representing Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had argued during the case that McCutcheon's challenge should extend to these base limits, and that candidates and parties should be allowed to raise unlimited funds. The justices, particularly Roberts, were skeptical of this during arguments.

The dissent was penned by Justice Stephen Breyer and joined by Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

            Let me put that in perspective for you. I the 1970’s it was decided that corporations had the same rights as people, it was also decided that money was free speech. These horrible decisions eventually lead to decades of money burrowing deep up the ass of the political structure in Washington. Since then the voice and will of the average everyday citizen has meant less and less in the broad scheme of things. In 2010 the Supreme Court of the United States of America ripped many of the caps off what, how, and how much the ultra rich and corporations could contribute to political campaigns. In essence political bribery was legalized.

            Today we became an auction house.

            I am not singling either party out, although I’ll be honest I truly 100% believe the Modern Republican Party is significantly more reprehensible than the Modern Democratic Party.  I’ll state this for you right now so you don’t need to wander or ask me. Until 2001 I considered myself a Liberal Republican, believe it or not that used to be a thing. Then we overreacted to a terrorist attack I’m not convinced we didn’t know about ahead of time. After that I began questioning my former views. When the Patriot Act was passed I knew we were in trouble, although I never realized just how much trouble we were actually in. I can’t be a Democrat because they are nearly as bad as the Republicans and I can’t be a Libertarian because I find about half of what they believe in to be complete bullshit.

            So where does that leave me?

            I guess I am a Progressive with some Libertarian leanings.

            Now, back to the point of this rambling and somewhat schizophrenic diatribe, what does today mean. Today the Supreme Court committed treason, in my opinion, and sold out every single ordinary citizen. Now instead of having to be a little clever in how they funnel money to their pets the ultra rich and major Multinational Corporation’s get to openly buy every fucking politician, give them their marching orders, and finally accomplish their goal of making all of us serfs in their medieval kingdom.

            You probably think I’m kidding.

            You probably think this is a bunch of conspiracy bullshit.

            Read the damn news. I don’t mean turn on one of the networks and watch their “News” or gods forbid the cable news network’s who are nothing more than the propaganda arms of the political parties. Except CNN, all they care about is missing  Malaysian airplanes and the possibilities that black holes and witchcraft might have been involved… seriously that was a thing.  When you delve into the independent news sources you begin to see the abuses of the rich over the poor, the government over the citizens, and the police being turned into a paramilitary force dedicated to keeping dissent under the boot.

            I wish I didn’t believe any of this… I wish more of you did.

            I am going to receive responses to this by people telling me I’m an idiot. They are going to tell me that money is free speech and that I need to get over it because the Left does it just as much as the Right (that’s bullshit by the way and I have problem with both sides doing it anyway).  People are going to try and dissect the minutia of the decision and tell me it was a legal decision while getting lost in the details and ignoring the whole cloth.

            Sigh…

            I love a lot of these folks but I can’t debate this with them because I can’t begin to see their point of view. I don’t understand how they can’t see what is happening.

            I don’t know where I am anymore.

            -Josh