Monday, January 9, 2012

Rejecting the Duopoly

Here is some encouraging news from a just-released Gallup poll: a record number of Americans are refusing membership in either one of the major two corrupt political parties currently smothering what's left of our democracy.The proportion of self-identified independents in 2011, when the poll was conducted, is the largest in 60 years.



Democrats maintain a slight edge over Republicans, but among those surveyed, an equal amount merely "lean" toward identifying with either party.

According to Gallup, here are the implications:  
Increased independent identification is not uncommon in the year before a presidential election year, but the sluggish economy, record levels of distrust in government, and unfavorable views of both parties helped to create an environment that fostered political independence more than in any other pre-election year.
As Americans' attention turns to choosing a president for the next four years and they line up behind President Obama or his Republican challenger, the percentage of independent identifiers is likely to fall this year. However, if national conditions and the political environment do not change appreciably over the course of this year, independent identification -- even if it declines -- will probably remain on the higher end of what Gallup has measured historically.
The unlimited money flowing into campaign SuperPac advertising is already having an unintended consequence, at least among the Republican contenders.  The Citizens United decision, which gave the right of free and anonymous political speech to corporations, has done more than give personhood to big business. It has spawned a cancer on the host.  Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, to name just two of the "beneficiaries", are busily engaged in mutual annihilation in their dueling attack ads.... and upcoming full-length negative infomercials.
  
The election is still ten months away, and the complicit corporate media monsters are greedily extending their claws for the millions and billions of ad revenue coming their way courtesy of the Supremes. They too have not appeared to ponder the law of unintended consequences. They're like Bush & Co invading Iraq and being utterly befuddled by the lack of enthusiasm of the natives.  How many independent voters/viewers are going to remain paying cable customers just to be invaded and tortured by nonstop political commercials?  Trust me -- since the money is relentless, so too will be the election year waterboarding of the body politic.

One more reason to cut the cord that binds and gags us.  Read a book, read a blog, or write your own. But above all -- Occupy!

26 comments:

Valerie said...

I suspect that voter turn-out for the 2012 election will be at an all time low. All those voters inspired to get out and vote for Obama in 2008 will stay home, demoralised that the candidate that they hoped would be another JFK or FDR turned out to be another George W Bush. Sadly, this will suit the corporations running this country just fine. They can say that the lack of Democracy in our country is all the voters’ fault.

I am waiting to see if I should register as a Republican, Democrat or Independent. In my home state of Washington, I have to register as a R. or D. to vote in the Primary. I don't know whether to vote for the least obnoxious Republican (in case he beats Obama) or to vote "uncommitted" in the Democratic Primary. I am sure it would send a message to the Obama camp but since they have totally ignored all the other messages the progressive wing of the party has sent them and done as their corporate masters have dictated, I doubt it will make a difference. Either way, I won’t be voting either for Obama or one of the Republican clowns in the “real” election. At this point, I will vote for Rocky Anderson unless there is an up-swell of support via the Internet for another candidate – which I don’t discount considering how quickly the Occupy Movement arose.

I suggest anyone watching TV tape whatever shows he or she watches and fast forward through the ads/brainwashing/dissemination of misinformation.

The Doktor said...

I see this as great news. The American people are starting to wake from their slumber- albeit some more quickly than others- but waking just the same.
I don't how people over here feel about Americans Elect, but Bernie Sanders is in their top tier of 4 candidates. I really think there are a lot of disenchanted Americans out there right now who really thought if they gave the republicans one more chance in 2010 they would do better, and instead they got the worst Speaker Of The House in history- and they know it. Boehner is a slobbering drunk with no idea of how to run anything other than a beer tap, and his record of failure is so colossal that his own party will be forced to turn on him like a fetid zombie looking for rancid meat....
@Valerie
I'm registered as a republican just to vote against the more serious crazies in the primaries.

Denis Neville said...

Lionel Trilling described American conservatism as a mélange of "irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas."

Rejecting the Duopoly!!!

"I think it's dangerous - this class warfare." – Mittens

Corey Robin says “we've forgotten a basic truth about conservatism: It is a reaction to democratic movements from below, movements like Occupy Wall Street that threaten to reorder society from the bottom up, redistributing power and resources from those who have much to those who have not so much. With the roar against the ruling classes growing ever louder, the right seems to be reverting to type. It thus behooves us to take a second look at…why the conservative responds to Occupy Wall Street as he does.”

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Conservative-Mind/130199/

“Given the reactionary thrust of conservatism, Occupy Wall Street may turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to the right…if Occupy Wall Street turns out to be a movement rather than a moment - if it has real staying power; if it moves from public squares to private institutions; if it starts to divest the elite of their privileges and powers, not just in their offshore accounts but in their backyards and board rooms - it could provide the kind of creative provocation that once produced a Burke or a Hayek. The metaphor of occupation is threatening enough; one can only imagine what might happen were it made real. And while the mavens of the right would probably prefer four more years to four good books, they might want to rethink that. They wouldn't be in the position they're in - when, even out of power, they still govern the country - had their predecessors made the same choice.”

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." - John Kenneth Galbraith

Jay–Ottawa said...

A former Latin American president writes a monthly column in "La Jornada," a decidedly-leftish Mexican daily. This president emeritus has been focusing in recent months on the environment, grieving over the fact that for the past two hundred years advanced countries have been depleting global resources that took millions of years to create.

At the same time the former president applauds technology’s latest achievements with super computers. They now beat humans at chess and, in more serious realms, supercomputers can resolve scientific problems that would take a team of scientists ten years to calculate without computers. Furthermore, these supercomputers can be packed into a robot that looks like a president, talks like a president and, most important of all, WALKS like a president.

And then the writer in "La Jornada" has a stroke of genius. Why not put a supercomputer robot on the ballot for the US election in November 2012? A robot could be programmed to provide economic fairness to the poor and the collapsing middle class.

Thanks to programmed personality characteristics (smile, eloquence, love of dogs, golf prowess), it could pull off economic justice without hurting the feelings of the superrich. Maybe it could even unravel the mare’s nest created by Wall Street –- but I doubt that. It could certainly steer clear of little wars; and it could negotiate in such an intelligent way as to avoid a devastating nuclear conflict.

Isn’t such a robot the Third Party Candidate we've all been looking for? With its Spock-like coolness always in a deep chess game, the robot would be immune to money, thus providing the longed-sought passage around the shoals of campaign finance reform. We might ask the Supreme Court to declare such an incorruptible savant chief executive a “person,” to avoid any niggling constitutional problems raised by purists.

A few critics have already described recent occupiers of the Oval Office as robots. So we’re accustomed to the idea of robots in public office. The Court has already set its own precedent for creating persons out of paper (while tending more and more to ignore millions of others made out of flesh and blood.) So let’s go with the flow of the Robert’s Court. Robots are persons. Then we can stop calling our super robot “it.” The resident of the Oval Office should always be a person. Women can call it a 'she,' the men can call it a 'he,' and the technicians can work out the details without getting into ethics issues.

Send me your anxious Republicans, your tired Democrats, your vascillating Independents, and your bulldog Bloggers yearning to breathe free. For the election of 2012, the choice will no longer be between the Lesser of Two Evils or the Best of the Worst. The bumper sticker of choice: “Back the Robot -- Unaffiliated and the Best Prez for the USA.”

“Si, se puede,” says Fidel.

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2012/01/09/opinion/019a1mun

Zee said...

@The Doktor--

Great to see you over here! I owe you a long e-mail, just as soon as I send something off to Valerie on which I've been working for some time.

Zee said...

@Denis Neville—


Darn! I swore that I was going to just “lurk” for a week or so to preserve my marriage, but you have given me more food for thought and, well, Mrs. Zee is off at music practice just now…While the cat’s away…

I have not yet read the references that you provided to Corey Robin’s writings in an earlier thread (they’re bookmarked) but what you have quoted so far intrigues me. It almost sounds as though the Progressive Prof. Robin has some hope for a Conservative “rebirth:”

“Given the reactionary thrust of conservatism, Occupy Wall Street may turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to the right…it could provide the kind of creative provocation that once produced a Burke or a Hayek.” --Corey Robin as quoted by Denis Neville.

A thinking Conservative can only hope!

I have tried very hard not to identify myself with the current dismal crop of Republicans who are vying for the Republican nomination for President. They are all so, well, hateful and prejudiced. And, as we have discussed earlier they are all committed to the very variety of capitalism that brought this country to its knees in 2008.

Like @The Doktor, I am registered as a Republican, but only to vote in Republican primaries so I can try to steer the party away from the abomination that it currently calls “Conservatism.”

And, as I’ve remarked before, this participation/education in Progressive blogs is getting expensive. Now I’ll have to go out and buy:

The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism From Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin, published by Oxford University Press.

Shelf space grows short, but continuing education is priceless. Time to purchase that Kindle or equivalent tablet.

Karen Garcia said...

My New York Times comment on David Brooks this evening. He wonders where all the libruls have gone. Duh....

Despite the ideologies with which people label themselves, the vast majority of Americans favor progressive programs. Democrats and Republicans, "liberals" and "conservatives" alike favor raising the cap on FICA taxes, reducing the defense budget and ending the wars, and taxing the ultra-wealthy. The poll results are here:

http://www.people-press.org/2011/06/07/more-blame-wars-than-domestic-spe...

The two-party system does not serve the electorate or acknowledge the wishes of the people. It's a duopoly bought and paid for by corporations and the profiteers of the military/industrial/terror complex who have a vested interest in keeping the population simultaneously fearful, dumbed down and entertained, and fooled into believing that choosing one Wall Street puppet over another will make a real difference in their lives.

No presidential candidate vetted and paid for by Plutocracy USA is going to change the dynamic. The Occupy movement is the new dynamic, the repudiation of politics as usual. The fact that politicians are suddenly talking the populist talk is a testament to its power. The fact that Congress may soon vote to ban insider trading within its own corrupt sanctuary is testament to its power. The inexorable march toward overturning Citizens United and getting the $$ out of politics is testament to its power.

And yes, David, make Medicare simple -- by covering everybody from cradle to grave!

Elizabeth Adams said...

I have never voted Republican. I can't say I am proud to be a registered Democrat. I've been looking at the Green Party, but a few of the people in our local Occupy groups are in the Peace and Freedom Party. I may go there.

For those of you who haven't heard about the 99% Declaration, I highly recommend checking it out:

http://www.the-99-declaration.org/

Become a delegate. Register to vote. Volunteer to help make it happen. Spread the word. This could get rid of the duopoly.

Cirze said...

I love it, K!!!!

O C C U P Y !!!!!

S

OCCUPYGREENSBORO

Denis Neville said...

@ Elizabeth Adams – Amen!

RollingStone’s Matt Taibii:

“The auctioned election process is designed to reduce the field to two candidates who will each receive hundreds of millions of dollars apiece from the same pool of donors.

“The reason 2012 feels so empty now is that voters on both sides of the aisle are not just tired of this state of affairs, they are disgusted by it. They want a chance to choose their own leaders and they want full control over policy, not just a partial say. There are a few challenges to this state of affairs within the electoral process…but everyone knows that in the end, once the primaries are finished, we’re going to be left with one 1%-approved stooge taking on another.

“There are obvious, even significant differences between Obama and someone like Mitt Romney, particularly on social issues, but no matter how Obama markets himself this time around, a choice between these two will not in any way represent a choice between “change” and the status quo. This is a choice between two different versions of the status quo, and everyone knows it.”

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/iowa-the-meaningless-sideshow-begins-20120103

Can so many lack any empathy or sympathy for anybody? Have their lives been utterly mistake and tragedy free?

Investigate the alternatives. Spread the word. Let’s get rid of the duopoly.

DreamsAmelia said...

Well said--like John Prine says, "blow up yer t.v., throw away yer papers," and I would say, go and listen to the speakers at the Gitmo protest. Last year we stood in front of the White House and heard testimony from lawyers who showed the way "evidence" is distorted to turn average men, people just like all of us reading this blog, into monsters. The only difference being they were from the mid-East.

At first, I felt depressed beyond saying, because our pitiful protest was being swarmed in all directions by tourists and school groups (to her credit, ONE teacher did ask us questions and tried to educate her students about our protest)--we were outnumbered at least 30:1. But as I spoke with members of the group, my eyes started tearing at the level of integrity they had been living their whole lives--stories of being in prison with Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky over the years, stories of how cool the D.C. police are but how filthy the jails are--this core group of sturdy souls had a willingness to put their flesh on the line with hunger strikes and marches and activism through their churches to keep the heat on our elected officials to do the right thing. They had stable jobs as lawyers, teachers, artists, musicians--they weren't protesting because we have a draft, they were protesting for a fundamental demand of norms of decency, which indefinite detention without charge obviously defies.
I felt a little queasy to think that the "large" protests in the 60s were maybe easier to participate in because it was "cool" and "groovy" and self-serving to end the military draft. When the draft is over, we see who the real friends of peace and justice are...

Then we were ordered by the speaker to stop our chit-chat. We were told to lower our black hoods completely over our heads (they were breathable), and pin our hands behind our backs. Thusly we marched, 2 by 2 for blocks, from the White House to the Department of Justice. Worst of all, I felt NO ONE cared. Nobody passing on the street stopped what they were doing, gave a shout out, honked a horn--nothing. I saw how NOTHING seems to shock or wake up our fellow citizens. It's all just another ho-hum day in the business of fighting terrorism--And THAT is when I could see that a vast majority of the populace is totally brainwashed by corporate t.v. You don't realize the extent of it until you go to a few protests and realize we truly can, will, and must create liberty and justice for all. Real people are doing just that, and they aren't getting press: by design.

James F Traynor said...

I don't know what to think about the rising number of people who list themselves as independents. I suspect a large number is made up of both 'extreme' Republicans and 'extreme' Democrats (being a democratic socialist, for want of a better description, I list myself among the latter). This would be more more of an indication of serious polarization than anything else. I am basically a pragmatist; I don't look so much at whether a glass is half full or half empty but at the net direction of its ebb and flow. And the bottom of the glass appears to be getting closer all the time.

I think that our problem is that American capitalism has failed to adapt over the last 50 years or so; it has become reactionary in response not so much to communism but to what it now calls European socialism which it has always seen as the greater threat precisely because it appears to have been so successful, particularly among the Scandinavian countries. I believe that this attitude makes the Republican Party (and their enablers in the Democratic Party) a menace both to the nation and the world.

I, frankly, think that it may be too late for this to turn around and that we're heading for a violent upheaval in this country. It's not so much the Chinese that the world should worry about but us as in U.S. Inc..

Jay–Ottawa said...

The greatest hindrance to political reform in the US is the two-party system. Either party will only bring more of the same. I do not understand how people concerned about economic disparities, civil rights and drone fever can do anything other than turn to a Third Party.

The thinking that we are wasting our votes is what keeps the two old parties afloat. If you don't understand how just thinking in the same old box can freeze frame the USA in its current state, check out Luis Bunuel's classic, "The Exterminating Angel." It was made for such occasions as we now find ourselves.

The New Progressive Alliance, where people of high caliber have been thinking about alternatives to the two-party dead end and coming up with alternatives, have just put out a new idea. If you know someone who might be voting in the New Hampshire primary, check this out.

http://newprogs.org/blog/2012/01/08/dissaffected-nh-dems-heres-your-chance

James F Traynor said...

We don't have a two party system. It is essentially a one party system, the Capitalist Party, with two wings both of which vie for the support of the 1%, differing only in their methods of approach; the Republican wing's 'let them eat cake' model and the Democratic wing's more 'enlightened exploitation of the 99%' version- the Clinton model.

Fred Drumlevitch said...

Indirect evidence of the failure of the two-party system — via a new example of the arrogance and hypocrisy of the Obama administration, and its belief that the U.S. isn't subject to the rule of law:

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/10/us_argues_it_is_immune_from_std_experiment_lawsuit/singleton/

Truly disgusting.

Will said...

@DreamsAmelia,

I've had that John Prine song stuck in my head since last week when I heard Chris Hedges say he didn't own a television. (Of course, I was watching BookTV on my own television at the time, but that's beside the point.)

For anyone not familiar with John or this gem of a tune, here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG0-iWCKjsw

Fred Drumlevitch said...

The web address in my comment above (re lawsuits based on the long-ago U.S.-run Guatemalan STD experiments) didn't wrap correctly, so here it is again, split up (those interested will need to re-assemble it):

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/10/us_argues_it_is_

immune_from_std_experiment_lawsuit/singleton/

Anne Lavoie said...

Being a native of the Live Free or Die state of New Hampshire, I have politics in my blood and independence in my bones. Town Hall meetings were our state sport, the most community fun we had all year. To hear the eloquence and passion of people standing up and speaking up was awesome. I attended well before I could vote, just for the drama of the arguments! The election time brouhaha was the same. We took politics seriously but with enjoyment, and accepted and cherished the personal responsibility for getting actively involved.

Since I first registered to vote long ago, I have been a registered Independent in all four states I have lived and voted in. If/when I am in a closed primary state, I temporarily register for a party in order to vote in the primary, and I change back afterwards. It's very easy to do.

I am not a wishy washy person who doesn't know what I believe. I just have always believed in voting the person, not the party. That requires studying the issues, prioritizing them, analyzing the candidates positions, and selecting the one will work to enact those policies for the good of the country. I don't find value in party or personal loyalty because it almost always comes at the expense what's good for the entire country.

Voting your self-interest is the mantra of both corporate parties. Republicans members want to keep more money and guns for themselves, while Democrats want more benefits, including those related to abortion, family planning and gay rights, while the politicians cut backroom deals to undermine some of those very benefits.

We frequently hear their condemnation 'They vote against their own best interests!' Did they even consider that maybe more people should be voting the best interest of the country instead of their own? George Washington warned us about political parties in his Farewell Address, and that was even before they became two sides of the same corporate coin proclaiming various self-interests.

If you really want to support the Occupy movement, get out of the Duopoly now. Independents are the ones the politicians all worry about. Let's now give them a really big reason to worry, just in time for the elections.

OCCUPY!

Denis Neville said...

Modern capitalism and the end of economic democracy…

Woody Guthrie’s song, “Jesus Christ,” argued that Jesus would have been shunned and possibly killed by modern capitalist society much as he was in his own time.

http://www.woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/Jesus_Christ.htm

Our extreme capitalistic system isn’t a free market economy. It is ruled by a financial oligarchy, aided and abetted by a resurgence of right-wing economists, who are driven by ideology and special interests, that again threaten the economies of Europe and America where their ideas continue to flourish.

By design, Obama’s financial reform bill did nothing to control the behavior of banks.

Joseph Stiglitz writes, “If we expect to maintain any semblance of “normality,” we must fix the financial system...we have not fixed the financial system. Rather, we have poured money into the banks, without restrictions, without conditions, and without a vision of the kind of banking system we want and need. We have, in a phrase, confused ends with means. A banking system is supposed to serve society, not the other way around. That we should tolerate such a confusion of ends and means says something deeply disturbing about where our economy and our society have been heading. Americans in general are coming to understand what has happened. Protesters around the country, galvanized by the Occupy Wall Street movement, already know.”

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/01/stiglitz-depression-201201

“Modern Capitalism” (according to Atrios) - “Apparently it involves letting super rich people light hundreds of billions of dollars on fire, and then taxing poor people so they can afford to have a second bonfire.”

Occupy!!!

The Doktor said...

@Zee;
Hi Zee! Thank you, it's a lot nicer to be welcomed instead of being smeared and projected on.
@Anne Lavoie;
Great comment. Voting for the lesser of two evils is what got us here in the first place. We need to pull together as Americans instead of being pulled apart by career politicians who have never worked a day in their lives and don't plan to.
It is more than obvious that Obama's team watches polls like a hawk, and once they saw his margin going the wrong way he came out underneath that bridge in Ohio (stealing Chris Matthews' idea) and has been inching to the center ever since. He's a politician just like every other politician.

Occupy indeed!

Denis Neville said...

Modern capitalism and its corporate media…

“Zombie lies about the success of TARP are still alive, and starving for brains.”

Obama’s Sec. Timothy Geithner oversaw the “TARP that made money.”

Steve Waldman of Interfluidity, “Yes, Virginia. The banks really were bailed out.”

“Substantially all of the TARP funds advanced to banks have been paid back, with interest and sometimes even with a profit from sales of warrants. Most of the (much larger) extraordinary liquidity facilities advanced by the Fed have also been wound down without credit losses. So there really was no bailout, right? The banks took loans and paid them back.”

“Bullshit.”

http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/2587.html

Dr. Pitchfork, “Corporate Media Fails Again - AP 'Fact Check' Repeats Zombie Lies About Bank Bailouts”

“The zombie lies about the success and necessity of TARP simply will not die. While there are a number of moving parts to the bank bailouts, and while the Fed and Treasury’s three-card monte doesn’t make things any easier to get a handle on, one would think that professional journalists could at least get their basic facts straight – certainly when hailing their piece as a “fact check."

http://dailybail.com/home/corporate-media-fails-again-ap-fact-check-repeats-zombie-lie.html

James Singer said...

@Will.

Thanks for the link to Prine. One of my all-time heros. Remember sitting at my very important desk at National Journal in the early 70s with an earphone stuck in my head and listening to "Sam Stone" and trying to write something meaningful about Ed Koch's marijuana hearings.

James F Traynor said...

Capitalists aren't the problem, laissez faire capitalism is. Many capitalists, like Warren Buffet, would be much happier doing their thing under reasonable regulation, unburdened by the strum und drang of political and social upheaval. Scandinavian countries have long had their successful capitalists and, recently, South American capitalists have done quite well without the interference of the CIA or the U.S. marines.

Denis Neville said...

James F Traynor said...Capitalists aren't the problem, laissez faire capitalism is.

Yes, there is a distinction.

Milton Friedman was the leading apostle for the revival of laissez-faire capitalism. Irresponsibility, Friedman explained, was what made capitalism succeed. “Do corporate executives, providing they stay within the law, have responsibilities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? My answer is, no, they do not.” His modus operandi was exploiting crisis and disaster to impose rapid and irreversible change to prevent society from returning to “the tyranny of the status quo.” Chile under Pinochet was his testing ground - economic shocks to accompany electric shocks. As Eduardo Galeano asked, “How can this inequality be maintained if not through jolts of electric shock?”

Irresponsibility is at the heart of the US problem. And, as Charlie Pierce wrote today, “Three years after the financial sector nearly ate the entire world, devastating the national economy and ruining millions of lives, the Republican Party is preparing to nominate for president a pure product of that very same world.”

“In a global free market, there is a variation on Gresham’s Law: bad capitalism tends to drive out good.” – John Gray, False Dawn

“Gresham’s Law – a general law or principle concerning the circulation of money…named after Sir Thomas Gresham, who clearly perceived it truth three centuries ago. This law briefly expressed is that bad money drives out good money, but that good money cannot drive out bad money.” – W.S. Jevons, 19th century economist

In 1944, Karl Polanyi, when describing how the struggle for domination between laissez-faire capitalism and society’s values led to the Great Depression, made this prophetic statement: “To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment would result in the demolition of society"

Polanyi was convinced that such a demolition could no longer happen in the post-war world because, “Within the nations we are witnessing a development under which the economic system ceases to lay down the law to society and the primacy of society over that system is secured.” Alas, Polanyi's optimism was misplaced. And just as Polanyi foresaw, this doctrine is leading us directly towards the demolition of society.

Denis Neville said...

An Indiana University study says 46 million Americans are living below the poverty line – up 27% since start of recession. According to the report, these numbers will continue to rise, because although the recession is technically over, its continued impact on cuts to welfare budgets and the quality of new, often poorly paid, jobs will force many more into poverty. The situation is likely to become even worse if the long-term unemployed lose their jobless benefits.

http://www.indiana.edu/~spea/pubs/white_paper_at_risk.pdf

Then there is the vulture capitalist, Mittens.

Mittens’ campaign insists on trotting him out as the great friend of the embattled middle-class. As Charlie Pierce said, “They might as well just dress him up as a chicken and send him out to talk about agricultural policy.”

“The point isn’t necessarily that Romney has lived in privilege all his life; so did FDR. It’s his apparent inability or unwillingness to imagine what it’s like for those less privileged, his complete failure to try, even in his imagination, walking in someone else’s shoes that stands out.” - Paul Krugman

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/uncompassionate-conservatism/

But, let’s not to be seduced by the bitter politics of envy and our resentment of his success.

Anne Lavoie said...

@Denis

And the 'bad capitalists' are sitting on trillions of dollars just waiting for their next constructed crisis to fully ripen, not just to cash in but to restructure the system in their image, aka 'doing God's work' - Privatization. They can't do that without the government puppets in their Duopoly, but voters are still willing to support that two-headed monster with their membership and support. Go figure.

Did your sources happen to identify any solutions to this problem, besides the obvious one of voters dropping their membership in either heads of that corporate-owned monster?

So many intelligent people stay with those parties even knowing what they know now about the corporate control. Isn't that feeding the beast instead of starving it? The corporations would lose their well-greased Congressional machine without the Duopoly, and with AUSTERITY right around the corner, we should be throwing monkey wrenches into that machine as fast as we can, not supporting it!

That's not likely to happen though. Just look at the Catholic Church and their rich and long history of evil-doing. Despite all that, they have a flock of over a billion who faithfully give, and they are probably THE biggest and wealthiest corporation on earth. Who cares? 'Baaaaaaa, baaaaaaa, not us' said the docile sheeple.

No, voters are unlikely to reject the corporate Duopoly that packages up and serves them puppet candidates who will soon finish their demolition job on our Democracy. I'm afraid the people are comfortably snookered, but I hope that they will awaken, and very soon.