Who says you can’t buy the White House if you got the dough? And as a down payment, why not slap down a million bucks or so from the untold millions bilked from the American people over the last several years?
Essentially, that’s what presumed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, his band of Big Money manipulators, and the complicit Senate Republicans are banking on doing. And nothing less. All in much the same reckless, shady manner by which our financial industry nearly bankrupt this country.
The conservative party once again demonstrated its self-obsessed indifference to democratic fairness by recently blocking the Disclose Act that simply would have alerted citizens as to where some of this nation’s most powerful and influential corporations are placing their bets this election year.
For reasons that continue to become increasingly clear, obstructionist Republicans in Congress, intent on playing by their own set of rules, would rather you not know who their sugar daddies are.
That singular, inexcusable, corrupt move to deny transparency by Republicans, is so pathetically revealing, and should tell middle class Americans all they need to know about the true priorities of the once inaptly labeled “moral majority” party.
As if we really didn’t know already, by Congressional Republicans’ persistent refusal to budge on those tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, as far as they’re concerned, the corporate elite takes precedent over the people.
It’s not as if the Disclose Act would have prevented mega corporations – like Wall Street banks, health insurance and drug companies – from funneling tens of millions of dollars through outside fundraising groups largely endorsing Romney.
The goal of the Act was to introduce some desperately-needed transparency into campaign fundraising, at a time when scandalous daily headlines reveal more and more about the unwieldy influence and criminal practices in the financial industry. Transparency was something even Republicans have long claimed to favor. Not anymore.
Of course, there are so many things wrong with this picture that it literally makes you sick to your stomach if you stare at it long enough. Little wonder why Americans would simply rather tune out and opt instead to follow the race for the next American Idol.
For the first time in American history a presidential challenger is on pace to out raise a sitting president. In June alone, just one of Romney's super PACs raised $20 million. In the meantime, millions of children in this country go to bed hungry. Millions of folks have lost their homes to the 2008 economic crisis. Millions more could still follow suit. And the future of the economy?
We should know by now that no one man has all the answers. And as a country, we need to spend more time formulating the questions. President Barrack Obama has made some mistakes, but he's also done some things right. He's certainly not immune from the corporate influence and has a good deal to answer to. But to think of yanking him from office just as he's hitting his stride is flat out dumb.
As Americans, our duty doesn’t begin and end on Election Day. We need to pay attention all year round.
Now, thanks to some screwy legal loopholes exploited by notorious right wing schemers like Karl Rove – an “outside” group like American Crossroads can spend millions of dollars in anonymous contributions to run ads promoting Romney for president.
What that means, in theory and most assuredly in practice, is that the Wall Street robber barons responsible for nearly bankrupting this country can legally dump the same millions of dollars they stole from Americans over the years, into brainwashing campaigns designed to insert one of their very own as the next president of the United States.
Ain’t that America. Capitalism at work, baby. Home of the brave? Land of the free?
Kevin McKinney
(Wednesday, July 25, 2012, Opinion, Shore News Today)
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