Tag Archives: democrats

Buying Elections

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What’s wrong with Billionaires spending unlimited amounts to influence elections?

Do we seriously need to answer this question?

The fact that some think its ok is shocking, and scary.

Remember the images from decades ago — of back-room ‘power-brokers’, rich white guys, smoking cigars, making the decisions, controlling the media, manipulating the political process.  No women, minorities, no unions, few work-place safety rules, few environmental regulations, put business first.

How some long for the good old days…

We as a nation rejected back-room politics, not because every idea was bad but because hijacking a fair process was corrupt.  Yet here we are again – now with a new twist.  The manipulation today is so effective that the Billionaires are no longer afraid to come out of the closet and show themselves and announce their willingness to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to further their agendas. They’ve convinced us that those who are against their freedom to exercise their rights are socialists, are against the First Amendment, are un-American.

Wealthy Americans are absolutely entitled to voice their opinions, as are all Americans.  But when their wealth permits them to so overpower and dictate the conversation and when they’ve apparently lost the awareness that unbridled domination of ideas is bad for America, we’re in trouble.

Worst of all, their money is largely not used to build support for their ideas or vision.  They are not trying to show us a better plan, a better strategy for success.  Instead, they are largely focused on vilifying and destroying those they disagree with.  They are spending their money trying to scare the American people.

Remember – they’re not the candidates.  Their Americans who supposedly have a vision that they believe is best for America – yet they don’t spend their money trying to convince the voters of this wonderful vision; they instead work to destroy the other choices.

That’s what’s wrong.

When parents are splitting up and divorcing, the saying goes that you have to love your kids more than you hate each other.  Translation – for the sake of the kids, don’t destroy each other, because you end up deeply harming the kids.

Well, the political elite in this country hate the prevailing majority view, and their really scaring the kids.

President Obama and Governor Romney both have many ideas about the way government should work for the people – about the role of government – about where we may need more government and where we need less.  Thankfully, their views are quite different.  And we as Americans desire to hear from and understand what each side wants and sees for America, what they believe in, and how they see the country operating if they should be elected in November.

Citizens United handed Billionaires the ability to manipulate our elections.  They should now show the intelligence and love of America to not do it just because they can.

Nero Fiddles While Rome Burns

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We’re in a fiscal crisis.  We all know it.

Federal government revenues and expenditures are out of balance and as a result we’re running enormous and unsustainable deficits.  If the rest of the world should decide one day that lending to the United States is a risky bet, interest rates will sky rocket, businesses will cut back or close unable to afford to borrow or pay off existing loans, unemployment will rise rapidly, and deficits will soar as tax revenues plummet and expenditures for debt service and for social services rise dramatically – leading to even higher interest rates, and worse unemployment, and even larger annual deficits – and a spiral downward that will be next to impossible to break.

We’re in a very precarious situation because our financial house is not ‘in order’, yet fortunately the rest of the world is lending us money at record low rates.

So with this scary but very lucky ‘low interest rate’ reality, what do our politicians do?

Republicans actually spook the rest of the world intentionally by playing chicken with the debt ceiling.  Imagine, they actually drive the United States towards default of its debt obligations to our lenders.

And Democrats act irresponsibly by appearing to be in denial about the seriousness of our fiscal situation, failing to put forward and embrace a thoughtful, substantive fiscal plan that includes significant expense reductions in entitlement spending.

But worst of all, because it is an election year both parties have abandoned all serious attempts to accomplish anything substantive this year.  Republicans pass bills in the House knowing they will never pass the Senate, while Senate Democrats try to move legislation forward that they know will be killed by Senate Republicans.  Both sides posture in order to have campaign slogans and have the ability to point and blame the other side, and in the meantime the Republic is failing. They don’t even have the courtesy to pretend to lock themselves in round the clock, all night sessions, for a solid month, trying to hammer out a ‘grand bargain’ in order to begin to responsibly address this crisis.

Nero Fiddles While Rome Burns.

President Obama, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reed, Mitch McConnell, together with Mitt Romney to avoid political advantage – all need to put country first and come together as a group and solve this problem.  Serious expense reductions need to be on the table in social programs, in military spending, in all aspects of government operations.  Tax rates need to be on the table, as well as tax policy and the closing of tax loopholes. Investments in infrastructure that make us more competitive over the next 100 years need to be on the table, as do investments in new technologies that will spawn new industries and provide the jobs of the future.

A combination of serious expense reductions, targeted tax increases, closing tax loopholes, strategic investments is the way forward.

And as soon as they come to a deal, our markets will explode as confidence in our fiscal future rises.

Americans know it, and it’s time our political leaders stopped fiddling.