SCOTUS decision makes the US a soft fascist state.

[kpete]

The Unvarnished Truth About the US
2010 January 22
by Ian Welsh

I’ve been meaning to write this post for some time and in light of yesterday’s Supreme Court decision allowing unlimited corporate money into the political system, I think it’s time.

Yesterday’s decision makes the US a soft fascist state. Roosevelt’s definition of fascism was control of government by corporate interests. Unlimited money means that private interests can dump billions into elections if they choose. Given that the government can, will, and has rewarded them with trillions, as in the bailouts, or is thinking about doing so in HCR, by forcing millions of Americans to buy their products the return on investment is so good that I would argue that corporations have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to buy out government - after all if you pay a million to get a billion, or a billion to get a trillion, that’s far far better returns than are avaiable anywhere else.

And no politician, no political party, can reasonably expect to win when billions are arrayed against it.

The one faint hope is that politicians in the Senate will panic, know they have 10 months to do something and ram something through. Of course, that will only be a stopgap measure, until the Supremes overthrow it, but in the meantime, maybe Dems will get serious about the Supreme Court and not rubber-stamp radical right-wingers like Alito and Roberts.

more:
http://www.ianwelsh.net/the-unvarnished-truth-about-the-us/

[ThomWV]

1. Soft for the moment. Hard is right around the corner.

[Fumesucker]

2. I disagree..

The US was already a soft fascist state, this decision has moved it to firm..

The 14 points of fascism..

http://www.ellensplace.net/fascism.html

[WindRiverMan]

3. I agree.

With the exception that the U.S. became truly fasicst under the Bush Regime.

[tom_paine]

4. The comments are almost as good as the article

Maybe better. And that's saying alot because the article is pretty damned good.

A comment, attributed to Helen Thomas (but which I cannot fully confirm), states that we should constantly ask ourselves at this particular junction of history, "Who are we? What are we becoming?"

And of course, once those two questions are answered to an individual's satisfaction, what to do about it and the onrushing future.