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The Nation - "Democracy for Sale" - Another Article Noting Corporate Coup 2010

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TomCADem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Oct-16-10 08:21 PM
Original message
The Nation - "Democracy for Sale" - Another Article Noting Corporate Coup 2010
Edited on Sat Oct-16-10 08:24 PM by TomCADem
Here is another article outlining the increasingly blatant efforts of corporations to buy the election in 2010 and gain Republican control of Congress.

http://www.thenation.com/article/155404/democracy-sale


On October 6, amid the tidal wave of corporate cash flooding the 2010 campaigns—which could attach a $5 billion price tag to the most expensive midterm election in history—Bill Moyers told Common Cause that money in politics is "the dagger directed at the heart of democracy." He had just warned that "the activist reactionary majority on the Supreme Court...has opened the floodgates for oligarchs and plutocrats to secretly buy our elections and consolidate their hold on the corporate state."

What is happening this fall is not just about parties and candidates or television attack ads or a media fantasy of "the grassroots Tea Party movement." We are witnessing an assault on democracy by multinational corporations that, freed by the Citizens United ruling, are out to get the best government money can buy. Who's buying? Billionaire businessmen with a stake in energy, finance and telecommunications policy debates—like Trevor Rees-Jones, Robert Rowling and Jerry Perenchio—are writing checks for as much as $1 million each to Karl Rove's American Crossroads project. What's more, Crossroads GPS, an allied group that's pouring tens of millions into Congressional races, is organized under tax laws that allow Rove to hide the names of donors. But we do know the targets: by early October, the group had spent $14 million on ads attacking senators Barbara Boxer in California and Patty Murray in Washington, as well as a handful of other Democrats in races that could decide which party controls the Senate.

The Crossroads campaign is part of a broader push from corporations to buy not just Congress but a guarantee that there will be fewer challenges to corporate abuses, bankster speculation and free-trade policies that allow multinational corporations to shutter American factories while exploiting the world's poorest workers.

Fronting this corporate campaigning is the US Chamber of Commerce, which, according to the Center for American Progress, collects and deposits money from US-based multinationals and groups from India and Bahrain that ends up "in the same 501(c)(6) account the Chamber is using to run an unprecedented $75 million attack campaign, mostly against Democrats." The Chamber joins Crossroads and other Republican

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RKP5637 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Oct-16-10 08:33 PM
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1. And we can thank SCOTUS. n/t
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Angry Dragon Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Oct-16-10 08:42 PM
Response to Reply #1
3. Impeach them for treason
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billlll Donating Member (434 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Oct-16-10 08:46 PM
Response to Reply #3
4. impeach Scotus? possible?
How?
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RKP5637 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Oct-16-10 08:46 PM
Response to Reply #3
6. Someone here just said similar... just how far can this go... there appears to be
very little control over them even when decisions are really really bad... It's a mystery to me how anyone could possibly think anything different would happen with corporate donations.

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Bozita Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Oct-16-10 08:41 PM
Response to Original message
2. Bigtime K&R
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G_j Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Oct-16-10 08:46 PM
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5. "buy not just Congress but a guarantee that there will be fewer challenges .."
as it is now, every piece of legislation to hold corporations accountable and make them play fair, gets a 'poison pill' added if it ever passes at all.
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democracy1st Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Oct-16-10 08:48 PM
Response to Original message
7. K & R for later
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RKP5637 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Oct-16-10 08:49 PM
Response to Original message
8. I think a lot of Americans are still asleep at the wheel as to what is occurring, and
I think another segment just does not give a damn, very apathetic.
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hadrons Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Oct-16-10 10:01 PM
Response to Reply #8
9. For all the (deserved) blame S. Court and the corporations are ....
getting, part of the problem is the large number of Americans who allow themselves to be played like this.
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TomCADem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Oct-17-10 04:29 PM
Response to Reply #9
10. But, The Corporate Media Provides Numerous Scapegoats: Gays, Immigrants, President Obama...
...so that we can feel good that it is not our fault as corporations and the wealthy undermine our democracy.
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