I famously remember Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia standing on the Senate floor and soundly denouncing the decision to send troops to Iraq. Not that Mr. Byrd was any prince among men, but by the time of the Iraq War he didn't care who he pissed off.
Frank Lautenberg was kind of that way. He had been a senator from New Jersey for a long, long time, so his wheeling and dealing days were over and done with. He voted blue pretty consistently.
So today I learned that New Jersey's esteemed
It doesn't matter who replaces Frank Lautenberg. No politician supports collective bargaining anymore. Those who say they do are the most reprehensible (*cough*Obama*cough*). No one has stood up to the dangerous genetic engineering of food crops (*cough*EVERYONE*cough*). We can't even get a vote for background checks at gun shows! Will the successor of Frank Lautenberg change any of this? Oh HELL no. His election will be financed by firearms manufacturers, big business, Monsanto ... probably even Massey Energy. For sure he will have to kiss the ring of New Jersey's political Boss Hawg, George Norcross.
Democracy is a flawed system, because any fool can vote. The Powers That Be have figured that out, and They give us good-looking, earnest-seeming "folks" who get into office and slip the reins of power to the Powers.
Read it right here: The last time I will ever be fooled by a politician is Mr. "Change We Can Believe In." He really had me going. Lesson learned. It doesn't matter who runs for office. It doesn't matter which party controls the legislatures. All that matters is money. Change we can believe in? Nope. Everything's just the same.
6 comments:
I am saddened to say that I completely agree with you.
See, our failure was reading that motto as the implied Change in terms of delta, shift, or whatever word you want to describe "a difference in situation".
He never lied when he said Change (the pocket sort) is what we (the political machine) believe in.
That's some darn impressive slight of hand spinning, isn't it? *sigh*
We have an Election in the offing about 100 days hence, lots of pork barreling going on right now and a maze of election promises from all sides to confuse us all.
A politician is beyond the arms of the law when expoed for lying, cheating and other forms of skuduggery Ordinary citzens would be jailed for.
Politicians from well bred Australian families with
generations of history have much in common with their convict ancestry of Whores and thieves.
Whereas we migrants (Honest) from the Sceptered Isle are a different breed altogether.
I agree with you. For all of the good things you can say about term limits, it takes a giant to be able to ignore the big lobby interests and live to tell about it.
Those guys seem like they're just about gone now...
Like Molly Ivins used to say, "You dance with the one who brung ya."
At least my human rights as a woman and a queer person have been upheld, which is more than I can say if Romney had taken office.
The Democrats are leading us to hell in a handbasket more slowly than the Republicans would have. That's important. But it is also important that professional politics is not all that runs our lives: it is important that we produce regionally sustainable economies, produce our own jobs (by starting democratically run worker-owned workplaces), and, well, eat the rich. :-)
--Kim
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