It's a sad day in America when Jimmy Carter, a mainstream politician, albeit a moral giant compared to most of our politicians, can say with conviction that America has become an oligarchy.
HARTMANN: Our Supreme Court has now said, “unlimited money in politics.” It seems like a violation of principles of democracy. … Your thoughts on that?CARTER: It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and congress members. So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over. … The incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody’s who’s already in Congress has a lot more to sell to an avid contributor than somebody who’s just a challenger.
x YouTube VideoYep, a sad day in America. And like President Carter says, most politicians view unlimited cash as a benefit to themselves. There is one exception. One.
“The millionaire class and the billionaire class increasingly own the political process, and they own the politicians that go to them for money. … we are moving very, very quickly from a democratic society, one person, one vote, to an oligarchic form of society, where billionaires would be determining who the elected officials of this country are.” — Sen. Bernie SandersYes, Bernie is the one exception to the rule that our politicians are for sale to the highest bidder.
And some of our best known politicians are defined by their lust for money.
We are witnessing the rise of the super-rich and the fall of everyone else.
x YouTube VideoThese shameless bastards have nothing but contempt for the rest of us.
They own the media so they can make most people believe anything they want — even the most outrageous bullshit, like Pete Peterson is a philanthropist.
Or Hillary Clinton is a progressive.
Like we’re too stupid to know that progressives don’t hang out with vampire squids.
A few weeks ago, Hillary Clinton delivered a much-touted policy speech at the New America Foundation in Washington, where she talked passionately about the financial plight of Americans who "are still barely getting by, barely holding on, not seeing the rewards that they believe their hard work should have merited." She bemoaned the fact that the slice of the nation's wealth collected by the top 1 percent—or 0.01 percent—has "risen sharply over the last generation," and she denounced this "throwback to the Gilded Age of the robber barons." Her speech, in which she cited the various projects of the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation that address economic inequality, was widely compared to the rhetoric of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the unofficial torchbearer of the populist wing of the Democratic Party. Here was Hillary, test-driving a theme for a possible 2016 presidential campaign, sticking up for the little guy and trash-talking the economic elites. She decried the "shadow banking system that operated without accountability" and caused the financial crisis that wiped out millions of jobs and the nest eggs, retirement funds, and college savings of families across the land. Yet at the end of this week, when all three Clintons hold a daylong confab with donors to their foundation, the site for this gathering will be the Manhattan headquarters of Goldman Sachs.
The hypocrisy is stunning, and the contempt for the intelligence of the American people is beyond belief — unless, of course, you’re familiar with the one percent.
Goldman was a key participant in that "shadow banking system" that precipitated the housing market collapse and the consequent financial debacle that slammed America's middle class. (A system that was unleashed in part due to deregulation supported by the Clinton administration in the 1990s.) This investment house might even be considered one of the robber barons of Wall Street. In its 2011 report, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a congressionally created panel set up to investigate the economic meltdown, approvingly cited a financial expert who concluded that Goldman practices had "multiplied the effects of the collapse in [the] subprime" mortgage market that set off the wider financial implosion that nearly threw the nation into a depression.
Hillary Clinton's shift from declaimer of Big Finance shenanigans to collaborator with Goldman—the firm has donated between $250,000 and $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation—prompts an obvious question: Can the former secretary of state cultivate populist cred while hobnobbing with Goldman and pocketing money from it and other Wall Street firms? Last year, she gave two paid speeches to Goldman Sachs audiences. (Her customary fee is $200,000 a speech.)
The choice presented to the American people couldn’t be more stark, or more important. We can vote for keeping the oligarchy humming right along, with the rich getting richer, the banks getting even fatter and the world getting another great big evil helping of WAR. Or we can vote for a bright and hopeful future for the American people and a snowball’s chance for the planet and its people. It’s simple. Vote for Bernie Sanders.
Have a happy Thanksgiving, everyone.