ON THE ROAD TO DESTRUCTION OF DEMOCRACY

The Republicans are winning the war against democracy. The aim of the Republican political schema is to prevent all people from ruling while the aim of democracy is to allow all people to decide on who is to govern them. As taught in all elementary government classes, the American Revolution was a switch from a monarch to a “government of the people by the people, and for the people”. It was a battle between the ruling class and the people. That is what a representative government is. It is an indisputable fact and that was what America was until Ronald Reagan (see: Someone Else’s Hero, on this blog site).

They are winning on so many fronts; it is difficult to decide where to start. The Supreme Courts of the United States made a decision to allow corporation to control elections.  This “money is words” decision conforms in a weird sort of way in their mind with the constitutional right of freedom of speech. David and Charles Koch spent something like 10 million dollars on the campaign. Art Pope bought and paid for North Carolina Gov. McCrory’s election, with disastrous results for the people of the state. I receive a request from Organize for Action for $3. It would take 3.33 million people like me giving $3 each to match what these two guys can write check for an not even notice they have written the check. I am not sure but suspect they can deduct the $10 million from their corporate income taxes, which is a way of saying that the taxpayers like you and me pay in part for them to influenced political elections.

Organizations like the NRA, and Americans for Progress along with a whole host of other organizations with patriotic sounding names use money in a gangland style protection racket. Politicians will face a primary election if they do not vote the way they are told by these rich people. Their opponents will have money to burn and the challenging candidate will do as people like Karl Rove and Grover Norquist tell them; actually, these two guys are go betweens; it is the corporation CEO who do the telling. Your little $3 donations are peanuts in comparison. That is why we have subsidies to oil companies and corporate farms, for example. The rich people ply politicians with money directly. Huge campaign donations buy loyalty. Only politician, who do not comply, suffer primary challenges.  Of course, the result is a congress with a 10% approval rating. It should be obvious why they do not care what their approval rating is. It is why a Speaker of the House can say things something like, ‘It is not the number of bills we pass but the number of bills we repeal’.

Down through the years the people put in office by Republicans have destroyed labor unions, which is one of the paybacks for huge campaign donations. Without labor union money, there is no counter to management money. The future looks bleak.

Once in office, the Republican Party has uniformly overturned voter’s rights. They use gerrymandering legislative districts. They shorten voting hours so that working people have to take time off work to vote. Republicans use their power to take over election boards, which allow them to cut the number of voting machines in over-crowed district. Add to this the idea that, they passed a law that allows shutting the doors on voting places one hour after voting times close. They require travel to and from expensive voter ID from driver license boroughs to prevent voter fraud that does not exist. They prevent same day registration and prevent use of student IDs. Their efforts to block voting are being refined every day. The block is clearly aimed at the poor, the non-white, the teenagers, the old people, anyone who might be a Democrat.

The Supreme Court of the Untied States, the Congress of the United States, State governments across the nation are all in danger of subversion. It is clearly an attempt by the rich to subvert the American way and install a plutocracy to benefit themselves, they very thing our country was formed to prevent. Our founders built this country on compromise between the rich and poor, on fairness, and equal opportunity for all. The shocking thing is that many of the people who are hurt the most vote Republican, something I learned since I move to North Carolina. 

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