Don’t misunderstand me, but I think that President Obama can
be criticized for not being able to overcome Republican opposition. Some of us
think he can do the impossible. There can be little question that he is going
to go down in history as one of our greatest presidents. However, there is no
doubt that our system of democracy, as carefully crafted as it was, is not
working. People such as the Koch brothers and Karl Rove have taken the accumulated
knowledge developing over centuries coupled with greed and are using that to
destroy democracy. Our political system can easily stand up to John Boehner, Ted
Cruz, Rand Paul and the like, but when
we have political operatives working from within to destroy the fundamentals of
our system of government, we have a serious problem; one that will requires
some fundamental change at the constitutional level to fix.
The principle of democracy is simple. As a “mixing pot” of
political ideas, colonial America developed a system of government where “all of
the people” are in charge. Not a king, dictator, a political party, or any other
definable group of people in charge but all of the people have the power. For a
long time I thought that there was only one way to change how our system works
and that is to vote in a dictator. I was wrong. Karl Rove, in my mind as a despicable
behind the scenes political operative changed that. When asked about his
influence on the government, he denied he had any, which means even he does not
understand what he has done.
It started with his position in the George Bush campaign.
Anyone, who could manage to talk the American people into electing Bush to the
highest office in the land, has unusual political skill but also has to have a
measure of dishonesty—like considering a salesman skillful if he can sell an
obviously defective product. His success moved him into a position in the White
House as political advisor who at first illegally obtain secret document clearance,
which wasn’t legitimatized until Bush appoint officially appointed him presidential
advisor. He used his position to corrupt the federal courts system and skillfully
avoided punishment for his illegal activity in dong this. Most recently he was caught and exonerated for
illegally taking advantage of IRS 504C laws to have his money handling organizations
declared tax exempt. He was instrumental in appointing Republican operatives to
even the lowest level of civil service jobs with the express purpose of
extending Republican influence—part of his drive to establish a permanent majority
in defiance of our electoral system. The point in mentioning these things in
this way is to point out that if he does not operate illegally; he constantly walks
on the edge of our legal system.
Although a long precedence for politics in Supreme Court appointees,
he introduced big money into the campaigns for Supreme Court judges that has
resulted in the corrupt majority of activist judges we now have in that court. Thus,
this one man, working questionably within our system of democracy, has created
a corrupt way of electing and appointing our representatives at many different
levels.
He, as an individual, no longer matters; the corruptions he manipulated
are out of control. There is so much Republicans money dumped into the corruption
across the nation that system even low level elections are targeted: Art Pope
and school board level election in one school district in North Carolina, for
example. North Carolina and Wisconsin are prime examples of the result where national
money in the form of Koch brother’s has combined with local money, again in the
form of Art Pope, is used to corrupt our government. By using old style techniques
such as gerrymandering and voter suppression, and his new techniques such as gangland
style threats of primary challenges backed by big money, massive media campaign
buys, coalitions of the rich against the masses, we have a Supreme Court and a Congress
that is corrupt. Individual votes still count, it is that misleading advertizing
works—in 23 states you can lie in advertisements with impunity—candidates are
no longer freely selected, great masses of people have their voting suppressed.
It has disgusted conservative and liberal alike, but as I pointed out, it is running
free rein; it is out of control.
It almost made me cry, to watch Obama stand in front of our corrupted
Congress and valiantly stand and fight against this plutocracy—as he said, “fighting
to change the way things are done in this town”. I looked at his State of the
Union Speech as his “fight night”. He wants to change things in Washington. I
want him to change things in Washington. Judging from poll after poll showing
congress will not pass legislation that has 60 to 80 percent popular support, and
I am sure the great majority of people in the United States want to change how
things are done in Washington. However, I do not see any change coming in the near
future. It is amazing that a one little unscrupulous jackass has managed to
kick down such a beautiful barn.
URL: firetreepub.blogspot.com
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