What happened November 5? Hal Ginsberg and I decipher the election results and what lies ahead. I feel that the 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United decision enabling billionaires and big corporations to buy politicians and the government was responsible for enabling an authoritarian, fascist-leaning cult leader to become president.* Hal thinks a major overhaul of the Democratic Party to one that sides with working people (as it once did) is essential….
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” — Frédéric Bastiat, Economic sophisms, 2nd series (1848)
We just watched the final fulfillment of a 50 year plan. Louis Powell laid it out in 1971, and every step along the way Republicans have follow it.
It was a plan to turn America over to the richest men and the largest corporations. It was a plan to replace democracy with oligarchy. A large handful of America’s richest people invested billions in this plan, and its tax breaks and fossil fuel subsidies have made them trillions. More will soon come to them.
As any advertising executive can tell you, with enough money and enough advertising — particularly if you are willing to lie — you can sell anybody pretty much anything.
Even a convicted felon, rapist, and friend and agent of America’s enemies.
America was overwhelmed this fall by billions of dollars in often dishonest advertising, made possible by five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court, and it worked. Democrats were massively outspent, not to mention the power of the billionaire Murdoch family’s Fox “News” and 1500 hate talk radio stations.
Open the lens a bit larger, and we find that it goes way beyond just this election; virtually every crisis America is facing right now is either caused or exacerbated by the corruption of big money authorized by five corrupt Republicans on our Supreme Court.
They are responsible for our crises of gun violence, the drug epidemic, homelessness, political gridlock, our slow response to the climate emergency, a looming crisis for Social Security and Medicare, the situation on our southern border, even the lack of affordable drugs, insurance, and healthcare.
All track back to a handful of Supreme Court justices who’ve sold their votes to billionaires in exchange for extravagant vacations, luxury yachts and motorhomes, private jet travel, speaking fees, homes, tuition, and participation in exclusive clubs and billionaire networks that bar the rest of us from entry.
For over two decades, Clarence Thomas and his wife have been accepting millions in free luxury vacations, tuition for their adopted son, a home for his mother, private jet and megayacht travel, and entrance to rarified clubs.
Sam Alito is also on the gravy train, and there are questions about how Brett Kavanaugh managed to pay off his credit cards and gambling debts. John Roberts’ wife has made over $10 million from law firms with business before the court; Neil Gorsuch got a sweetheart real estate deal; Amy Coney Barrett refuses to recuse herself from cases involving her father’s oil company.
None of this is illegal because when five corrupt Republicans on the Court legalized members of Congress taking bribes they legalized that same behavior for themselves.
As a result, we have oligarchs running our media, social media, and buying our elections, while the Supreme Court, with Citizens United, even legalized foreign interference in our political process.
Our modern era of big money controlling government began in the decade after Richard Nixon put Lewis Powell — the tobacco lawyer who wrote the infamous 1971 “Powell Memo” outlining how billionaires and corporations could take over America — on the Supreme Court in 1972.
In the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision, the Court ruled that money used to buy elections wasn’t just cash: they claimed it’s also “free speech” protected by the First Amendment that guarantees your right to speak out on political issues.
In the 200 preceding years — all the way back to the American Revolution of 1776 — no politician or credible political scientist had ever proposed that spending billions to buy votes with dishonest advertising was anything other than simple corruption.
The “originalists” on the Supreme Court, however, claimed to be channeling the Founders of this nation, particularly those who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, when they said that “money is the same thing as free speech.” In that claim, Republicans on the Court were lying through their teeth.
In a letter to Samuel Kercheval in 1816, President and author of the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson explicitly laid it out:
“Those seeking profits, were they given total freedom, would not be the ones to trust to keep government pure and our rights secure. Indeed, it has always been those seeking wealth who were the source of corruption in government.”
But Republicans on the Supreme Court weren’t reading the Founders. They were instead listening to the billionaires who helped get them on the Court in the first place. Who had bribed them with position and power and then kept them in their thrall with luxury vacations, “friendship,” and gifts.
Two years after the 1976 Buckley decision, the Republicans on the Supreme Court struck again, this time adding that the “money is speech and can be used to buy votes and politicians” argument applied to corporate “persons” as well as to billionaires. Lewis Powell himself wrote the majority opinion in the 1978 Boston v Bellotti decision.
Justices White, Brennan, and Marshall dissented:
“The special status of corporations has placed them in a position to control vast amounts of economic power which may, if not regulated, dominate not only our economy but the very heart of our democracy, the electoral process.”
But the dissenters lost the vote, and political corruption of everything from local elections to the Supreme Court itself was now virtually assured.
Notice that ruling came down just two years before the Reagan Revolution, when almost all forward progress in America came to a screeching halt.
It’s no coincidence.
And it’s gotten worse since then, with the Court doubling down in 2010 with Citizens United, overturning hundreds of state and federal “good government” laws dating all the way back to the late 1800s.
Thus, today America has a severe problem of big money controlling our political system. And last night it hit its peak, putting an open fascist in charge of our government.
No other developed country in the world has this problem, which is why every other developed country has a national healthcare system, free or near-free college, and strong unions that maintain a healthy middle class. It’s why they can afford pharmaceuticals, are taking active steps to stop climate change, and don’t fear being shot when they go to school, the theater, or shopping.
It’s why they are still functioning democracies.
The ability of America to move forward on any of these issues is, for now, paralyzed with the election of Trump and the GOP taking over the Senate.
This is not the end, though; hitting bottom often begins the process of renewal.
Many Americans will continue to speak out and fight for a democracy uncorrupted by the morbidly rich.
CNN host Jake Tapper pressed Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday about why Kamala Harris was campaigning with Liz Cheney, a Republican, and not with him.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., excoriated the Democratic Party in the wake of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential election victory.
The left-wing lawmaker, who is listed as a member of the Senate Democratic caucus, accused the party of abandoning the working class.
“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well,” Sanders said in the statement.
Sen. Bernie Sanders addresses delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Aug. 20, 2024. (Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images)
“While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right,” he continued.
Trump decisively defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, winning key swing states including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Sanders characterized Harris’ campaign as “disastrous.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Aug. 20, 2024. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
“Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign?” he asked.
“Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing?” he added. “Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not.”
While Republicans won the Senate majority in the 2024 elections, the 83-year-old Sanders, who has served in the chamber since 2007, just won another six-year-term.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks at a labor rally for Harris-Walz in Harrisburg, Penn., on Oct. 27, 2024. (Nathan Morris/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“Unbelievably, real, inflation-accounted-for weekly wages for the average American worker are actually lower now than they were 50 years ago,” he said in the statement. “Today, despite an explosion of technology and worker productivity, many young people will have a worse standard of living than their parents.”
“Today, despite spending far more per capita than other countries, we remain the only wealthy nation not to guarantee health care to all as a human right and we pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. We, alone among major countries, cannot even guarantee paid family and medical leave,” he asserted.
“Today, despite strong opposition from a majority of Americans, we continue to spend billions funding the extremist Netanyahu government’s all out war against the Palestinian people which has lead to the horrific humanitarian disaster of mass malnutrition and the starvation of thousands of children,” the senator declared in the statement.
Sanders noted in a tweet this week that he was “proud” to vote for Harris.
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” — Frédéric Bastiat, Economic sophisms, 2nd series (1848)
We just watched the final fulfillment of a 50 year plan. Louis Powell laid it out in 1971, and every step along the way Republicans have follow it.
It was a plan to turn America over to the richest men and the largest corporations. It was a plan to replace democracy with oligarchy. A large handful of America’s richest people invested billions in this plan, and its tax breaks and fossil fuel subsidies have made them trillions. More will soon come to them.
As any advertising executive can tell you, with enough money and enough advertising — particularly if you are willing to lie — you can sell anybody pretty much anything.
Even a convicted felon, rapist, and friend and agent of America’s enemies.
America was overwhelmed this fall by billions of dollars in often dishonest advertising, made possible by five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court, and it worked. Democrats were massively outspent, not to mention the power of the billionaire Murdoch family’s Fox “News” and 1500 hate talk radio stations.
Open the lens a bit larger, and we find that it goes way beyond just this election; virtually every crisis America is facing right now is either caused or exacerbated by the corruption of big money authorized by five corrupt Republicans on our Supreme Court.
They are responsible for our crises of gun violence, the drug epidemic, homelessness, political gridlock, our slow response to the climate emergency, a looming crisis for Social Security and Medicare, the situation on our southern border, even the lack of affordable drugs, insurance, and healthcare.
All track back to a handful of Supreme Court justices who’ve sold their votes to billionaires in exchange for extravagant vacations, luxury yachts and motorhomes, private jet travel, speaking fees, homes, tuition, and participation in exclusive clubs and billionaire networks that bar the rest of us from entry.
For over two decades, Clarence Thomas and his wife have been accepting millions in free luxury vacations, tuition for their adopted son, a home for his mother, private jet and megayacht travel, and entrance to rarified clubs.
Sam Alito is also on the gravy train, and there are questions about how Brett Kavanaugh managed to pay off his credit cards and gambling debts. John Roberts’ wife has made over $10 million from law firms with business before the court; Neil Gorsuch got a sweetheart real estate deal; Amy Coney Barrett refuses to recuse herself from cases involving her father’s oil company.
None of this is illegal because when five corrupt Republicans on the Court legalized members of Congress taking bribes they legalized that same behavior for themselves.
As a result, we have oligarchs running our media, social media, and buying our elections, while the Supreme Court, with Citizens United, even legalized foreign interference in our political process.
Our modern era of big money controlling government began in the decade after Richard Nixon put Lewis Powell — the tobacco lawyer who wrote the infamous 1971 “Powell Memo” outlining how billionaires and corporations could take over America — on the Supreme Court in 1972.
In the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision, the Court ruled that money used to buy elections wasn’t just cash: they claimed it’s also “free speech” protected by the First Amendment that guarantees your right to speak out on political issues.
In the 200 preceding years — all the way back to the American Revolution of 1776 — no politician or credible political scientist had ever proposed that spending billions to buy votes with dishonest advertising was anything other than simple corruption.
The “originalists” on the Supreme Court, however, claimed to be channeling the Founders of this nation, particularly those who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, when they said that “money is the same thing as free speech.” In that claim, Republicans on the Court were lying through their teeth.
In a letter to Samuel Kercheval in 1816, President and author of the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson explicitly laid it out:
“Those seeking profits, were they given total freedom, would not be the ones to trust to keep government pure and our rights secure. Indeed, it has always been those seeking wealth who were the source of corruption in government.”
But Republicans on the Supreme Court weren’t reading the Founders. They were instead listening to the billionaires who helped get them on the Court in the first place. Who had bribed them with position and power and then kept them in their thrall with luxury vacations, “friendship,” and gifts.
Two years after the 1976 Buckley decision, the Republicans on the Supreme Court struck again, this time adding that the “money is speech and can be used to buy votes and politicians” argument applied to corporate “persons” as well as to billionaires. Lewis Powell himself wrote the majority opinion in the 1978 Boston v Bellotti decision.
Justices White, Brennan, and Marshall dissented:
“The special status of corporations has placed them in a position to control vast amounts of economic power which may, if not regulated, dominate not only our economy but the very heart of our democracy, the electoral process.”
But the dissenters lost the vote, and political corruption of everything from local elections to the Supreme Court itself was now virtually assured.
Notice that ruling came down just two years before the Reagan Revolution, when almost all forward progress in America came to a screeching halt.
It’s no coincidence.
And it’s gotten worse since then, with the Court doubling down in 2010 with Citizens United, overturning hundreds of state and federal “good government” laws dating all the way back to the late 1800s.
Thus, today America has a severe problem of big money controlling our political system. And last night it hit its peak, putting an open fascist in charge of our government.
No other developed country in the world has this problem, which is why every other developed country has a national healthcare system, free or near-free college, and strong unions that maintain a healthy middle class. It’s why they can afford pharmaceuticals, are taking active steps to stop climate change, and don’t fear being shot when they go to school, the theater, or shopping.
It’s why they are still functioning democracies.
The ability of America to move forward on any of these issues is, for now, paralyzed with the election of Trump and the GOP taking over the Senate.
This is not the end, though; hitting bottom often begins the process of renewal.
Many Americans will continue to speak out and fight for a democracy uncorrupted by the morbidly rich.
8 days before we find out who is running the country, expect that is an unrealistic expectation. The controversy might be worse than the 2000 George W vs Gore election. The polls don’t show any clear winner. On Halitics today, Hal Ginsberg wonders if the non-endorsements by The Washington Post and L.A. Times will have any consequence. Neither of us think it will. To me it shows how billionaire owners only care about what helps them. No surprise there.
Did anybody notice there is an election coming up in about 15 days?
On Halitics today, Hal Ginsberg and I critique the campaigns of the two major candidates,Hal continues to be dissatisfied with both parties and their candidates. I see the necessity of choosing Harris, as Trump continues his psychological meltdown and threatens to get retribution from his perceived enemies. And how did Elon Musk get so much power? Does it have anything to do with his $250+billion net worth? After Nov. 5 the lawyers will take over the aftermath of the election results.
Halitics this week: The election is just around the corner and Hal Ginsberg says it is as close as it is because of failed Democratic policies. I think Kamala should be 50 points ahead of the mentally disturbed former president, but the race appears too close to call.
If you happen to be the richest person in the world, and your name is Elon Musk, and your net worth is about $250 billion, you can use as much of your money as you’d like to help your favorite presidential candidate win and nobody needs to know about it.
One of the little-known secrets of American politics is that in some cases there is no limit on how much any one person can spend to support their favorite presidential candidate. That’s right, no limit. The Supreme Court, in their 2010 Citizens United and SpeechNow.org decisions, decided that anyone, except foreign nationals and federal contractors can, in effect, spend unlimited amounts of money to help their favorite candidates. It’s actually much worse than that, as we will see shortly.
Sure, there is a nominal spending limit for giving to presidential candidates– the Federal Election Commission this year set the individual limit at $3,300 per person.https://www.fec.gov/updates/fec-announces-2023-2024-campaign-cycle-contribution-limits/ Most Americans would consider that amount to be fair and reasonable–the Supreme Court thinks otherwise.
The Supreme Court, in its ultra-conservative wisdom, ruled that there shouldn’t be any spending limit at all, as long as the money goes through certain kinds of Political Action Committees (PACs) and is not directly coordinated with candidates.
In the United States, a political action committee (PAC) is a tax-exempt organization that pools campaign contributions from members and donates those funds to candidates or legislation. There are special rules and restrictions for the various kinds of PACs, which represent business, labor or ideological interests.
The most egregious of these, “Super PACs,” (not considered a political action committees at all), are legally known as Independent Expenditures Only Committees (IEOCs). What makes them special is they can accept unlimited contributions and spend an unlimited amount of money. What makes them especially diabolical is that Super PACs are able to use “dark,” i.e. anonymous, money. https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-super-pac-3367928
Sorry, you don’t get to know who these “dark money” donors are. Super PACs are theoretically required to reveal their backers, but they can hide their true source of funding by reporting a non-disclosing nonprofit or shell company as the donor. Individuals can mask their identities and their contributions by giving funds to outside groups which then give the money to a Super PAC. Yes, it is a form of laundering money, with no donation limits and total anonymity.
Our 39th president, Jimmy Carter, understands where we are now.. “It [Citizens United] 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. https://hartmannreport.com/p/trump-is-a-whisker-away-from-the-55c
The Brennon Center for Justice, a New York University of Law nonprofit law and public policy institute, alleges “big money dominates U.S. political campaigns to a degree not seen in decades” and is “drowning out the voices of ordinary Americans.”https://www.brennancenter.org/search/?q=Drowning%20out&langcode=en&
And while Super PACs are most visible in federal elections, their influence also extends to state and local races.
If Elon Musk wants Donald Trump to be elected president this November, who will stop him from surreptitiously spending $50 billion or more to help make that happen? The answer: nobody. Certainly not the Supreme Court.
You see, the real “dirty little secret” of American democracy is that we don’t have a democracy. Mirriam Webster defines democracy as “a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.” Some people prefer the term “republic,” often described as a “representative democracy.” Regardless, we are nowhere close to being a representative democracy
Americans have always believed we have elections to decide our government, because that is what democracies do. In this country the presidential candidate with the most votes should win, right? However, our constitutionally antiquated electoral system, decided otherwise in five previous American elections, including for two of our past three presidents (George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016). https://www.history.com/news/presidents-electoral-college-popular-vot In those elections the winner of the Electoral College was in fact the loser of the popular vote.
What would be a better description of our political system? Plutocracy (government by the wealthy) would be one, aristocracy (government by the few) would be another.
If most Americans understood how far we are from a real democracy they would be even more upset than they are now. Fundamental, comprehensive change is in order. If we don’t make significant changes that give more clout to ordinary, regular people, we will be stuck with a continuation of the dysfunctional and deteriorating political system we have now. That should be unacceptable.
American democracy’s “Dirty Little Secret” needs to die off in order to make room for the emergence of real democracy.
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