It's clearly true that money has an outsize influence on governmental policy. It's also true that voters (people who actually vote; not just people who could vote) have a major influence. Older people, for example, tend to vote and as a result social security is considered to be a "third rail" of politics. Likewise medicare. Young people could have the same effect except that they tend to slack off on election day. An exception was when Obama ran and they had a substantial impact. They may have caused his emphasis on medical coverage even though it wasn't the medicare for all that the young would have preferred. I still like his one liner: "Don't complain; vote!" So, I don't dispute your point. I simply suggest that combatting its effect requires voting that has an impact.
Michael Froman, a Citibank executive at the time, sent John Podesta a list of potential cabinet officials about a month before the 2008 election. It included once-and-future Wall Street attorney Eric Holder for attorney general, and a choice of treasury chiefs including former Goldman and Citibank CEO Robert Rubin and two of his disciples, Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner. Other Goldman, Citi and Morgan Stanley executives were scattered throughout the administration. So in that respect, the issue wasn't whether money would have an outsize influence on policy: money was actually making the policy, from inside the administration. You may have been voting for Obama, but you elected Wall Street.
And that's how we got a recovery that, as Geithner put it, foamed the runway for banks and other financial institutions while leaving a great many ordinary folks, as Obama might say, ruined and mired in recession for years after. And that's how income and wealth inequality increased dramatically during the Obama administration, and what spawned the Occupy movement which, while it didn't have an impact on policy, did drive Obama to give an economic populist speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, echoing Teddy Roosevelt's similarly inclined speech there. And of course the town is closely associated with John Brown.
And while Occupy didn't result in policy changes, it did provoke a coordinated nation-wide crackdown on the movement, suggesting that at least it was inconvenient to have an attention-grabbing movement clearly demarcating money from the rest of us.
Vote for whomever you want, but if you really want that comprehensive welfare state and that heavily regulated economy you talk about, help the socialists make some noise.
That's my point. If Gore, the Democrat, had pulled even 10% of the Florida Democrats who voted for Bush, the Republican, then it wouldn't have been close enough to steal.
It's clearly true that money has an outsize influence on governmental policy. It's also true that voters (people who actually vote; not just people who could vote) have a major influence. Older people, for example, tend to vote and as a result social security is considered to be a "third rail" of politics. Likewise medicare. Young people could have the same effect except that they tend to slack off on election day. An exception was when Obama ran and they had a substantial impact. They may have caused his emphasis on medical coverage even though it wasn't the medicare for all that the young would have preferred. I still like his one liner: "Don't complain; vote!" So, I don't dispute your point. I simply suggest that combatting its effect requires voting that has an impact.
Michael Froman, a Citibank executive at the time, sent John Podesta a list of potential cabinet officials about a month before the 2008 election. It included once-and-future Wall Street attorney Eric Holder for attorney general, and a choice of treasury chiefs including former Goldman and Citibank CEO Robert Rubin and two of his disciples, Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner. Other Goldman, Citi and Morgan Stanley executives were scattered throughout the administration. So in that respect, the issue wasn't whether money would have an outsize influence on policy: money was actually making the policy, from inside the administration. You may have been voting for Obama, but you elected Wall Street.
And that's how we got a recovery that, as Geithner put it, foamed the runway for banks and other financial institutions while leaving a great many ordinary folks, as Obama might say, ruined and mired in recession for years after. And that's how income and wealth inequality increased dramatically during the Obama administration, and what spawned the Occupy movement which, while it didn't have an impact on policy, did drive Obama to give an economic populist speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, echoing Teddy Roosevelt's similarly inclined speech there. And of course the town is closely associated with John Brown.
And while Occupy didn't result in policy changes, it did provoke a coordinated nation-wide crackdown on the movement, suggesting that at least it was inconvenient to have an attention-grabbing movement clearly demarcating money from the rest of us.
Vote for whomever you want, but if you really want that comprehensive welfare state and that heavily regulated economy you talk about, help the socialists make some noise.
Bush v. Gore
250,000 Florida Democrats voted for Bush and it still took the supreme court to steal it.
Only because it was so close that they could.
That's my point. If Gore, the Democrat, had pulled even 10% of the Florida Democrats who voted for Bush, the Republican, then it wouldn't have been close enough to steal.
They didn't vote for Bush on purpose. Remember the hanging chads?
Okay, I've ordered a Pokey.
You will not be disappointed, according to me.