Ted Rall for August 09, 2010

That’s trouble with todays politicians, once you buy then they don’t stay bought. What do they think this is: Free Enterprise?

these days, isn’t “honest politician” an oxymoron ?

Very strange. Why not also mention multi-million dollar contributions from big labor, trial lawyers, Soros. Or does he really think only the right sells their souls for money? Goldman Sachs gave most of its contributions to the democrats etc.

Somehow you only get called to account if you’re on the left and black, it seems, and the money you took didn’t come from big oil, pharm, or defense, either.

^ Well said.

In 2008 Obama received over 60% of the “contributions” from labor/management. For labor and the trial lawyers it was a brilliant investment. For Goldman-Sachs not so good.

Economic competition ceases to be competition when an offending organization outspends you? I hope that’s not the Libertarian Party line.

jrmerm ,

You got your facts backwards. har har

Keep in mind mind that the “airwaves” belong to us, the people.

my eyes twitch when i see ted’s drawings - i love it

“When our ‘serving’ politicians have to use their time to fund-raise about 95%-”

Is Jaxaction making a case for campaign finance reform? I think its about time we funded our own elections instead of having Corporates (and Unions for the extremely paranoid) taking over our political system.

The cynicism about politicians is unhelpful and uncreative Ted. The problem is it leaves us hopeless and less enfranchised.

Better would be an analysis that doesn’t say democracy is pointless, an argument that doesn’t support facism. Elected officials who are narcissistic is not a sign of decadence and a fall from grace that only a strongman can correct.

Also one could use the cynicism to be clever and subvert things. How honest do they need to be? How honest can they be in our current system? How can we use their weaknesses to our advantage?

In the USA people are even more cynical and less involved in govt than in Canada and it shows. We need less of the “each for himself” ethos and more thinking about how to work together. Everywhere that is the case but one very obvious cultural difference is this.

Also some jokes about how “big labour” (the imaginary) and other leftists causes get lumped in with this critique about corrupt politicians would be a lot less tired of a joke. Big bad ACORN corruption is equated with Goldman Sachs.

I’d suggest Adam Curtis documentaries as really great analysis of why we need less of this cynical disenfranchising outlook. Not much solutions in those videos however.

How about a joke about how we dwell on the large national and international issues hopelessly - those that we have no control over, while ignoring the local where we actually could start some positive change.

Lastly, do I need to point out the whole obcession with personality over policy is what gets people like The Governator and Obama elected instead of people who are more competent? Lets make fun of the media culture that makes politics a superficial horse race instead of participating in it.

C’mon Ted you are a lot smarter and more radical than this.

jaxaction makes a great point. In most countries the broadcast spectrums are not “owned” as much as they are in the USA - more of a public license agreement. It would be great if media empires had to run political public service messages for free or nearly free as a duty associated with the privledge of their broadcast monopoly.

In any area of life, whenever you hire somebody else to “represent” you (politicians, mercenary soldiers, trial lawyers, etc.), you automatically lose a certain degree of the control over your affairs that you would have if you took care of matters personally, and open the door to innumerable forms of corruption. That’s just the nature of things, and there’s only one obvious way to change it.

“Cable TV stations do not use public airwaves and are not regulated by the FCC.”

Yes yes yes, we know that.

Exactly jrmerm, the right just wants to be left alone…so it can ‘inflict its will on others.’ They just want to legally steal taxpayer money through subsidies and government contracts without auction. And reap the profits from drilling on publicly owned land. And buy off the politicians so they can freely give unto the people contaminated food and oil geysers unto the earth. And use majority vote to deny fellow American citizens rights. And trample on the First Amendment rights of disagreeables. Those facist liberals are trying to inflict their will upon conservatives by denying their God-given right to oppress! Why can’t the left just leave the right alone already!

In all honesty, I’m really not sure why I bother. I suppose it is just too utterly infuriating to see a supposed human being truly believe that the right doesn’t consistently fight to crush the rights of everyone else.

http://www.broadband.gov/

http://reboot.fcc.gov/reform/systems/spectrum-dashboard

http://www.fcc.gov/mb/facts/csgen.html

http://www.fcc.gov/licensing.html

There is a solution: http://youstreet.org.

Unfortunately, people get caught up in arguing over the symptoms rather than the cause of our problems: money in election campaigns. In our current system, even the most idealistic politician MUST accept special interest contributions in order to get elected.

I’ll name one: the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Then, for seconds, there’s the Patriot Act. I suppose the Medicare Prescription Drug bill would constitute a third. Enough?

Jrmerm - take the hit.

You got pwned and its almost all from the same year.

I’ll let you keep the Drug Plan if you get the Sarahcuda to shout from Foxnews’ roof top that deficit spending is a good thing. She can yell “Decibel spending is a GOOD thing! I dare you to refudiate it!”

Remember deficit spending?

Republicans did a lot of it from 2001 to 2009

Then you can replace that with NCLB.

Nicely played sirroMsirroM

Of the 10 longest bills in the past ten years, five were written by Democrats and five were written by Republicans.

http://www.opencongress.org/articles/view/1375-For-Bills-in-Congress-How-Long-is-Long-

(That was as of November 25, 2009, admittedly before the Financial Reform Bill, but still….)

“the Democratic controlled Congress not only renewed it again this past February, but expanded it and made portions of it permanent.”

I’d like to see the parts that in the patriot act that you claim are permanent. As far as I know it the Patriot Act was extended for another year as a political move because if he let it expire you guys would be screaming about how soft he was on terrorism, a meme you would be talking about throughout November.

Nobody reads the entire bill. Sirrom brought up excellent examples which, in addition to qualifying to your question, were also not read by Repubs. The only time this usually comes up is as a talking point for the right against centrists. Notice that I didn’t say “left.” You see, if the left actually controlled Congress, we wouldn’t see originally good bills be watered down until they were nearly useless or worse, i.e. Health care, jobs bill, financial regulations. The right can squawk all it wants, but the fact is there is no left to speak of. If there were, we would have nationalized health care, had financial reform long ago, nationalized BP, had no bailout, ended “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” given students 0% loans, ended unconstitutional torture and surveillence, federally recognized homosexuals’ right to marriage…do I really need to continue this list?

Churchill, I am well aware that the Dems continue illegal surveillance; they are rightists. They do with the wars and torture what Repubs do with abortion and gay marriage and more recently, immigration (hell, Repubs had since ‘94 to do something about it): blow smoke and then fail to act. It is old news that Dems are largely liars, hypocrites, and pussies…what is your new point? Plenty of Dems still defend their vote for the Iraq Resolution…FFS we are still in both wars and Gitmo is still operating and we are proceeding with military tribunals. I’m beginning to really hate Obama…seriously, it is just like Rall sees it: four more years of Bush, just a seemingly smarter and better speaking W–meet the new compassionate conservative!

Dems cave to the pressure of their opponents and then are frustrated that they have no successes to tout in an election.