Sunday, May 29, 2016

Home of the free

A failed American fascist
In the bad old days, in company towns and other centers of American individuality and self-expression and exceptionalism, if you voted -- or even were suspected of voting -- liberal, you were fired.

In a company town, that made you homeless, too.

Nevertheless, the labor movement persevered.

Now we're back to then.

A disturbing piece in New Republic summarizes what Citizens United really means.

Here's one of many nut grafs:
It’s difficult for many of us who are educated, white-collar workers with relatively benevolent employers to appreciate the magnitude of the constraints on freedom that are routine elsewhere in the workforce. We might imagine we would quit if our boss ordered us to campaign for a candidate, even one we supported. But many Americans don’t have that freedom—nor the freedom to refuse a drug test or a work schedule that requires them to be on call at almost all times. They face strict parameters about what they can wear, how they can style their hair, when they can use the bathroom, and whether they have access to a phone in order to be reached in a child-care emergency. Libertarians, who believe that only government can restrict freedom, are blind to these encroachments on liberty.

In summary:

 the choice in Citizens United and other debates about political money is not between freedom and regulation, but between real freedom for individuals and the sweeping power of concentrated wealth. 
The plutocrats used to be more open about their antidemocratic beliefs. H.L. Hunt wrote a book (or had it written) that said rich people should have 7 times as many votes as ordinary Americans.

He was a piker. The new Malefactors of Great Wealth are thinking much more expansively.

And while Hunt never got more than one vote, the New Plutocrats have devised a kludge to work around that.

10 comments:

  1. Why should I take seriously an article that is so factually challenged?

    Two weeks later, an official of the company that owns the mine, Murray Energy Corp. (which has given more than $900,000 to Republican candidates in the last two years, far more than any other coal company) admitted that the miners were not all there by choice. “Attendance at the Romney event was mandatory,” Rob Moore, the chief financial officer of Murray Energy told radio host David Blomquist. Mandatory, but unpaid. Because the mine was closed for the Romney event, miners lost a day of pay.

    Bollocks. Complete, utter, stinking, lying bollocks. Listen to the show starting at 1:40.

    Why are progs such prolific liars?

    And that is even before getting to your insurmountable constitutional ignorance.

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  2. Oh, BTW, that's not the only barking mad factual assertion.

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  4. But wait, there's more:

    Interestingly, just a few days after the rally, the F.E.C. decided a case involving an employer in Hawaii that required its employees to campaign, on their own time, for Democratic congressional candidate Colleen Hanabusa.

    Bollocks. Complete, utter, stinking, lying bollocks.

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  5. They work for me.

    But you don't need them in any event.

    The New Repub's assertion of what Murray Energy said is a lie. (I wish I could be less pejorative, but that is impossible. The audio is clear, and unambiguous.)

    The assertion that a Hawaii employer required employees to campaign on their own time is equally fatuous.

    So I am looking at a New Republic article based upon lies, which you can't be fussed to check.

    And I, or anyone, is supposed to assume that the article somehow rises above its fraudulent origins?

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