Topic: Democracy is Dead ... Lobbyists Rule America
Atlantis75's photo
Fri 09/04/09 08:51 AM


And here's why: Ask any neuroeconomist, behavioral-finance quant, investment psychologist or other practitioner of the mysterious "science of irrationality" and they'll tell you that Americans have two self-sabotaging mental biases that killed democracy from within: "Denial" and "Magical Thinking" make us easy targets. Our brains are being manipulated by clandestine forces beyond our control. We can't see them or resist.

Yet we refuse to believe in this new Orwellian America. We prefer the world of magic, myth and illusion.

Yes, folks, democracy is dead. Oh, the illusion will be kept alive in our history books, in the rhetoric of politicians, in the manipulated minds of America's 95 million Main Street investors. The propaganda machine works. Like a child's fairy tale, democracy has been deeply imbedded in our brains for decades; we prefer believing old, familiar stories. They comfort us, even when no longer true. The real democracy, what so many fought and died for since 1776, is dead.

Lobbyists now run America, own America, rule America. Forget the 537 politicians you thought we elected to the White House, Senate and Congress to run America for us. No, they're mere puppets, pawns for the "Happy Conspiracy," an oligopoly, plutocracy, cabal, monopoly all-in-one -- a private club of America's richest few on Wall Street, in Washington and in Corporate America.

Voters and elections are irrelevant. Lobbyists decide what's in the best interests of this elite club. The usual suspects? Try the Forbes 400.

Last year Michael Barone wrote a "Defense of Lobbyists" in U.S. News & World Report: "Lobbying is as American as apple pie, going back to the colonies." How naïve, how in denial.

He obviously missed reading Bob Kaiser's brilliant 25-part series in the Washington Post a couple years earlier, on "how lobbying became Washington's biggest business." Turns out that modern lobbying actually began in the mid-1970s with the innovative "earmarked appropriations, federal funds directed by Congress to private institutions when no federal agency had proposed spending the money."

Kaiser expanded the series to: "So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government." In just three decades, Washington has earmarked hundreds of billions thanks to lobbyists peddling influence bribes to buy Washington votes.

After all, the cost of a Senate race has exploded from $437,000 to $7.9 million. So lobbyists shovel millions to friendly senators, like Connecticut Democrat Christopher Dodd and Alabama Republican Richard Shelby.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15038

no photo
Fri 09/04/09 08:57 AM
America is not, was not , and never was intended to be a Democracy.


Source:
United States Constitution

Atlantis75's photo
Fri 09/04/09 09:16 AM
Edited by Atlantis75 on Fri 09/04/09 09:16 AM

America is not, was not , and never was intended to be a Democracy.


Source:
United States Constitution


You're right, but it has been turned into one and then...




"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. "
John Adams ~Letter to John Taylor (1814-04-15)

raiderfan_32's photo
Fri 09/04/09 09:41 AM


America is not, was not , and never was intended to be a Democracy.


Source:
United States Constitution


You're right, but it has been turned into one and then...




"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. "
John Adams ~Letter to John Taylor (1814-04-15)


Adams was right.

byteme's photo
Sun 09/06/09 12:31 PM



America is not, was not , and never was intended to be a Democracy.


Source:
United States Constitution


You're right, but it has been turned into one and then...




"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. "
John Adams ~Letter to John Taylor (1814-04-15)


Adams was right.
Whats next comunism. that dosent last ether. Whats next????

Atlantis75's photo
Sun 09/06/09 03:41 PM




America is not, was not , and never was intended to be a Democracy.


Source:
United States Constitution


You're right, but it has been turned into one and then...




"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. "
John Adams ~Letter to John Taylor (1814-04-15)


Adams was right.
Whats next comunism. that dosent last ether. Whats next????


Actually communism has never happened either. It doesn't work, only on paper. It turns into a dictatorship. Every single country claimed to be a "communist" was (and is) controlled by a dictator. So left wing or right wing, it doesn't really matter. Hitler was a "right wing" national socialist (nazi) dictator, while Stalin was a bolsevik-communist dictator.

Where is the difference? Only the wording and the uniform they wear and whom they describe as the enemy, and that's it.

heavenlyboy34's photo
Sun 09/06/09 04:05 PM
What's next?

After a few generations of nonsense, with any luck, anarcho-capitalism or true laissez-faire is next. (that's somewhat wishful thinking on my part, tho)