Democrats realize that they have a corruption problem
Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that the Democratic establishment has acknowledged that it is corrupt and has decided the corruption must be expelled.
I'm saying that the Democratic establishment has acknowledged that the voters are fully aware that the party is corrupt and they now have no choice but to make modest reforms to address this public relations problem.
This is why the very first bill of House Democrats will be an anti-corruption bill.
House Democrats unveiled details of their first bill in the new Congress on Friday — a sweeping anti-corruption bill aimed at stamping out the influence of money in politics and expanding voting rights.This is House Resolution 1 — the first thing House Democrats will tackle after the speaker’s vote in early January. To be clear, this legislation has little-to-no chance of passing the Republican-controlled Senate or being signed by President Donald Trump.
Senate Dems will also join in with this political stunt.
The only thing this will do is highlight that the GOP is even more corrupt than the Democrats, a fact that the American voters are gradually recognizing.
A majority of respondents in 48 GOP-held congressional districts believe Republicans are “more corrupt” than Democrats, according to a new poll from a progressive policy group.Politico reported that 54 percent of respondents from the GOP districts said in the online survey administered by the Center for American Progress that Republicans are more corrupt.
Of those surveyed, 46 percent said they believe Democrats are more corrupt.
Voters are also losing faith in the Republicans ability to fight corruption, but most still doubt the Dems will do much against corruption either.
That being said, the DNC has passed important and significant reforms this past year.
It wasn't just limiting the powers of the superdelegates. They've also taken an important step towards empowering the grassroots.
Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez is setting a kind of cover charge to get onstage for the Democratic presidential primary debates, but not just any money will do. In addition to the usual polling metrics required to join the debate, candidates will also have to meet a to-be-determined criteria for “grassroots fundraising.”Including small-dollar fundraising as a necessary element for debate participation would have two effects. First, it incentivizes candidates to invest — strategically, financially, and emotionally — in growing a small-donor base. Second, it will force potential billionaire self-funders like Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer, and Howard Schultz to demonstrate some level of popular enthusiasm for their campaigns, meaning they can’t just flash their own cash and buy their way onstage.
These are big steps, and they deserve to be acknowledged. But at the same time, just like the House anti-corruption bill, there are huge loopholes in this reform.
That may seem like an extreme example, but take New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s 2018 campaign. In his July campaign finance report, eager to blunt the grassroots credentials of challenger Cynthia Nixon, Cuomo touted that 57 percent of his campaign’s contributions came from people giving $250 or less. Seems pretty good, until you look at the money coming from those contributions, which amounts to only 1 percent of Cuomo’s $6 million haul from that reporting period. Sixty-nine of Cuomo’s contributions came from a single individual, almost all in $1 increments — and the donor just happened to be the roommate of a campaign staffer.
The real significance of these reform bills is that it's evidence that in smokey backrooms, the Democratic Party has acknowledged the problem, and that they must appear to do something about it.
It's actually second-nature for the Democratic establishment, which still shamelessly pretends that it represents the working class.
The problem for the Dems is that fancy rhetoric and symbolic gestures are fooling fewer and fewer people.
Most of them are feigning left since 2018, but the other lesson from 2016 is that folks are tired of the Democrats’ tendency to spout progressive rhetoric around election time, then spring back into the neoliberal corporate party that has left most of America behind. Since the days of the DLC and triangulation, Democrats have consistently backed policies that favored the rich at the expense of the rest of us, and people are wise to it.
A real solution to political corruption would be passing a 28th Amendment revoking corporate personhood.
Comments
In my opinion, attempting to get any Constitutional amendment
through Congress has, for decades, been quixotic and has become downright dangerous. https://caucus99percent.com/content/lets-amend-constitution
If Congress fails to act, then the method of amendment defaults to a Constitutional Convention, not held since the one that wrote the Constitution--and probably for damn good reason.
A large number of people or states calling on Congress to pass an amendment and failing would provide a great talking point for those who want to hold a Constitutional Convention. Getting state legislatures to call for a Constitutional convention, if successful, would result in opening up the entire Constitution for revision when most states are red states.
Not that I am happy about this, but my recommendation would be to leave bad enough alone as the likelihood that it will get worse is great.
Please everyone have a Happy New Year despite this post.
No
Doing nothing guarantees that things will get worse.
Seeking an amendment will result in no amendment,
at best, but may result in a Constitutional convention controlled by red states. I really can't think of a worse Constitutional outcome.
Question
Have any of the other 17 amendments resulted in a Constitutional convention?
TPTB have a much greater hold now than then, I would think.
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
True
but that's no reason not to fight them.
From my first post on this thread:
Since seeking the amendment will not result in an amendment, why even take any risk, much less a huge risk? https://caucus99percent.com/content/lets-amend-constitution
That essay that I just linked touches upon why seeking an amendment today is very different from seeking one (or ten) from 1787 through the Eisenhower administration, which was when the last even mildly controversial amendment was ratified.
You have a point
The left learned not to bring cases to this RW supreme court, esp. when the court is highly willing to encourage the opposition to not argue their case on THIS point, but to argue on THAT point. All so they can strike down an even bigger swath of settled law in a subsequent case. There's too many things aligned against us. We have to learn how to fight in a new way.
Strange times....
....
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Hi and a Happier New Year, all!
Hadn't planned to start posting anywhere again until I was feeling better (still have the chemical kids here, albeit increasingly toned down, at least as far as the fog of toxic chemical scents go) and had a functional computer, mine having been down for freaking ever, (apparently only here and not at my brothers, the latter, when possible, trying various fixes for mine) with similar problems appearing in several loaners, resulting in months without even music... thank FSM for books!
But this particular laptop, while also accumulating various weirdnesses, is currently useable, lol, and in a rare occurrence on this site, where I've typically discovered others to have already said whatever I wanted to say better than I, just down-thread from my posts, after my having said it, this, following, doesn't seem to have been commented on here, so, from your link...
(Emphasis mine.)
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/12/30/supreme-court-john-ro...
Strikes me that having an anonymous foreign country,
on the behalf of an anonymous corporation,
anonymously interfering in not only another country's Supreme Court processes
but in the secretive settling\concealment of what ought to be public business regarding an investigation into some portion of what are too-often obviously appallingly corrupt governmental affairs
seems a pretty blatant exercise of power/complicity between democracy-suppressive conspirators.
What popped into mind were 3 long-standing rot-spots of concentrated stolen power claiming to be corporations/independent countries 'above the law' even of the countries in which they reside, as well as applying this claim to international law, having and being laws unto themselves: Washington DC, the City of London, and Vatican City, (the latter considered to be the smallest country in the world) these claims of being 'above the law' also being made by certain individuals and groups of their inhabitants, associates and various networks. (Specifically including secretive spy agencies/contractors.)
I don't know whether the District of Columbia could lay claim to being a self-owning foreign country, but the City of London could possibly claim to be a corporation belonging to a foreign-to-US State, kinda being both...
(Something also casting a new light on 'personhood' claims for corporations existing to shield individuals from liability and too-often used by the powerful to evade personal legal consequences for harm expediently caused to others in the personal pursuit of ever-growing profits/power. )
Despite whatever insider power struggles, what I personally term The Psychopaths That Be and their pathologized enablers, whether individuals or groups, whom/which they find currently/prospectively useful, have historically and do currently consolidate and conspire against the non-psychopathic - especially targeting anyone/group promoting the public good and/or the environment forming our life-support system.
And we know something of the coordination between the various groups of The Psychopaths That Be of various countries, especially between those of the US and Britain - and of the strong efforts of the 'above-the-law' notoriously child-abusing, money-draining-from-the-often-impoverished, self-declared 'Only Word Of God/Key To Heaven-representing' Catholic Church to fake 'modern' relevancy with their latest (carefully scripted) Pope, in order to re-exert a higher level of religious public mind-limiting-control, something which has long been reducing in effectiveness among a better-informed global population.
I wish I could remember where I recently read quotes from a British political figure stating - just as do some in the US (and some evidently believe in Vatican City, despite the latter using different methods of public control for easier predation of various sorts upon the more vulnerable) - to the effect that wherever their financial interests lie, so must their military be imported... but the general acceptance of any claim, by anyone or any group, of universal impunity, fosters potentially unlimited delusional and destructive pathology, as has always been so painfully demonstrated throughout history.
That being, of course, why nobody can be deemed 'above the law' in a true, modern democracy, with equal rights, opportunity and treatment of all inherent in the now-accepted and civilized concept. (Even if it is suffering from having been used as a backfired US PTB propaganda claim made to cover their own criminality in plotting and executing such as profitable-for-some invasions of/interference in other people's countries/governance.)
Absolute power invariably enables such mindlessly destructive shadow-tyrants as we have now, a situation which, it is evident, already-endangered global life cannot possibly long survive, should this be permitted, by the 99%, to continue dragging us all down their ever more obviously murderously suicidal path.
I hope people will think/are also thinking about what's revealedthis anonymous kidnapping of the Mueller investigation, will look into it if not doing so already - and, please, keep this unfortunately strong possibility in mind. This could be the yanking aside of the final parasite-shielding curtain intended to blind and smother us before too many ever see the petty and deluded self-appointed tyrants intent on micro-managing a world they're destroying in the process.
This example of what's described as being an anonymous country acting for an anonymous corporation blatantly stepping in to control a foreign political investigation and the US Supreme Court (perhaps, at least, in part in order to keep their connections and political control anonymous? as well the plans and purposes involved?) desperately needs investigation and public awareness.
I suspect that the public exposure of what's being concealed in this bizarre occurrence just might possibly strip off some of the muggers masks and alert enough people to the nature and degree of what has yet to be widely recognized as a shared and encroaching global threat created by long-running groups, begun by and consisting of a relative few pathologically greedy, power-hungry and psychopathic plotters, influencing/purchasing/within multiple governments in countries around the world, in time to potentially avoid absolute planetary disaster.
http://humansarefree.com/2016/09/brzezinski-its-easier-to-kill-than.html
They do seem to be working very hard on it, globally...
Going to shut up now, lol. Just that this latest departure from any democratic/justice-seeking pretense seems to me to potentially be very important - and potentially forming a final straw to snap even the most exhausted and propagandized eyes open, at long last.
Our various democratic governments and Justice systems should not be formed of often-hand-picked servants/proxies/representatives of the psychopathic class which by definition cannot form a legitimate democratic - of, by for the people - government at all.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
So glad to see you back here again EN!
I have missed your dark, front-rank informed analysis.
Sending good health to your computer too.
Welcome back and thanks for that. It isn't widely known
and, afaik, has never reached this level, but foreign "persons" have often claimed immunity from US investigations due to their home country's bank secrecy laws. That claim of immunity has been weakened lately, but never completely been thrown into the dumper.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
IMHO, the key words
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
I don't know that Republicans are more corrupt than Democrats.
I think both of them get as much money as they possibly can from as many big donors as they possibly can. I believe that the name "New Democrat" was to signal donors and to give Dems a talking point with donors, that this is no longer the party of tax and pass New Deal, Fair Deal or Great Society legislation. I don't think being unable to win over racist donors and donors who are too set in their ways to grok the New Democrat message makes a party less corrupt. So much for donors.
Once we get past who pries the most out of wealthy donors, I note that the two best known political machines, Tammany Hall and Cooks County, were/are Democratic--the latter still being quite alive and active, while New York's regressive primary laws aim toward limiting participation by the hoi polloi as feasible.
I note as well that, although it was a long time ago, Estes Kefauver's hearings uncovered ties between bosses in "organized crime" and Democratic Party bosses. Supposedly, that was the reason that Truman and other Democratic Party bosses did not want him as the Democratic Parties nominee, even though he had won twelve of the fifteen primaries that then existed. other three had been won by "favorite son" candidates.)
AFAIK, those hearings did not uncover any ties between Republican party bosses and organized crime bosses. This may be attributable to the fact that organized crime then targeted cities far more than rural areas, suburbs, for the most part still being relatively scarce.
Having said all that, I imagine that Republicans today are any less corrupt than Democrats, either.
Isn't that our core problem? That Republicans and Democrats have become so similar (maybe always were?) that the only choices voters have are exceedingly hard choices--vote for one awful large party or the other, or for a candidate guaranteed to lose?
Levels of corruption
One important difference is that the GOP doesn't feel it important to do ANYTHING about their corruption.
Of course we are still playing with lesser evilism.
And
The Democrats see it as a public relations problem. The Republicans could care less.
The end result is the same.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Wasn't it Nancy . . .
. . . who said flat-out that the Party didn't need to change; they needed to change the message?
A message is not substance; PR is not substance. Corruption is substance, and it is the substance of both parties.
Bingo
I keep coming back to why I became a part of this website. It was ALL about policies that benefit us all, not politics nor teams nor identity.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
The only difference...
is that the Goopers will tell you they are your enemy and then stab you in the chest, while the Democrats will pretend to be your friend and then stab you in the back.
Either way, you're still dead.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
And Democrats feel it's important to give their base a nod, but
as little a nod as Democrats think absolutely necessary to keep still more Democrats from defecting from the Dem Party. At that, as you noted, they seek to bring it to the floor while Republicans can kill it. So, the law won't pass, Democrats will have a basis for portraying themselves as anti-corruption, while portraying the Republicans as pro-corruption, but in reality, nothing will have changed for either Democratic or Republican politicians.
IMO, it's not that the ultimate goals of Democratic politicians and Republican politicians are that much different; it's that their respective bases are different. Right now, a chunk of Democratic base is totally disaffected, if not AWOL.
A decade ago, Democrats were riding high, at least on the national level. So, Republicans did an autopsy on their own Party and made whatever changes they deemed necessary to lure back voters. Since 2010, Democrats were on a slide that, by 2016 had them circling the tank. So, they began to make changes that, IMO, are cosmetic, if not downright cynical.
That applies to both parties
Consider what our local Trump fan says - that Trump is draining the swamp and defeating globalism.
The GOP somehow managed to convince voters that they are actually committed to reforms (for now). That requires some serious cynicism.
Of course, it applies to both parties. However, I was
responding to a post saying that one difference between the parties was that the Democrats recognized the need to change. (Actually, while they both recognize it, neither wants it.) Therefore, I didn't see a need to show that Republican politicians are also fine with the status quo. I thought my prior post had mentioned other differences, too, but those did not cut in favor of the Democratic Party.
I have no brief for Republicans. Never voted for a single one. I just came to think that Democrats are no better. They are only more artful dodgers. They are, after all, the fox in Malcolm X's parable.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHzNFQXTUOQ]
And, as Phil Ochs said
-------Phil Ochs
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Trump is an ousider and
ran as an outsider.
I guess you didn't catch when Nancy was saying, "we'll drain the swamp."
Yes, she said it during some appearance that was recorded.
So, now we have dems running on Trump's platform. But since it is dems saying it now, and they are 'less' corrupt, we should believe them.
dfarrah
Right
I missed that.
Well, with #MeToo we are supposed to believe women.
You're not suggesting some Kabuki
on the part of our Democratic comrades?
The horror.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
You wonder if I had been suggesting? How disappointing!
I thought I had been quite clear.
Of course, politics is mostly kabuki, and quite successful kabuki at that. If it hadn't been so successful, Americans would have gone to D.C. long ago with bags of feathers, buckets of tar and some pitchforks (courtesy of the NPA). However, Republicans have long been candid about their view that, what is good for the rich is good for all Americans. Inasmuch as Democrats had been talking a different game, thanks in no small part to union donations to their cause, their kabuki is more crafty.
Just joshing....
What would politics be, without theatre. An empty stage, and no audience.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
I knew that, my much appreciated friend.
I don't know what I would do without your humor.
My reply about being disappointed was in jest also. I should have put j/k after it. I tend to assume that everyone will know when I am joking, but that flies in the face of Poe's Law.
The last paragraph of my post was just me thinking "aloud" while posting.
Dear Henry,
There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza,
There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, a hole.
So fix it dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
So fix it dear Henry, dear Henry, fix it.…
Without any kind of judgement I would like to say, that responding without broader context can be premature. In the case of your response to Bollox, I think it applies. He’s not one to interpret literally, and I think his perception is actually more similar to yours than you might think.
[video:https://youtu.be/ywFvjoKcdrE]
Please see my reply to Bollox, which, as I type this, is
slightly upthread. (Even if taken literally, I was expressing disappointment only in my own failure to be clear, despite thinking I was being clear.)
Thank you for clarifying.
It seems like I didn't get you in context of the bigger picture. I should have listened to the part of me that felt surprised by your response and given it more consideration. At least now I know you a little better ; ).
No worries. Poe's law trips all of us up at one time
or another. In this case, what seemed mildly funny to me initially wasn't that funny. Maybe that's why no one recognized it as a stab at humor.
I'm surprised that
people would perceive either party as different in corruption.
dfarrah
Yeah, they have a public relations problem...
Might I suggest a new theme song that properly sums up their position?
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcdtVD8X1-A]
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Woot, there it is!
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Is this example of the corruption? Cuomo vetos beaverment leave
Thank you democratic party base in NY.
Cuomo vows to expand paid job-leave law to cover bereavement
Gov. Cuomo vetoes bill allowing paid bereavement leave
Sorry, I think 12 weeks is excessive.
I only got to take four days of vacation when my mother died. that included funeral preparations and clearing out her apartment.
A full week paid leave would have been good. Maybe with a second unpaid week if needed.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
It could be excessive.
The point is that Cuomo promised to sign the bill, and then vetoed it. The mayor of Baltimore did something similar. Promised to sign a bill increasing min. wage during election, and when the city council approved it, she vetoed it as mayor.
Yeah. I hate that kind of lie.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
There is rampant corruption within the DNC
X-post from Kossacks for Bernie:
i.e. Voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting FOR evil.
These self-righteous prigs all need to be voted OUT of office, starting with "Leader" Pelosi, Chuckie the Shoom, and their criminal coterie who all preach the Obama doctrine of "bipartisan compromise" which always - ALWAYS - votes with Rethuglicans. There is NO "loyal opposition" to war; they all endorse and vote to pay for the illegal and unconstitutional wars of the last eighteen years while refusing to improve the lives of We the People.
There's no "loyal opposition" to anything illegal or unconstitutional. Indeed, they're almost all standing in line for "kampaign kash."
The power of the DNC superdelegates was not limited for the simple reason that they still have them; they are only not allowed to vote in the first ballot. We all know that to get around that they will have a second, third, or however many other ballots to put power right back into the hands of the superdelegates.
If the superdelegates select a candidate that does not satisfy their big money base, there's always the chair who gets to choose the candidate on the basis of who s/he believes is the most loyal Democrat. That's a rigged - CORRUPT - system and we all know it.
This is why and how Bernie will lose the Dem nomination if he chooses to run as a Dem again. Not even Bernie's persuasive powers has made the DemExiters turn around and DemEnter. Our memories are longer than the DNCs, and we still remember how Bernie, the ONLY candidate who could have beat Trump, was cheated out of the 2016 candidacy.
And, still, the DNC has done NOTHING to make it easier for people to register to vote in states where voter disenfranchisement is rampant, and the DNC has done NOTHING to get rid of the eminently riggable e-voting machines to give us PAPER BALLOTS that can be recounted by hand if vote totals are called into question. They can, and will, if they deem it "necessary," rig future elections.
Just like the RNC, the DNC is CORRUPT to the core!
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute ..., where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference. — President John F. Kennedy, Houston, TX, 12 September 1960
Matt Taibbi really did a wonderful job on this subject
(i.e.: the reality that the two major parties are pathetically corrupt). The majority of one of Matt Taibbi's most brilliant paragraphs...from, "Wall Street's Big Win," Rolling Stone, August 4th, 2010. I reread the article at least once every couple of years, usually whenever I think I've overdosed on the Kool-Aid®:
"Freedom is something that dies unless it's used." --Hunter S. Thompson
Democrats Find a New Angle
Politicians can be adaptable when needed. But these new initiatives will effect nothing. The Democrats have merely identified a new angle to emotionally manipulate voters by using issues they've now identified are important to us. What's stopping them from corrupting the way this criteria is fulfilled, or even how the money is collected? Just like they manipulated the way the polls were conducted in the 2016 primary and how the media reported it, this is another device to master for their own benefit.
Hope springs eternal? Not this time. Not this constituent.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
There is only one party
The Capitalist Party. 2 Wings, 2 bases. The amount of voters that don't have their needs and problems addressed by either wing exceeds the total numbers of the 2 bases combined. It's all a dog and pony show for us rubes.
The Goopers didn't rig their last primary.
The Dems did. Not sure how you get more corrupt than that.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?