Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Scott Walker in New York to combat out-of-state funds with out-of-state funds



Walker's campaign is allowed to raise unlimited funds to compensate for bearing the cost of verifying signatures in a recall election. Big Apple Scotty has deemed that Badger taxpayers now cover that cost, while he continues to raise unlimited dollars from unaccountable sources. Unaccountable out of state sources interested in purchasing influence here.

The sound of that much money can be soooooo sexy. The recall, I suspect, might be a little more like a rodeo than a horse-race. The bull doesn't give a shit how much money you have.

Via Uppity Wisconsin.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Tim Cullen to run against Walker? Is that dog blue?

I read yesterday on Uppity Wisconsin that Tommy Thompson is endorsing Democrat Tim Cullen to run against Scott Walker in the upcoming recall election. Couple comments:

  • Walker spoke highly of Cullen in the phone call with blogger Ian Murphy posing as David Koch;
  • Cullen served in the Thompson administration as head of Health and Human Services;
  • In the background: Thompson did the advance work that allowed the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to attack and quash democracy in Wisconsin.

I figure the junta is either trying to hinder Cullen's bid for the Governorship by tainting him with the stink of their own corruption, or Cullen is more one of them than one of us. Either way, any endorsement from Walker's cabal of fascist thieves, particularly of a candidate preparing to run against them, brings both the candidate and the endorsement under suspicion.

The Walker administration is corrupt, anti-democratic and un-American. Accepting endorsements from them, or the likes of Thompson, is questionable strategy at best.

Just sayin'.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Corporations: As people, you suck

Casting corporations as people, and their money as speech, lends them legitimacy in government they do not merit and is rational only if one assumes government should be run on a corporate model. Because, y'know, business and financial types never fuck anything up. It was the folks who believed they could afford those mortgages who brought the economy to the brink, right? Even though they were lied to (the back room term in the business is "liar's loans"), they should've known it was too good to be true. Then the banks committed "control fraud" by colluding with property estimators and securities rating companies to bundle and re-sell these worthless pieces of paper as AAA-rated instruments before they defaulted. When the bottom fell out of the whole thing, our corporate citizens were bailed out by flesh-and-blood taxpayers, and nobody went to jail. Back to record-breaking earnings, privatized profits and socialized losses.

Here's one problem: governments and corporations have differing and mutually exclusive motives. Where the motive of government on our constitutional model is to provide for its citizens, the motive of government on the corporate model is to make money off the provisions, or rig the game so our corporate citizens can.

Here's another problem: When 20% of Americans control 93% of the country's financial wealth and 85% of its total net worth, 80% of us are going to be without a voice because we don't have the money to buy into the game of government. Screwed. And expecting the federal legislature to act on our behalf? 47% of Congress, as opposed to 1% of the general population of the U.S., are millionaires.

And yet another: Voter suppression ID laws springing up like pecker-shaped mushrooms in states across the country. This is blatant, arrogant disenfranchisement of targeted groups, anti-democratic, and un-American. It is also a direct by-product of corporatist take-over.

The insulting roster of potential Republican candidates for President in 2012: really? How many people even in the Tea Party base are that fucking stupid? It doesn't matter, though, how much of a tool they put into the office, as long as it one of their tools. Because "tool" is precisely the right word.


To paraphrase:
'A man without a corporation is like a fish without a bicycle.'
Like they say, I'd rather be a stationary haddock.