Sunday, June 5, 2005

The New Corruption



click the image to read "Sumberging Markets" at bloodbankers.typepad.com

Thanks to Jen at the Brad Blog, I've been reading Elizabeth Drew in the New York Review of Books. She's written a sickening expose of the new ways in which money and republicans are corrupting the federal government.

I think you should read all of Selling Washington, but I especually want to point out this paragraph:
The effects of the new, higher level of corruption on the way the country is governed are profound. Not only is legislation increasingly skewed to benefit the richest interests, but Congress itself has been changed. The head of a public policy strategy group told me, "It's not about governing anymore. The Congress is now a transactional institution. They don't take risks. So when a great moral issue comes up -- like war -- they can't deal with it." The theory that ours is a system of one-person-one-vote, or even that it's a representative democracy, is challenged by the reality of power and who really wields it. Barney Frank argues that "the political system was supposed to overcome the financial advantage of the capitalists, but as money becomes more and more influential, it doesn't work that way."
Challenged? Obliterated! After two fraudulent presidential elections, with a murderous mid-term in between, "the theory that ours is a system of one-person-one-vote" is untenable. Our electoral system is broken -- and it was broken deliberately, for partisan political reasons. Until and unless it is fixed, American politics will continue to be absurd and offensive. So please help John Conyers.