The roar of the political money vacuum cleaners can be heard if you are listening. After Citizens United, the oligarchs had to build a new vacuum cleaner for the 2016 presidential race.
I KNOW how Democrats feel about the transformation of elections, and I suspect that many ordinary Republicans are as turned off, too.
There are, however, more oligarch Republicans than there are, Democrats. What they are defending is simple enough to understand: they are investing in elections to protect their net worth and privileges in the tax code.
The oligarch's millions in campaign contributions to Super PAC's are pitted against your hundred, two hundred, or five hundred dollar contributions.
Insiders and political cronies have always had closer access to the corridors of power than ordinary people, but there can be no doubt -- none -- that the transformation of democracy constitutes a wholesale metamorphosis for which there is no name in the public eye.
You don't see, for example, the term, "Oligarchy" on network news. Or "Shadow Government".
In Florida and its state capitol, Tallahassee, it has been no simple task to take over the cockpit controls. Big money influence, though, is calculated and cunning.
It found energy in a communications strategy to impose homogeneous conservative values related to limited government through the Moral Majority and the Sagebrush Rebellion in the 1980s. It further promoted its aims by handicapping regulatory agencies by intimidating science staffers; effectively marginalizing dissenters within government ranks. It cultivated the weapon of fear to gin-up resentments against minorities -- always a fertile mother load in the American South -- to ignite the Tea Party in the early 2000s.
GOP candidates for the 2016 presidential campaign are in full force, shaking down the billionaires. Ted Cruz, this week, announced that PACs supporting his run had raised $31 million. A month ago, PACs related to Jeb Bush had been so successful that fundraisers were asked to hold off on million dollar plus donations, for fear that Jeb would be portrayed as the big money candidate too early in the campaign.
On the ground in Florida, you can see the results by looking at the shadows cast on the ground by the sun.
There is the state legislature and Gov. Scott's appointments on the Governing Board of the South Florida Management District giving the finger to civic activists' protests in favor of using Amendment 1 funds to purchase sugar lands for water storage and cleansing marshes; a deal that Big Sugar agreed to only a few years ago. The net result: to solidify the control of Everglades "restoration" by billionaire oligarchs who made their money poisoning people, poisoning democracy, and poisoning the Everglades.
Another shadow on the ground: the state legislature is poised to release Miami-Dade County rock miners -- one of the wealthiest and most secretive oligarchy in Florida -- from a fee designated to protect the drinking water of millions of Floridians from contamination.
Another shadow on the ground, and this one is the most impactful for Miami, perhaps, of all: Munilla Construction Management (MCM), involved in numerous county and municipal construction projects in Miami-Dade and elsewhere in Florida, hired Erik Fresen -- a state legislator -- to be its lobbyist on transportation and highway (MDX) business. Fresen used his state office for his lobbyist registration. It is as though the oligarchs don't even bother to hide their takeover plans. Legal or illegal seems to matter not at all.
The term, "robber baron", is used to lightly describe what has overtaken American democracy. The divisions in American society, particularly separating the .001 percent from the rest, have not been more clearly demarcated than they are today. It is war but, apparently, most Americans are too distracted by daily worries and anxieties to know or care.
I KNOW how Democrats feel about the transformation of elections, and I suspect that many ordinary Republicans are as turned off, too.
There are, however, more oligarch Republicans than there are, Democrats. What they are defending is simple enough to understand: they are investing in elections to protect their net worth and privileges in the tax code.
The oligarch's millions in campaign contributions to Super PAC's are pitted against your hundred, two hundred, or five hundred dollar contributions.
Insiders and political cronies have always had closer access to the corridors of power than ordinary people, but there can be no doubt -- none -- that the transformation of democracy constitutes a wholesale metamorphosis for which there is no name in the public eye.
You don't see, for example, the term, "Oligarchy" on network news. Or "Shadow Government".
In Florida and its state capitol, Tallahassee, it has been no simple task to take over the cockpit controls. Big money influence, though, is calculated and cunning.
It found energy in a communications strategy to impose homogeneous conservative values related to limited government through the Moral Majority and the Sagebrush Rebellion in the 1980s. It further promoted its aims by handicapping regulatory agencies by intimidating science staffers; effectively marginalizing dissenters within government ranks. It cultivated the weapon of fear to gin-up resentments against minorities -- always a fertile mother load in the American South -- to ignite the Tea Party in the early 2000s.
GOP candidates for the 2016 presidential campaign are in full force, shaking down the billionaires. Ted Cruz, this week, announced that PACs supporting his run had raised $31 million. A month ago, PACs related to Jeb Bush had been so successful that fundraisers were asked to hold off on million dollar plus donations, for fear that Jeb would be portrayed as the big money candidate too early in the campaign.
On the ground in Florida, you can see the results by looking at the shadows cast on the ground by the sun.
There is the state legislature and Gov. Scott's appointments on the Governing Board of the South Florida Management District giving the finger to civic activists' protests in favor of using Amendment 1 funds to purchase sugar lands for water storage and cleansing marshes; a deal that Big Sugar agreed to only a few years ago. The net result: to solidify the control of Everglades "restoration" by billionaire oligarchs who made their money poisoning people, poisoning democracy, and poisoning the Everglades.
Another shadow on the ground: the state legislature is poised to release Miami-Dade County rock miners -- one of the wealthiest and most secretive oligarchy in Florida -- from a fee designated to protect the drinking water of millions of Floridians from contamination.
Another shadow on the ground, and this one is the most impactful for Miami, perhaps, of all: Munilla Construction Management (MCM), involved in numerous county and municipal construction projects in Miami-Dade and elsewhere in Florida, hired Erik Fresen -- a state legislator -- to be its lobbyist on transportation and highway (MDX) business. Fresen used his state office for his lobbyist registration. It is as though the oligarchs don't even bother to hide their takeover plans. Legal or illegal seems to matter not at all.
The term, "robber baron", is used to lightly describe what has overtaken American democracy. The divisions in American society, particularly separating the .001 percent from the rest, have not been more clearly demarcated than they are today. It is war but, apparently, most Americans are too distracted by daily worries and anxieties to know or care.
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