Please recall that despite the forecasts of doom, President Obama won re-election, beating the brigades of billionaires and shrill media attacks. He attracted smaller donations, and utilized the "big data" that the NSA has made infamous to advantage.
Electoral manipulation, or is it "persuasion" wears new faces every day, and goes way beyond the Supremes. Consider the blatant, and so far successful, efforts underway to make it harder for minorities to vote. Where's the outrage about that?
The big money boys can be beaten, but only when you organize from below, which is something that seems to have gone out of favor with so much of our political buzz is generated in the beltway where an odious gang of cynical crooks and dopey curmudgeons from both parties wrestle with each other, to the disgust of much of the public who tell pollsters how little respect they have for these loudmouths in suits.
If the Congress disappeared--not that it should--who would miss it?
If you want some real scandals not in the media, look critically at the media. It is central to our political order. Yet media doesn't cover its impact, and mostly denied it has one. It tells critics no one pays attention and then tells advertisers the absolute opposite.
Look at the increase in media concentration and what passes for information programs. Why do you think the public is so uninformed Comic David Letterman leaving in a year rated more attention than the daily deceptions in what singer Peter Tosh once called 'politricks.'
Look at the rise of Fox News that has been #1 for the past 49 quarters and learn about how Murdoch & Co used intimidation and big bucks to buy their way on the air and, then, profit from a system in which the big cable providers (and, we, their subscribers) that run his faux news pay for most of it, not advertisers.
The other day I was chatting with one of Public Citizen's articulate Democracy for the People organizers fighting big money in politics with hundreds of protest events in cities across the county.
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