Reprinted from hartmannreport.com
So much money is sloshing around in our political system that honest politicians are buried and actual criminals are stepping up.
Republicans in the Senate yesterday killed legislation passed through the House that would require "dark money" to be publicly disclosed: not a single Republican voted for it, although every Democrat in attendance did.
Ralph Reed's Faith & Freedom Coalition, we learned Wednesday, is going to spend $42 million on the midterm elections, focusing on flipping evangelical Hispanics toward the GOP.
Leonard Leo, head of The Federalist Society so famous for providing Trump and McConnell with rightwing judges to pack federal courts and the Supreme Court, recently received a $1.6 billion contribution, tax-free.
So much money is sloshing around in our political system "- both what we know of and the billions in truly dark money that we know nothing about "- that honest politicians are buried and actual criminals are stepping up.
Donald Trump's phone call to Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was probably the clearest illustration of this recent incarnation of his lifelong criminality. Although it's rapidly being eclipsed by his theft and probable sale to foreign dictators of classified documents.
Over the last 40 years, career criminals like Trump have increasingly moved out of the business world and the streets and into politics, something for which we can thank the Supreme Court.
There are, among us, a small number of individuals who are career criminals. They have literally spent their entire lives skirting or outright breaking the law, and not only believe the law doesn't apply to them, but actually delight in getting away with their crimes.
Because all of us have, at one time or another in our lives, broken a law or told lies; we tend to assume that these career criminals are just like us but only got caught in that one unlucky moment, like that time you drove home after a second glass of wine, or made up an excuse to tell your boss.
But they're not like you and me. There's something fundamentally different about these people. And the failure to recognize that goes to the core of the crisis within the Republican Party and our overall political system today.
Back when I was in my late teens, I got a job as a manager of a GNC store in a mall in Okemos, Michigan. There was a test that I had to give to all job applicants to determine their "honesty."
The test asked really weird questions, along the lines of:
"One of your very best employees just came to you to return some money to the till, money that she had borrowed from the till because a few months back she needed it to help pay for an emergency medical procedure for her child. She has saved up to pay the money back, and is now trying to do so. What do you do?"
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