Excellent article from Robert Reich, economist, and former Clinton labour secretary:
“A funny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum. According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech and corporations are now people. But when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with the political consequences of this, they’re treated as public nuisances and evicted.
First things first. The Supreme Court’s rulings that money is speech and corporations are people has now opened the floodgates to unlimited (and often secret) political contributions from millionaires and billionaires. Consider the Koch brothers (worth $25 billion each), who are bankrolling the Tea Party and already running millions of dollars worth of ads against Democrats.
Such millionaires and billionaires aren’t contributing their money out of sheer love of country. They have a more self-interested motive. Their political spending is analogous to their other investments. Mostly they want low tax rates and friendly regulations…”
He also makes some great observations about how the Occupy movement is now under attack by the status quo. Read the whole article here.
Only those who are blindly part of the problem cannot see the massive conflicts inherent in the present status quo and the legitimate complaints being voiced about its assault on our democracy.
