On May 2, 2014 Vermont became the first state to call for a convention to amend the U.S. Constitution to reverse the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which precipitated a flood of cash into politics. These were overwhelming votes, and there was bipartisan support.
Are you tired of merely complaining about government corruption? Here's your chance to do something. I just donated a significant amount of money to the SuperPac Kickstart campaign created by Lawrence Lessig, a tireless leader in the election reform movement. Listen to his 5-minute presentation and then ask yourself, "Isn't this what I've been waiting for?" Please . . . PLEASE listen to this message and consider joining this movement. This approach has real potential to change the way Washington works. You'll need to get past the dark irony that it will take money to beat money. The battle cry is "Mayday"--our government is going down in flames. Become a proud player in this effort. Mayday PAC Launch from lessig on Vimeo.
Many politicians would claim that college shouldn't be free and that, in fact, the federal government, which is now a direct provider of many college loans, should pile interest onto student loans. I have two things I'd suggest in response, both of which speak to the systemic corruption of the United States Federal Government:
Here are more stats from The Atlantic:
A mere $62.6 billion dollars! According to new Department of Education data, that's how much tuition public colleges collected from undergraduates in 2012 across the entire United States. And I'm not being facetious with the word mere, either. The New America Foundation says that the federal government spent a whole $69 billion in 2013 on its hodgepodge of financial aid programs, such as Pell Grants for low-income students, tax breaks, work study funding. And that doesn't even include loans.
George Carlin summarized the issues back in 1988. Almost 200 criminal and ethics investigations.
A new study demonstrates that the United states is not a democracy, but an oligarchy. Lee Camp comments on this study: Common Dreams has also commented on the study, entitled "Testing Theories of American Politics."
A study, to appear in the Fall 2014 issue of the academic journal Perspectives on Politics, finds that the U.S. is no democracy, but instead an oligarchy, meaning profoundly corrupt, so that the answer to the study’s opening question, "Who governs? Who really rules?" in this country, is: "Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But, ..." and then they go on to say, it's not true, and that, "America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened" by the findings in this, the first-ever comprehensive scientific study of the subject, which shows that there is instead "the nearly total failure of 'median voter' and other Majoritarian Electoral Democracy theories [of America]. When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy." To put it short: The United States is no democracy, but actually an oligarchy.You can find the study here. The following is the bottom line:
The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence. Our results provide substantial support for theories of Economic Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.