Corporatist Oligarchs Have Bamboozled the People

Knowing how I believe that few, if any, differences exist between Repubs and Dems (at the highest levels of politics), a CA friend sent me an email showing what he believes are some of the differences.  He ended by asking if I knew of any Repub in favor of the $15 minimum wage.  My response (slightly edited) is found below.

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Not 100% sure, but I think Senator Susan Collins is for $15 per hour.  Many other Repubs AND many Dems are for a raise to $10 - $12, rather than $15.  [Side Note:  In only a two-person household in 1992, I was making $15 an hour...

and barely scraping by back then.  $15/hour is almost nothing nowadays.]

But none of that proves anything; it's like not seeing the forest because of individual trees.  In general, & in the larger scope of things, today's major Parties both are dictatorial in their running of each Party and they're both Corporatist in nature.  They both marginalize any truly Populist candidates, and they kow-tow to Wall Street.

In my opinion, the whole current Repub v. Dem thing is a complete sham...a Divide & Conquer strategy by Oligarchs.  That wasn't true in the past, but it is now.  No one ever will convince me otherwise.  The last genuine Populist to run for national office was George McGovern in 1972.  Sanders is better than most, but I think his attitude toward things like Drone Wars & Foreign Policy in general, stinks.  Even Rand Paul, a blatant Corporatist, has a better Foreign Policy view than Sanders.  Paul is much more of a non-interventionist than almost anyone in DC.  He has been marginalized almost totally because of it.  The same thing happened to Dennis Kucinich on the Dem side.  

Both Dems & Repubs in the top slots want American Hegemony to continue forever.  They all believe we should be the world's Police Force.  Forget about the U.S. Constitution and International Law.  According to the Republicrats & the Demopublicans, the U.S. Gov't can order the overthrow of any Gov't, change any regime, place sanctions on any country, and bomb any nation it so chooses.  It's insanity. 

No-Sir, in the big picture, there's hardly any difference at all between Dems & Repubs at the highest levels when it comes to really significant issues.  In the rare cases when there is a difference on a significant issue, it's usually because one or the other has given in to overwhelming popular protest...but their core, Corporatist beliefs have not changed.  Politicians are sleazy & deceitful that way.

That's how I see it, anyway.  Forty years ago, things were different... but not anymore.  The political paradigm has changed completely.  Unfortunately, most Americans seem to be stuck in the old paradigm of Repubs v. Dems, Right v. Left, etc.  That exists in name only... and is a testament to how thoroughly the Oligarchs have bamboozled the People.

As I've said many times, the new political paradigm is:  the Oligarchy v. the rest of us.  In socioeconomic terms, the Lower Class is growing larger, the Middle Class is shrinking, and the Upper class has increased its income by 700% in the last 30 years.  The two major political Parties are no longer relevant... except as Edward Bernays style Propaganda.

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Not only my opinion.  Be Well

Non-Democratic Democratic Party Elections and Republican Losers

Here's some food for thought regarding the 2016 elections.

1.  As of the morning of June 10 (Friday), at least two million votes had not yet been counted in Tuesday's California Primary Election.  Hillary Clinton "won" that election by about 440,000 votes... that is to say, she "won" it without at least 2,000,000 votes being counted.  Do the math.  How do we know she won... maybe, maybe not.  Even though she's way ahead in the total delegate count, this situation matters because declaring her the winner prematurely adds to her campaign's momentum... perhaps falsely.  It also may influence Superdelegates to the detriment of the Sanders campaign.  Finally, it simply shouldn't happen... the election/vote count is not over.  Is this democracy in action?  No, this is closer to Fascism in action.

2.  All over the country, people have participated in Primary Elections, casting their votes for the candidates of their choice.  In reality, they are electing pledged delegates to a political convention.  And yet, when that convention (for the Democrats) takes place relatively soon, 15% of the participating delegates will be unelected; they are the Superdelegates, the Party Elites.  They had nothing whatsoever to do with the Primary Election process.  No citizen voted for them in the Primaries.  They will pledge to a particular candidate for other, essentially unknown reasons.  Fifteen percent may sound small, but it's a significant number.  Is this democracy in action?  I think not.  Instead, this is a goofy, non-democratic process concocted by the Democrats after the McGovern loss back in the early 1970's.  The People chose McGovern as their candidate, he lost BIG-TIME, and the Dem Party hierarchy vowed that type of thing would never happen again.  [In other words, they decided that the ignorant public cannot be trusted to solely select the candidate; they need help from the experts in these matters:]  That's how Democrats wound up with 15% unelected delegates.

3.  Add to the above the fact that there have been irregularities in the Democratic Party Primaries in several other States... Iowa, New York, New Hampshire... just to name a few.  Add to that the very odd decision of the Democratic Party hierarchy to have very few debates and to drastically cut the number of participants in those debates early on in the process.  Finally, there are the decisions of the Corporate Media to give the Sanders campaign the smallest amount of coverage of any major candidate... by a large margin.  This despite the fact that he generated massive rallies and interest.  It should be obvious that something fishy is going on here.  [Attention "Conservatives":  so much for the "Liberal Media" (who is more "Liberal" than Sanders?); they are Neoliberal, and those two categories are polar opposites.  Wake up.]

4.  As to the Republicans, it's fairly clear that the Republican Party hierarchy wants to lose the election in November.  I've been following national elections in this great Land very closely ever since 1956.  In all that time, there has never been a Primary season more mishandled by a specific Party than this one by the Repubs.  The Democrats and McGovern came close, but this year & the Repubs get the cigar.

5.  The moneyed interests want Hillary, and barring unforeseen events, that's who they're going to get.

Not only my opinion.  Be Well