The corruption of our political process

Two new pieces of information, and an older outrage:

1.  First, the older.     When the case "Citizens United" reached the Supreme Court of the U. S., it was a narrow argument about a specific case:   whether a private group could air a critical film about Hillary Clinton during the height of the 2008 presidential primary campaign.   Previous law would have restricted such airings in the 30 days prior to the election.

The conservative majority of SCOTUS, in a bit of judicial activism apparently led by the Chief Justice John Roberts himself, expanded the case to a broad, landmark ruling that treated corporations as individual persons with regard to free speech rights.   And now, we're seeing the disasterous results:  the power of SuperPacs that allow wealthy groups, or billionaire individuals, as well as corporations, to wield undue influence in our electoral process.    And we are just beginning to see how bad this can be and what mega-funds are being spent this way.

2.  Second:  Now the New York Times has released information it obtained about the advertising plan that has been devised by a group of "high profile Republican strategists" who are hoping to have it funded by conservastive billionaire, Joe Ricketts, with the explicit purpose of painting Barack Obama as secretly planning to implement the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's "liberation theology" -- which they misinterpret as a hate-white campaign.

The $10 million advertising plan calls for hiring as spokesman in the ads "an extremely literate, conservative African-American who will argue that Obama misled the nation in presenting himself as "a metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln."   The proposal also states that the plan will show how “president’s formative years among left-wing intellectuals has brought our country to its knees.”   This would be a four-hour, multi-media blitz (newspaper, billboard, TVads) during the Democratic convention in Charlotte, when maximum attention would be focused on it.

The Times goes on to say that Mr. Ricketts is considering several proposals and has not yet decided but that he does intend to spend a large sum of money to defeat Obama.   He reportedly believes that John McCain made a mistake in not capitalizing on the Jeremiah Wright connection in 2008.

3.  Third:   Although not directly political, it involves the influence of money in our governmental process and the recent shocking investment loss by JPMorgan Chase bank, which today is being upped to an estimated $3 billion and may go higher.

The news that was shocking, to me, but it's not new to those in the know:   The CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, not only lobbied Washington to weaken regulations, he also sits on the board of the New York Federal Reserve Bank -- and thus is in a high position himself for directly influencing decisions about bank regulations.

How can this not be an outrageous conflict of interest?   The fox guarding the hen house?

The only smidgen of optimism I can see in all this is that Democracy (such as it is in the U. S. in the 21st Century) still must be pretty powerful if it even partially survives in the face of such capitalistic amorality.

Let me say it boldly:   I think Capitalism, in its unadulterated "free market" form that Republicans want, is both unchristian and undemocratic.

That our democracy survives in its attenuated form is a tribute to democracy itself and to its ideals of equality, freedom, and fairness.   Capitalism, when unregulated, works against those ideals.

Ralph