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June Carbone: How to Take Our Country Back From the Money Men who Fund the Tea Party
The more bold the 'man behind the curtain' becomes, the better chance we have at identifying his game and shutting it down.
Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow and New Deal 2.0 pundit Thomas Ferguson, a political scientist at U Mass, Boston, documents the effective sale of Congress to special interests. The congressmen who raked consumer advocate and should-be populist hero Elizabeth Warren over the coals were the paid shills of the big banks she was willing to confront. Membership on financial services committees is now the product of the right campaign contributions. While public outrage may have led to the passage of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, it did nothing to contain the alliance of lobbyists and business friendly Republicans (along with more than a few Democrats) working overtime to water it down and block its implementation.
In the meantime, the Republicans have launched a campaign to rig the political system. Their campaign against unions is a campaign against the last remaining source of institutional support for Democrats. At the same time, they are engaged in a wholesale initiative to make it harder to vote. Who is most likely to be affected by these measures? The answer is clear: the poor, the young, the less educated, recent immigrants, in short, those mostly likely to be Democrats and most likely to be the victims of tea party budget cuts.
The more bold the 'man behind the curtain' becomes, the better chance we have at identifying his game and shutting it down.