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If you’re like me, and I know you are, you’ve been wondering who exactly our president is listening to, and exactly whose interests does he take seriously.
That’s because it should be obvious that he’s not listening to us, the 99%, and our interests are on the back burner, if they’re on the stove at all.
Well, help is on the way, there’s one guy in Washington that knows who’s calling the shots, and he’s helping us understand the mystery of who exactly are the MOTU.
US Senator Bernie Sanders, of Vermont has posted a report on the 26 Billionaires who are using their wealth and the license provided by the SCOTUS Citizens United decision to buy our government.
I’m a big fan of lists, so I couldn’t pass up the chance to share this one.
Citizens United is nothing more than a device intended to enable the very wealthy to remain anonymous while subverting our democracy through legalized bribery.
If you find most the names on Bernie’s list are unfamiliar, don’t feel bad, these folks have always been rich enough to by anonymity, and now thanks to Citizens United, they have achieved near absolute impunity too.
I sincerely hope that someone will annotate this list more completely to give us a more complete look at where their wealth has come from, so as to allow us some ability to judge whether their judgment and behavior is evidence of good character, the sort of character to whom we would entrust the control of our elected officials, like our president for instance.
If the average American must show a photo ID before being allowed to vote, why can’t we mandate that anyone contributing more than $1000 to any candidate for office be required to register their photo with the FEC, and have it posted to the FEC website so we can all get a look at who is financing our elections?
23 Comments
Of cousre it should read;
If the average American must show a photo ID before being allowed to vote, why can’t we mandate that anyone contributing more than $1000 to any candidate for office be required to register their photo with the FEC, and have it posted to the FEC website so we can all get a look at who has been buying our government?
I’d like their address, phone and social security number, too. So as to avoid mistaken identity. But it won’t happen in this republic. What is France up to now, I think this is their fifth since the revolution? Yup, Fifth as of 1958. Maybe we need a renovation.
Rec’d.
Just got back from reading the list. Only recognized a few names — who are all these guys? Guess I don’t move in the right circles!
Exactly!
If you’re rich and powerful enough to
select who is allowed to run for presidentboss the POTUS around, your name should be a household word.Name and address isn’t even good enough, exact, real-time GPS would be better.
That the R’s filibustered the Disclose Act on party lines yesterday…I guess I’m pretty much thinking that the D’s are using it as a campaign tool. They weren’t serious back in the day, and I thought I remembered it included some delay in publishing the lists of donors, anyway. Do you remember?
Not that I think the average voter would ever be aware of the importance of the names even if they WERE to hear them or read them. Bah!
For fun I was cross-checking the names with this year’s Bilderberg attendees list, but I got distracted, let go of it. First four I checked: no cross-over, lol.
The guys on that list are rich enough to buy anonymity, even if they’re Bilderburgers, they’re likely not on any list. If they don’t attend themselves, they buy representation.
The first thing a really, really rich man does however, is buy invisiblity.
Except to those who pass laws that might affect him.
How many people does he listen to from the Bush Administration? The name of this game is, “When the price is right, you get the green light”.
Thank you, Watt4Bob, for this list.
Many may be found at Wikipedia, some are on Forbes’ List …
It might be wise for us to learn the names of their businesses, their “connections”, their “politics”, and the politicians whom they “own”.
I agree, for the very wealthy anonymity is protection.
So, we should seek to end that protection, as you are doing.
(While, for the rest of us, notoriety is protection …
So, we must seek to expand that protection, as much as possible.)
Recommended to the awareness of everyone at FDL.
DW
Um, this list appears to me as the tip of the iceberg. How about these folks (see the entire thread re The Oregonian)?
I thought everybody knew that Obama answers to wealthy donors and corporate lobbyists like every other politician in the dirty, corrupt, rotten-to-the-bone two-party system. Still, a reminder every now and then can’t hurt.
On the other side of the ledger… Sheldon Adelson lures Jewish voters for Romney
A campaign by the Republican Jewish Coalition, funded by the casino mogul, targets Jewish-American voters and attacks Obama’s positions on Israel.
These are all Republican donors.
And your point :)
It’s not the list of billionaires that Obama listens to? He listens to a different set of billionaires? After all, you pretty much have to be a billionaire to make on the Forbes 400 anymore.
Let’s not forget these “donations” are business decisions; they are NOT political.
All of them expect a return on their investment…
Sorry, but you’ve missed the point entirely.
This post is not another “everybody knows” topic.
This post is a celebration of a particular kind of information, not some vague abstraction.
This is a list of the particular individuals who are busy, and have beem busy subverting the will of We the People by vetting the short list of people allowed to run for public office, funding their campaigns, which and thus buying our government out from under us.
We recognize very few of their names and that’s a big part of the problem, but it’s also the one thing we could fix about our situation without the permission or cooperation of the rotten, greedy bastards.
This list comes to us from an incredibly reliable source, someone who has been thinking carefully about our problems.
What everybody knows is not the topic of my post.
Oh, piddle on that. Look at the House Clerk’s roll call vote on HR459, the full audit of the Fed by the Comptroller General; ya think there’s some big difference in the phony duopoly R v. D shineola?
Who are the Gatekeepers of the plutocracy? Somewhere, the radical right and the radical let meet (even given it’s election year theater, safe votes and all that). Seems like this is one of those venn diagram overlaps. IMHO, of course.
If ya are unable to grasp what Gatekeepers of the Plutocracy Dems are by now…check SB 202, and yes, it’s freaking Rand Paul’s thing…will completely tank.
Do we remember what illuminations the last one year audit brought us; the trillions of bailouts for Special Banks around the globe, Special Corporations like…Caterpillar and McDogfood?
Absolutely!
We should be ashamed of the fact that we’re so easily controlled by a bunch of gatekeepers, most of whom are volunteers, and would work for free, happy to be telling some other poor fucker to get back in line an quit complaining.
See my reply, #10 here, about the invisible working people.
I didn’t question the reliability or value of your information, Watt4Bob. A lot of us think very carefully about the problem of government corruption and how to solve it–myself included, lowly as I undoubtedly am in the grand scheme of things. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t be here reading and commenting on the story. To a lot of people (and yes, they pop up here and there even on the Firedoglake boards, though it’s generally more of a problem at places like the Huffington Post), the reality of a Democratic president being swayed by undue influence is not even “some vague abstraction”, as you put it–it’s something that has never, ever occurred to them. Not for a second. “I thought everybody knew that Obama answers to wealthy donors and corporate lobbyists…” was sarcasm: appropriate sarcasm, in my estimation, because it’s so painfully obvious that everybody doesn’t know. It wasn’t intended as a personal affront or an attack on the substance of your piece.
Obama’s big donors were Republicans always: His top 20 Donor List, and Romney’s and George Bush: All 3 top 20s contain almost exclusively people who are on the other two’s lists.
I’d like to take you up on that annotated version, anyway, Here’s a few notes:
~Adelson: His organized crime ties in China are under investigation in this week’s news;
~Kochs are billionaires because Marijuana is illegal: The based their billions dealing DuPont’s wood-pulp paper – much worse than Hemp paper – a good investment;
~Walton WalMart: By law, Obama should have removed his license and prosecuted him under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act a few months ago when it was revealed that he had Bribed officials in Mexico;
~Poulson made billions or trillions on the inside job that was our 2008 economic collapse: With ex-VP Dan Quayle & then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, he bet that it would collapse, apparently on insider info from Greenspan & Quayle: All 3 made out like, well, bandits;
~Charles Schwab: As long as stock traders and bankers are allowed to make profits off of handling other people’s money, there is no hope for our economic system.
That’s a good start…
This is why I’m saying that knowing the Who, What, Where, When, and Why is very different that simply carping about the influence of ‘Billionaires’ in the abstract.
We’re not being reamed by abstractions, we’re being reamed by individuals, real flesh and blood people, and naming them is as good a first step as I can think of.
Followed by;
This is Mr. Adelson, his money comes from ______, he gives campaign contributions to ________, in the amount of $__________, because he wants_______.
Keep adding names, and details.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention Bob. (Recommended, of couse.)