Wednesday, February 1, 2012

This Election

Make no mistake about this presidential election. It's about money and power, but mostly money. Only kinda' watching the republican primary (trying to avoid it but sometimes there's nothing else on the news stations except it) it's clear the billionaires and mulit-millionaires are pouring money into superpacs, and yes, cordinated and orchestrated by the candidates themselve - the law governing the separation of superpacs, parties and candidates is ludicrous.

While you can argue, as I believe, President Obama is also well funded by superpacs paid by billionaires and mulit-millionaries and by major corporations, namely the energy companies, the banks, the financial and investment instutions, and the mortage companies, he's the only real hope for the American people to get anything done. I've argued he's a moderate-conservative democrat (closelly allied to moderate republicans), he does acknowledge the liberal and progressive arms of the democratic party in Congress for which he needs and couldn't get bills passed without them.

But before you decide he shouldn't be our president or you decided the republican candidate is better for this country, consider where the republican candidate is coming from, the extreme right which is mostly white, wealthy people hiding behind the pseudo-populist Tea Party and religious, conservatives republicans. It is a political war between economic classes, racial and ethinic groups, religious groups and political philosophies.

It really is the political war between the haves who want more and the have-nots who struggle to survive along with the have-some who face falling into the have-less or worse the have-nots. It really is between the 1% and the rest of us. Don't mistake the rhetoric on either side, to create distrust or hate for the other side or trust and hope in their side. Both sides will do this during this election campaign.

If you don't believe some of what this election is about, just look at who's funding the Republican superpacs behind the candidates. A sea of old, white, wealthy men, some with their wife and family. Whether it's the Koch brothers, Wal-Mart family, etal, they're all about wanting to be wealthier and freer of government oversight and regulation, and less taxes for them to push the cost of government onto the backs of the rest of us.

There's no argument the wealthy pay a lot in taxes, millions of dollars to our few thousand or less. We're talking several orders of magnitude of difference, and while we far outnumber them in being taxpayers, our contribution doesn't amount to as much as their contribution. That's the fact of money. But it doesn't change the responsibility and obligations of all of us to all of us, especially those who can easily pay their share.

And that's behind much of the effort to elect a republican who will find ways to lower taxes on the wealthy, reducing overall government income, increasing the annual budget deficit and the longterm national debt, and reducing our government's ability to do the work for all of us. We all use and need the federal government, only the wealthy find ways around it we have to live through and with it. Money does a lot and gives them more freedom.

And they like to sell you the image as hope and a goal for you, when they know only a few will succeed. It's the image that sells and we want to believe we can be them. It's about money. Not their money, which they want more. But your imaginary money you think you can have if you try. It's that money, not their real but our dream, but they want to limit your dream while giving you the illusion it's real.

That's what this election is about, illusions of money. Believe them and we lose. Don't believe them, believe in reality. Our reality, this country and what needs to be done for all of us.

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