THE LONG MARCH CONTINUES. The NH Rebellion walk to draw attention to the role of big money in politics has four routes this year: Dixville Notch, Keene, Nashua and Portsmouth. The finish line is at the State House on Jan. 21 — in celebration of the late Doris “Granny D” Haddock’s birthday — but the group aims to have a longer, and louder, presence in the 2016 first-in-the-nation primary with supporters asking presidential hopefuls this question: “What specific reforms will you advance to end the corrupting influence of money in politics?”
NH Rebellion – yet another silly attempt to rid us of the evil corruption of money from the political process. Silly in that there have been many failed attempts in the past but they believe (like many socialists) that it is because “the right people haven’t tried it yet”. Silly, too, in that they really go out of their way to ignore the obvious reason why there is so much money in campaigns. The entire time that Larry Lessig’s Mayday PAC was funding Jim Rubens in the NH US Senate race, not a whisper. We Groksters had a bit of a discussion on their mark and raison d’etre; this was one of my responses:
Like he has little answer to “Money out of campaigning”? Get Money out of government? These guys have blinkers on in that they don’t realize that so much money is spent campaigning because the stakes (and the ability to control those stakes) is over MUCH MORE money. And that which pols refuse to talk about – their GREED FOR POWER over others.
What’s a couple of billion spent to gain office when you get to control billions or trillions more? People are willing to spend the upfront because the backends are so large (no, I’m not fat-shaming here when talking about backends….but Chris Chrisie…oh never mind). The stakes are so much higher as Government gets even bigger.
When the Occupy Wall Street movement was in full swing, there was one issue on which it AND we in the TEA Party agreed upon: Crony Capitalism (which plays a role in the above as it is part and parcel of the backend half of this). Both factions believed this was a bad thing but we diverged on the remedy:
- OWS wanted MORE Government in charge of MORE things to better regulate Crony Capitalism
- TEA Party wanted a smaller government to lessen the nooks and crannies in which Crony Capitalism flourished. Kill Crony Capitalism by no longer constraining the Free Market
Frankly, the latter is a more elegant solution as it lessens the opportunities and that in itself lowers the overall stakes “to be purchased”. It also helps to mitigate the even worse problem:
Power hungry Politicians that believe they have the right to control your life
Because, dontcha know, that’s what many (if not most) want to do. And we just keep letting them do it to us.
(H/T: Union Leader)
asdf
