If you think that none of today’s presidential candidates care about people like you, check out Republican Scott Walker.
The Wisconsin governor not only cares, he wants to sit down with you, get your ideas, and stay in close touch. No matter who you are, Scottie wants you to join his team, so his presidency can be your presidency! Not a Republican? No problemo, amigo, Walker doesn’t check your papers. Well… except for that million-dollar check you have to write to his Super-PAC.
That’s the ticket price for entering Walker’s inner circle, where you can discuss your policy concerns and seek personal favors – straight from your lips to the candidate’s ear! Even if you’re a common working stiff, just give a million dollars – and you’re in! Is this a great country, or what?
Maybe you’re wondering what, specifically, your money buys. Well, Scott’s Super-PAC even prints out a handy purchasing slip showing that you’ll be an “Executive Board Member” of the Walkerites’ campaign. Thus, you’ll have two private dinners with The Man, a Walker staffer dedicated to your needs, special briefings and weekly emails, bi-monthly conference calls, bi-annual retreats, and – best of all – an “Exclusive Executive Board Pin.”
Golly, I haven’t been this excited or felt so included since the 1950s, when I became a member of “The Mickey Mouse Club” and got my own set of mouse ears.
This is Jim Hightower saying… When the Supreme Court descended into the Alice-In-Wonderland fantasy that corporations are people and money is speech, it was inevitable that American politics would devolve to a frivolous game that shuts out the workaday majority and enthrones a Koch-brothers plutocracy sustained by secret-money Super-PACs and whorish candidates like Walker. To help end this corrupt mockery of our electoral democracy, go to www.DemocracyIsForPeople.org.
http://www.democracyisforpeople.org
“Scott Walker Lets Billionaire Donors Know the Outrageous Sum It’ll Take to Buy Him Off,” http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/scott-walker-lets-millionaire-donors-know-outrageous-sum-itll-take-buy-him, May 20, 2015.

Doug Hughes: Protecting Democracy from Plutocrats

The price of liberty is said to be eternal vigilance. But just being watchful rarely does anything to stop the theft of our rights. Instead, the real price of liberty is open defiance – the courage to stand against the oppressors. And the price of that can be prison.
Doug Hughes has dared to defy the corrupt, plutocratic order that the moneyed elites, both political parties, and the Supreme Court have imposed over us. Dismayed and disgusted that We the People are blocked by big money from having our voices heard and responded to, this Florida letter carrier chose to get heard with one dramatic act of civil disobedience. In April, Hughes flew his homemade gyrocopter across Washington and onto the lawn of the US Capitol to protest the usurpation of our most basic freedom: the right to be self-governing.
This was no stunt, no spur-of-the-moment outburst, but a thoughtful, well-planned, non-violent stand against the tyranny of money. Undertaken in the spirit of Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King, Jr., this mailman-on-a-mission was fully aware of and prepared to pay the price of civic defiance. Sure enough, on May 20, a federal grand jury indicted this messenger of democracy on a mess of charges that could add up to more than nine years in prison. Far from backing away, however, he’s now calling out you and me: “We spend billions protecting the United States from terrorists,” Hughes recently wrote. “It’s time for American’s to spend time protecting democracy from plutocrats.”
One time when Thoreau was in jail for his defiance of authority, his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson happened by and asked: “Henry, why are you here?” Thoreau retorted: “Why are you not here?” We can best honor Doug’s sacrifice by “being there” in the fight to save democracy from plutocracy. To help Doug and his family during his fight go to www.gofundme.com/sn8gc2s. And to join the fight, go to www.DemocracyIsForPeople.org.

Phil Gramm campaigns against bigotry and exploitation of workers

Phil Gramm, the former right-wing senator from Texas, has surprised me.
I had assumed he had zero charitable instincts, for he kept trying to kill such poor people’s programs as food assistance: “We’re the only nation in the world where all our poor people are fat,” he smirked.
But Phil seems to have developed a new empathy for people who’re demonized. Although he’s now a Wall Street operative, Gramm returned to Capitol Hill in July to express solidarity with victims of bigotry in our country. Wow! Gramm standing with Black Lives Matter and oppressed immigrants!
No, no... not “them.” The former senator was testifying against a new rule requiring corporations to reveal the spread between their CEO’s pay and what their workers get. It’s “demagoguery,” Phil grumped. Then he lurched into the abyss of absurdity by wailing that overpaid corporate chieftains are actually – get this – victims of public bigotry. The multimillionaire snarled that “The one form of bigotry that is still allowed in this country is bigotry against the successful.”
To prove this bizarre claim, Gramm cited the specific case of his buddy, Ed Whiteacre, who retired as CEO of AT&T in 2007. Ed was widely condemned for grabbing a $158-million retirement package for himself as he went out the door. Gramm practically wept as he related the sad story of Whiteacre’s heartache. The guy was actually underpaid, wailed Gramm – “If there’s ever been an exploited worker, he was exploited. It was an outrage!” Odd since the former senator, had never previously expressed the slightest concern about exploited workers.
This is Jim Hightower saying... Perhaps Gramm could do a telethon to support ex-executives like Ed, who suffer such soul-crushing bigotry. Please give ‘til it hurts... and don’t laugh, for Phil really feels the pain of the rich.
“Former Texas Senator: CEOs are the real victims,” http://becausefinanceisboring.com/post/125292445379/former-texas-senator-ceos-are-the-real-victims
“GOP: Deregulate Wall Street, or The Roman Empire Will Fall,” Huffington Post, July 28, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gop-wall-street-romanmpire_55b7a661e4b0224d8833f37c
The Committee on Financial Services, http://financialservices.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=399