Newest push to privatize more of government is to privatize the VA? Is nothing sacred to these republicans? People need to understand that our government is the only thing standing in the way of large corporations to just completely prey on those of us least able to protect ourselves. Our government has allowed itself to be almost completely taken over by corporations, and the shills for the corporations, our so called representatives sent to DC to speak for we the people and instead speak for the artificial persons, the corporations. The Republican consistently state that democrats promote social welfare programs because that's how they "buy" votes, but then isn't the government supposed to be doing the will of the people? But let's say that's the case, what then does it say of the Republican party who gives the wealthiest, the bankers and the large corporations what they want? Is that not also buying political support in the way of campaign finance? So, Republicans sell themselves to corporations and the Democratic party sells themselves to the people and does their will, which would you rather have represent you?
Supreme Court today ruled 6-3, in the people's favor for a change regarding a case brought against the police that stopped a man for a traffic violation and then after he was pulled over told him to sit tight and then made him wait for 10 or more minutes until a drug sniffing dog was brought in and that resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of the man. So, he's stopped for a traffic violation, such as speeding and the Court actually ruled in his favor and against the State. Chalk one up for the people.
FDR, in 1936 wrote a letter to the 75th Congress in regards to the enforcement of the anti trust laws. Went something like this; "The Liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point that it becomes stronger than their democratic government. That is the essence of Facism - ownership of a government by an individual, a group or by any other controlling power." This is a huge problem today since we all but stop enforcing the anti trust laws during the 1980's allowing the constant mergers and take overs that have resulted in these huge corporate goliaths that are quite literally dictating government policy today. They have consolidated our media to the point where it no longer works for a functional democracy in that it is censored by the advertisers. The mainstream media loves war, because it's profitable so they promote it. They will not speak against the fossil fuel industry because they advertise with them. They love all the money in our political system because they are the main benefactors through all the campaign ads and so forth.
Did you know that we have about 108,000 private contractors in Afghanistan compared to 67,000 US troops? And those private contractors, who do essentially the same things as our military earn 5 times as much and this comes from tax payers? Black Water is the largest and they have been convicted of horrendous crimes. These private contractors added to the chaos in Iraq and were cited multiple times for unjustified killings of civilians. Now, we have Blackwater in Afghanistan working on the anti drug program there at a huge cost to taxpayers and doing essentially what Bush handed the Afghan government some money for, like maybe $100 mill but do not recall the exact amount, to burn the poppy fields and we're paying Blackwater far more and the drug problem is getting worse not better. I don't give Bush much credit but in this he was right.
Big business has to convince the people that Government is the bad guy, not them. They seek to privatize and therefore weaken our government because a large, strong government is the only power with the ability to protect the people from them. They started the propaganda under Reagan with "government is not the solution to the problems, government is the problem" and then "greed is good" and we're still operating under that lie. The Corporations along with their enablers the republican party have almost achieved their goal. Their ultimate goal is to control completely all 3 branches of the federal government and all 50 states governments and at that point they will no longer even pretend to care what we think. In fact, if that should occur, I fear that we'll no longer have the vote.
Did you know that the largest banks borrow at near zero interest rates which smaller banks cannot do therefore they receive a taxpayer subsidy of $83 billion per year? Why aren't we outraged by this? Because we aren't told that's why.