Who Rules America?

Who rules America?

    By Allan J. Lichtman, contributor

     http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/civil-rights/214857-who-rules-america

“A shattering new study by two political science professors has found that ordinary Americans have virtually no impact whatsoever on the making of national policy in our country. The analysts found that rich individuals and business-controlled interest groups largely shape policy outcomes in the United States.”

“The new study, with the jaw-clenching title of "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens," is forthcoming in the fall 2014 edition of Perspectives on Politics.”

“Rich individuals and business interests have the capacity to hire the lobbyists that shadow legislators in Washington and to fill the campaign coffers of political candidates. Ordinary citizens are themselves partly to blame, however, because they do not choose to vote.

America's turnout rate places us near the bottom of industrialized democracies. More than 90 million eligible Americans did not vote in the presidential election of 2012 and more than 120 million did not vote in the midterm elections of 2010.”

[Bold emphasis mine]

How Much Wealth Is Enough?

American Capitalism embraces the concept of wealth.  Wealth is defined as the abundance of valuable resources or material possessions.  Having an abundance means you have more than others.

At every level of wealth in our capitalistic society, while you may be wealthier than others, there are those that are wealthier than you.  The desire for more wealth is like crack. You can never get "enough".  While some work hard to gain wealth, some have found it easier to steal to gain a higher rung on the wealth ladder.  Those in power have legalized their thievery and call it investment banking or managing hedge funds. 

It seems to me that in American Capitalism, no one is happy with their rung on the wealth ladder.

Internet Wars!

It's no secret that the internet has become a vital part of our lives.  Many people keep up to date on the latest on critical issues.  Social movements have been started and important stories have been released ahead of the corp-media. 

Some of us think keeping the internet free from control of the major corporations is essential for our very freedom and liberty, but there is a war on for control of the internet.

On one side are the Internet service providers (ISPs) — like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon.  They see it as a means of greatly increasing their profits at the expense of free access for users, and are willing to spend large sums of money to lobby to get the needed control.

On the other side of the war is everyone else.

The ISPs want to be permitted to slow down traffic from companies that don’t pay special fees.  They could pick and choose what kind of service each user got.  They also want the freedom to favor their own offerings over those of their competitors.  Comcast could make it very difficult for Netflix to compete with the Comcast alternative.

The big question is: Whose side is Tom Wheeler, FCC Chairperson on? At this point it doesn't look good.

“The FCC's latest draft rules proposes banning ISPs from blocking users' access to websites or applications but allowing some "commercially reasonable" deals between content providers and ISPs to prioritize delivery of some web traffic.”

Over a million people have provided their reactions to the proposed rules including President Obama.  He took issue to the rules stating that he is in favor of “an open and fair Internet."

More at:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/06/obama-net-neutrality_n_5655862.html

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/the-power-of-story/can-we-keep-the-internet-free

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/18/us-usa-internet-neutrality-idUSKBN0FN23720140718

Release of Heavily Redacted CIA Torture Report Delayed

The Senate Intelligence Committee (SIC) has investigated the Bush Administration’s use of torture and is trying to get the executive summary released from the White House where it is being screened for classification purposes.  The report itself is 6,300 pages and has taken 5 years to prepare. Sen Feinstein, the chairperson of the SIC has returned the summary to the WH indicating that the heavy redaction has significantly effected the results of the document.

Making things more complicated is that a report was recently released by General David Buckley, CIA Inspector General that indicated CIA employees improperly accessed the database used by the SIC staff while they were working on the investigative report.  The Director of the CIA, Brennan denies that any snooping took place.  However, Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) on Thursday said, in a statement, "The CIA unconstitutionally spied on Congress by hacking into Senate Intelligence Committee computers. This grave misconduct not only is illegal, but it violates the U.S. Constitution’s requirement of separation of powers.”

This puts President Obama between a rock, the SIC and a hard place, the very powerful CIA/NSA organization.  Last week he had a press conference where he attempted to explain what is going on.  Some are saying that he stumbled badly as he said:

"In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we did some things that were wrong.  We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks. We did some things that were contrary to our values.”

He also said,

“And there was enormous pressure on our law enforcement and our national security teams to try to deal with this, and it’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had and a lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots.” 

These statements appear to be attempts to rationalize and minimize the horrible torture that occurred under the Bush Admin.  Some "folks" have held out hope for the last six years of silence from the President, that he would eventually either prosecute the offenders or at least issue a very strong statement condemning the torture. The weak wording of this speech dashed those hopes. It's very doubtful that he will strongly condemn the actions of Bush/Cheney regarding torture in the future. 

It should be noted that two very powerful people, General Clapper, Director of National Intelligence lies to Congress and John Brennan spies on Congress don't get fired.  Either President Obama doesn't want to fire them or he hasn't enough power to fire them.  Either way is not good for our country.

Sources for the above and good further reading:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/31/cia-john-brennan-mark-udall_n_5638585.html

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/local-news/20140801-obama-concedes-cia-torture-stands-by-embattled-director.ece

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/opinion/stop-the-cia-spin-on-the-senate-torture-report.html