How Our Bought-and-Paid-For Congress Rolls

I have been led to understand that numerous polls indicate the American people "know" the game is rigged against real people, i.e., the vast majority of the populace, and in favor of the very elite fraction of one percent who are already unimaginably rich by our standards.  And yes, those game rules obviously play in favor of anyone holding a congressional office.  I don't know that I am confident that the "people" in that initial statement amount to anything like a majority of the populace.  I believe there is a herd of remarkable numbers of us who continue to rely almost exclusively on Fox "news," radio "evangelists," and other snake-oilers for their incoming stream of guidance as to how to "think" about matters big and small.

I know I read one of the seminal works supposed to help us with this a while back, and while it was greatly instructive and rewarding and I heartily encourage you to do the same, I am still staggered.

I swear we would be far better off as a country on almost every metric I can think of if we stopped trying to restrict voting by minorities (i.e., the collective already in the majority in many locales), the young, and the elderly and instead prohibited voting by those who take Fox/Limbaugh/Hannity/Beck et al seriously.

I'm willing to forego that un-democratic proposal if the republicans will agree to cease their program of voter suppression.

Meanwhile, here's another discouraging account that I doubt you found reported in your newspaper or mainstream news:

This week, the House Ways and Means Committee is poised to demonstrate exactly how the rules are rigged. On Tuesday, the committee will begin to mark up a series of corporate tax breaks – known as “extenders” because they have been extended regularly every year or two for over a decade. Only now the committee plans to make many of them permanent, at the cost of an estimated $300 billion over 10 years. And it does not plan to pay for them by closing other corporate loopholes or raising rates. The giveaway – almost all of which goes to corporations – will simply add to the deficit, no doubt fueling the later demands of those who vote for them for deeper cuts in programs for the vulnerable in order to bring “spending” under control.

Much more at the link, including Congress' appallingly mean-spirited refusal to extend unemployment benefits to cover those damaged by the mega-corporations who now apparently more or less own those box seats in congress.