Chris Powell, the Managing Editor of the Journal Inquirer and a columnist for the paper, comes down in a recent column on the side of liberty, the First Amendment and campaign finance competition.
The prospect of corporate money flowing through the campaign finance system, Powell notes, is no more frightening than “the huge amounts already entering politics via the Federal Reserve, which has created hundreds of billions of dollars and bestowed them in secret on certain financial corporations, which in turn have spent some of the money in ways that retain or build their political influence.
A typical Powell column: When the shooting is over, a caravan of busses is needed to haul the corpses off to the boneyard.
The prospect of corporate money flowing through the campaign finance system, Powell notes, is no more frightening than “the huge amounts already entering politics via the Federal Reserve, which has created hundreds of billions of dollars and bestowed them in secret on certain financial corporations, which in turn have spent some of the money in ways that retain or build their political influence.
“As government becomes more pervasive, there may be public interest in allowing corporations, as representatives of the ever-diminishing private sector, to push back more in politics. Yes, now corporations may more plausibly threaten to ruin politicians who cross them, but then government itself long has been making and breaking corporations. These days there's not much of the private sector left, now that the U.S. government has more or less formally merged with General Motors, AIG, J P Morgan, Chase, and Goldman Sachs.Powell then exuberantly picks off both outgoing senator Chris Dodd, “…long the stooge of Wall Street and the foremost beneficiary of political contributions from financial corporations” and the newspaper that the Journal Inquirer is suing for plagiarism:
“Then there was the Hartford Courant, a subsidiary of Tribune Co., whose political influence long has been so great that for a decade it has obtained waivers from the Federal Communications Commission to operate two television stations in Connecticut in violation of longstanding rules against such cross-ownership. (Somehow this excessive corporate influence has never bothered Dodd or any other member of Connecticut's congressional delegation.) Even President Obama's criticism of the Supreme Court decision seems insincere and opportunistic, since his own campaign for president in 2008 was the biggest recipient of money from Goldman Sachs.”
A typical Powell column: When the shooting is over, a caravan of busses is needed to haul the corpses off to the boneyard.
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