America is now officially for sale

[last_texas_dem]

It's the Tea Party spirit distilled: pose as the champion of Joe America, while actually ripping him off

by Johann Hari

>>>The laws and policies of the legislature of the United States of America are now effectively on e-Bay, for sale to the highest bidder. Are you a Wall Street boss who wants to party like it’s 2007? Are you a Big Coal baron who wants to burn, baby, burn? Are you an insurance company that wants to be able to kick sick people off your rolls? Meet John Boehner, the most powerful Republican and soon-to-be Speaker of the House. But – of course! – you already have.

Here’s an example of how you have worked together. In 1995, the House was going to finally repeal subsidies for growing tobacco, because an addictive cancer-causing drug didn’t seem like the most deserving recipient of tax-payers’ cash – until Boehner walked the floor of the House handing out checks from tobacco lobbyists to his fellow elected representatives. They changed their minds. The subsidy stayed. Explaining his check-dispensing, Boehner says: “It’s gone on here for a long time.” So get your bids in: the House is open for business.

To understand what has happened in the mid-term elections, the best guide lies in an unexpected place – the dusty vaults of Hollywood. In 1957, Elia Kazan directed a film called ‘A Face In The Crowd’ that read the tea-leaves of the Tea Party back when Sarah Palin was merely a frosty zygote. One morning a poor wandering Arkansas chancer named Larry ‘Lonesome’ Rhodes is lying passed out on a jail cell where the local sheriff has detained him overnight. A pretty young radio producer arrives and asks if he’d like to tell her a story to be played on her show where ordinary folks speak to ordinary folks. He sings and rambles and offers corn-poke homilies. The clip is a huge hit – and he is soon given his own show, filled with country music and country wisdom which then shoots off into the stratosphere.

When Lonesome Rhodes becomes one of the biggest stars on US television, he starts receiving offers. Advertisers say that if he endorses their lousy products, they’ll shower him with millions. He knows how to sell to ordinary people – and he is pushed to go further. They ask him to sell the political causes that will make them richer too. He starts railing against social security and the old age pension and anything that taxes the rich to help the rest. He uses the tunes and slanguage of working class Americans to get them to emotionally identify with the people who are screwing them over. He’s brilliant at it – a gurning hyperactive huckster, saying that support and security for ordinary Americans is a betrayal of America. He makes himself rich by lying to the people he came from.>>>

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-america-is-now-officially-for-sale-2125447.html

[HereSince1628]

1. That's truer than one might think. The WI gov elect is a privateer

I expect to see Wisconsin's Freeways become toll roads operated by international corporations.

[Dr.Phool]

2. And Floriduh's

If Rick Scott doesn't keep them for himself.

[Doctor_J]

3. The deal's been closed

it's already been sold