Who is the Puppet, who is the Puppet master?
I hate always being the one to burst the bubble that we do NOT live in a democracy. At best, we live in a democratic republic, and while in an ideal sense our elected officials work for us, the truth of the matter is, they don’t. Not even a little bit.
Hyperbole aside, the only power we have over the political class is the ballot box, and as Chimpy proved in 2000, well, we don’t always have that. So in 2008 we allegedly tossed out the bums and replaced them with uncorrupt professionals that would give us the change we so desired. And now 10 months into the new congress we learn that GOPers and Dims are quite literally being spoon fed talking points from the healthcare lobby in what can only be interpreted as pay to play.
Yeah, I’m shocked too.
Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies.
Kill me now!
But their staffers helped with the spelling!
;>)
So other than accepting checks from lobbyists and licking the taints of the super rich, what exactly is it that these assholes do?
This crowd will enjoy this radio transcript of an interview with David Bromwich (long):
http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Watson_Institute/Open_Source/RadioOpenSource-David_Bromwich.mp3