By Ken Walker
Think your vote mattered?
The results are in. Big business and big spending won! Did the votes matter? Would it not have mattered if Patton had a threesome? It wouldn’t have mattered if the Democrats could have managed to scrounge up a good candidate in any race on the national scales. A CNN/Gallup poll on Wednesday, after the results were posted, showed 83 percent of those questioned were either “discouraged” or “completely felt left out” due to feelings of their would-be votes not mattering. The ballot was full of uncontested candidates or two-party ballots. Where has the representation gone?
A professor stated in a November 7 lecture that in the United States, our parties are working-class parties. That may have been true in 1888, when economists in the third edition of The New York Times wrote, “America shows its working class within its class parties of representation.”
Now, in 2002, it takes over $140 million in spending by a local Congress winner to take home the trophy and reclaim her seat. Her opponent spent an estimated $90 million; I guess he did not have enough money, thus costing him the election. Not to mention a slew of other things that all Democrats in this state were associated with, though they were not involved. But would it really matter if he had won? Would there be radical change? And for the first time since that 1888 column, in which the time was dubbed “Reconstruction,” all major institutions of national government will be held by Republicans.
It’s not a catastrophe, but the federally funded/mandated coalition Citizens for Tax Justice and Children’s Defense Fund has just released some rather catastrophic economic findings. It states in its first deliberation that “over the ten-year period, the richest Americans — the best-off 1 percent — are slated to receive tax cuts totaling almost a trillion dollars.” This study goes on to show that “from 2001 through 2005, the best-off 1 percent will receive only 19.8 percent of the Bush tax cuts.” And the American people thought that $300 or $600 figure they received in the mail a little over a year ago was just a perk.
“By 2010, when all of the provisions of the bill, including complete repeal of the estate tax of extremely large estates, are scheduled to be in place, 51.8 percent of the tax cuts are targeted to the top 1 percent.” It is highly interesting that over half the tax cuts are going to be transferred to only the top 1 percent, which is already, uh, running society. There does still remain that other 99 percent of American society, but they are the “1 percent” sitting in representatives’ and senators’ back pockets, steering them like the puppets they are. So with this figure (which can be found at www.ntf.org/tax_cut), would it matter which representative/senator would have won? No.
The fact is that money is running American elections. It is not public opinion. It is not stances, history in politics, etc. It is money! It is capital! How can these people actually represent Mr. $20,000 a year? What exactly does John “blue-collar” Doe have in common with Mr. “so white collar it’s shining” Representative? I see nothing in common with someone who allows that much money for a campaign built on negative television advertising and makes no donations in the campaign, aside from the donation to marketing companies. Though voter turnout is a joking matter in this country (nearly 40 percent on November 5), it would not matter whom you voted for; they are all millionaires, and we are the blue collars being dyed by the millionaires and their millionaire agenda.
