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The Money Men |
Current rating: 0 |
by Paul F. Heller
Email: pfheller (nospam) cox.net (verified) |
28 Dec 2002
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Oligarchy is the spice of life in the Bush White House... |
The Associated Press calls him "the fundraiser in chief". As the head honcho of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, he whipped up over $124 million, money apparently well spent in last month's off-year election. He is President George W. Bush's newest lap dog, and your new Senate Majority Leader, ladies and gentlemen, Bill Frist (R., of course, Tennessee).
While he shouldn't be proud of the way he found himself with a gavel in his hand, Frist is certainly proud of his record as a GOP fundraiser. Beyond that, he proved to be a generous GOP fundgiver as well, passing around a total of $232,000 of hard-earned cash (I believe he owns an HMO ... a true peer, indeed) to various Senate races, through his personal fund raising committee, Volunteer PAC. This same fellow dug up $58 million in "hard" money (small amounts donated by the people) and $66 million in "soft" big-corporate donations - which will be illegal next time around. He also forked over the individual maximum amount of $10,000 to sixteen different Senatorial candidates, some of whom won key states by paper-thin margins, like Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Bob Dole's wife Elizabeth in North Carolina (funny, I thought she was from Kansas), Norm Coleman of Minnesota, John Sununu (whose father was once fired by Dubya's father) in New Hampshire, and James Talent in Missouri, who defeated the widow Carnahan, whose deceased husband beat John Ashcroft there in 2000.
All very boring stuff, I know. But a lot has been made out of the fact that the Senate, as well as the House of Representatives, is currently stocked with millionaire businessmen, Frist included. This has never happened before. The idea behind representation backing up taxation in a civil society is simple. The many should have control over their lives, and in the past, the makeup of politics resulted in the tax bracket being applied more heavily to the rich than to the poor. That's kind of what made America a utopia in the eyes of many people around the world. But ever since the Reagan era, the rich have been clamoring for a bigger allowance. Would-be populists, who are actually shills for the giant corporations that try to suck up our every after-tax dollar, will tell you that you should get to keep "more of your money". But the point is, we don't have any money to keep; it's all polarized up at the top, where between one and five percent of the population is holding ninety-five percent of the money.
Given giant tax cuts by their puppet president, Wealthy America hasn't really bothered to let any of it trickle down. Those $300 tax rebates that Bush coyly mailed out to everyone, to make us feel like we got ours when the richest men in the world got handed about a thousand times more than Everyman, are long forgotten now. Who even knows what they spent it on? I should have bought T-bonds; instead, I picked a nice new Telecaster off the wall. I'll probably have to hock it later this month, just to pay the bills.
If those are Bill Frist's best qualifications, that he vacuums up the money, like any good M.D., then this country is screwed down tight. In case anybody hasn't picked up on this, the economy is going nowhere. The stock market doesn't dare rise from the rubble, with Bush talking war, war, and more war. The individual investor has been bitten so hard since the Republicans took over that the only thing on his or her mind is paying down their own debt. Consumer confidence is shot, and the result has been the worst shopping season since 1970. Bad economies tend to trickle up, you see.
But none of that will slow down the GOP money train. It's a pity that men so adept at prying money from the most greedy among us haven't the will or compassion to raise resources for those who truly need it, or to apply it to our national debt and deficit, or to use it to beef up Social Security before the Baby Boomers start standing in line with their hands out. Or, at the very least, they could pay for their own pork-barrel projects without dipping into the public funds whenever they need a baseball stadium or a parking lot or an electrical generating station.
It's too bad that all those donations only went to the purchase of politicians, who represent a handful of people, and talk a line of nonsense in order to get your votes to do it. It is unfortunate that something so incredibly obvious can be passed off as anything but a rip-off of the average American. You may think otherwise, but without individual intelligence quotient assessments, I doubt you're any brighter than this: You've been suckered. Your 401k is useless. Your employer will early-retire you, and you'll be on your own. You'll have nothing to leave to your kids, except the remnants of your mortgage and bills. The good old days (read: the ‘90s) are gone, hijacked by the Good Ol' Party.
But Bill Frist and his rich friends will live comfortably no matter what befalls the rest of us. He probably laughs when he gets that taxpayer-supplied paycheck in the mail, a piddling $155,000 a year. They all probably think that's pretty funny. Then they hop into their limousines and head off to some expensive dinner, where a bunch of rich guys will pop corks and light cigars and tell each other how easy it was. Our representatives. You bet. |
See also:
http://www.hellermountain.com
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