Oh, I know, money is speech. The first amendment means that there can be no government control over what is allowed on the media when political discourse is involved. “God bless the first amendment”, they say in the executive suites of the major corporations. Can there be any doubt who controls the information for mass distribution in the US? The people who own the country run the country. Their power is the purse. Ownership of the media controls the media. Ownership of congress and the political system results in controls by campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures. We don’t want to believe the above. We want to think that “public opinion” has some affect on what the government does at the national and state level. But time after time we find that public opinion has very little to do with the way that government decisions are made. Huge majorities in polling stand in stark contrast to the way the votes go at the national and state level. Michael Moore points this out routinely. Polling organizations show how the government is at odds with the long term public sentiment, ad infinitum!What is amazing is that there is no revulsion about the cost of campaigns! They just go on and on and we are urged to contribute more and more money to the candidates. We have to do this because that is the way the game is played! We continue to “auction off” the various elective positions. The political people make the phone calls and do the doorbelling because it is the only way to be a good citizen. But the movers and shakers, the extra wealthy, the squillionaires, the rich and the powerful, the financial elites, just smile and out spend in every arena with no limits. This has always been true but it is “truer” today when the phony, fiat money has been expanded at the technological level into the trillions of dollars! The wealthy elite now have unlimited money to spend to exert their power. They have “manufactured” hundreds of trillions of dollars of wealth and will spend whatever it takes to get what they want. And when they do they get the rewards they are after. The money spent as an investment that results in more phony money that the phony money they spent!

The political junkies believe that they can just “out work” them with organized people power and some contributions. Well, they are right except it is very difficult to organize enough people to make the difference. Even with modern communications systems it takes great leadership and a major crisis to galvanize enough enthusiasm to drive a major organizational success. And can they be kept together for the long haul to make substantive change?

But let’s get back to the cost of elections. We are being snookered! The wealthy and the powerful run up the cost of elections to insure that they will win! And along the way they profit and the political junkies and civic minded people are ripped off as they pay into the media “buys” which goes right into the pockets of the same people who own country! They keep the election process going on longer and longer for more and more profits! Government becomes more and more expensive to run so more and more taxes are taken to make campaign contributions even more stressful and difficult for majority. And they won’t give up. The more they pay to keep the “rabble” in line, the more they make from the contributions of the “rabble”! No chance that public financing of elections will ever happen on a meaningful scale. The “people” may want it but “the big boys” will “manufacture” consent to make sure it doesn’t happen.

In other words, they love spending money to make money on elections! They are doing all the right things to make sure elections are as costly as they can. The campaigns start as soon as the election is over. The most expensive communications is pushed to make the campaign spend the most to “get the word out”.

That is why we say, “The game is over”! There are isolated cases where a superior candidate overcomes the rich and the powerful. And the best financed campaign doesn’t win every time. Still about 95% of all incumbents win their elections. At the highest levels about 98% of incumbents get re-elected. The cliché’ is that you are never really elected until you are re-elected! Getting elected and re-elected is so difficult and expensive above the very low income, local level that elections become a cruel joke.

So the famous quote is, “What is to be done”? Obviously organizing is the key. But organizing is the toughest work there is even by gifted people. The tools are better today but the competition from the owners of the country is even more intense and powerful. But developing leadership and organizing on a small scale is what has to be done until a circumstance develops that will drive the majority to action to overcome the mind control (the manufactured consent) of the elite power structure. Are we there yet? No but we are close as the international financial system is just based on faith! The paper (fiat) money is faith based and has escalated into the stratosphere. With depleting resources the costs of everything goes through the roof and the “food source” is insufficient.

We are about to find out if phony elections and phony money are going to be “sustainable”!

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