Birdie Sanders: The Canary in the Coalmine of Democracy

[imagine2015]

https://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeyhotey/25435747173/

[highprincipleswork]

1. The metaphor is true.

[boston bean]

2. .

[Jackilope]

3. True

[longship]

4. Oh dear! Hillary supporters won't like this!

We'd better line up the fainting couches.

Wait a minute... Wait a minute...

Bernie went to the Vatican where he actually shook hands with the Pope!!!!

Sorry! Oh dear. Oh dear! We've now run out of fainting couches for Hillary supporters.

Please! We need more fainting couches! Maybe the 300,000+ dollar per plate Hillary fundraiser can supply the necessary fainting couches for her supporters.

Of course, maybe one ought to listen to what George Clooney is saying.

Oh dear! More fainting couches! Hurry!!!!

The bird! The Pope!! George Clooney!!!

Please get me to my couch!

[NWCorona]

5. Go Birdie!

[Octafish]

6. You should extend on the concept with words, too.

Democracy -- government "of the People, by the People, and for the People" -- is dying for 99-percent of the People.

Those with means? That's another story: Oligarchy. Or is it Plutocracy?

Plutocrats v. Oligarchs

by DAVID ROSEN
CounterPunch, MAY 2, 2014

The Supreme Court’s recent decision, McCutcheon v FEC, granted further political influence to the 1 percent, enabling them to spend as much as they wish influencing political campaigns. It followed the Court’s 2010 ruling, Citizens United v. FEC, allowing the rich to spend unlimited sums on political advertising. Some wonder if this is not a 21st century form of buying an election?

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) lamented the toll these decisions will likely have on American popular democracy. “If present trends continue, elections will not be decided by one-person, one-vote,” he warned. He added, “this process — a handful of the wealthiest people in our country controlling the political process — is called ‘oligarchy.’”

Sanders acknowledged the potential consequences of the Court’s decisions: “The great political struggle we now face is whether the United States retains its democratic heritage or whether we move toward an oligarchic form of society where the real political power rests with a handful of billionaires, not ordinary Americans.”

The contemporary concept of oligarchy was popularized by the Russian experience. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, innumerable state companies were privatized. The country was in disarray and, in an effort to stabilize the economy, the Yeltsin government “redistributed” state-owned enterprises to trusted cronies. They came to wield unprecedented power over the economy, the state apparatus and the mass media.

The term “oligarchs” is gaining currency in the U.S. Sanders defined them as “a small number of very wealthy families who spend huge amounts of money supporting right-wing candidates who protect their interests.” He means to differentiate this “small number” from the larger world of the rich and superrich, the plutocrats, who – as a class – have long exercised considerable influence on the U.S. political system. Who are these oligarchs and how do they different from today’s plutocrats? And how does this generation of oligarchs differ from previous generations of the superrich who, over the last century, have dominated American politics?

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/02/plutocrats-v-oligarchs/