Rick Moen via luv-talk wrote:
True electoral reform will require getting the money out of politics, which means meaningful public financing for (at least) national-office campaigns and overturning of the very harmful 2009 US Supreme Court decision Citizens United, Appellant v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310, in which the five-member corporatist majority banned the rest of the Federal government from restricting so-called independent political expenditures by corporations, citing 1st Amendment freedom of speech.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but the rationale was something like this: 1. corporations are people. 2. corporations can't vote or go to rallies like human people. 3. therefore, to exercise their first amendment right to free speech, they NEED to be able to pour funding into political entities that promote their pro-corporate, anti-human agenda.
Quoting Vidal's May 1975 essay 'The State of the Union' (_Esquire_ magazine):
There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party... and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt – until recently... and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.
Cf. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/02/political-failure-modes-... With hilarious Mencius Moldbug rejoinder buried in the comment section.