A tree falls in Paradise
As I said yesterday, except now with 300 days and three votes in California towards the 2008 Presidential Election, I hate when I'm right, or when I remember things from high school. No matter what the spinsters say, this election is about one thing – money. How much of it can the uber-rich collect?
After Richard Nixon beat George McGovern for president in 1972, this country had the first of its fuel crisis. Lines at gas stations were common and drivers were told they could only buy gasoline when the last number of their license plate fell on an odd or even day.. Nixon declared that this country would go on a course towards energy independence. That was then and this is now with new buzz phrases, but the same old talk.
Fast forward to when President Bill Clinton was himself facing impeachment charges. What history tells me is that the only thing that saved him from being removed from office was the 10,000 point Dow. His backers were making a lot of money, so they let him finish out his term.
In 1999 it became clear to me that not only George Bush would be nominated for President, he would win. What made that apparent was that the next president would make over 300,000 a year. Federal law indicates that a sitting president cannot raise their own salary. However, towards the end of his administration, Lyndon Baines Johnson made a deal with Nixon – Nixon's salary as president would go up if Johnson's retirement benefits went up.
It looked like a similar deal was struck before Bush was elected. As long as Bush made his backers filthy rich, they would make his administration comfortable.
Which leads me to the events of this weekend. Candidates Ron Paul and Dennis Cusinich protested their lack of inclusion in the ongoing debates. Kind of feel like the men that would have a hance of speaking for the poor are being squeezed out of this campaign. Those candidates that are left will have been thoroughly vetted, not for their ability to serve the people of the United States, but for their ability to make their uber-rich backers even richer.
With 300 days left for us to decide between Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, there will be no one who will speak for the average American, let alone for the poor. It won't matter which candidate calls themselves an agent of change, they will do the same thing president elected in my lifetime has done – make lots of money for their backers.
More on this later.