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….is once again looking more like their last “Contract on With America” from back in the 90’s. All talk and much bullshit. No surprise there as it is a Republican habit to do a “bait and switch” with the voters once they have conned their way into office.
The GOP's Bill to Repeal Campaign Finance
by Patience John Mon Jan 24, 2011
If there are two things Republicans are good at, it's lying and doing their corporate masters a solid. The long list of Republican lies is long, from lying the country into a war to your basic broken campaign promises. When it comes to doing their paymasters' work, the last decade was a banner era.
Now, the Republicans are attempting to do both at the same time.
The GOP's Campaign Finance "Sneak Attack"
By Andy Kroll, Mother Jones
http://motherjones.com/...
On Wednesday, House Republicans plan to rush to the floor a bill that would eliminate the federal government's presidential financing system—in the process, violating recent pledges by the GOP's leadership of increased transparency and debate in Congress. Not one hearing has been held on the legislation, nor has a single commitee debated its merits. If it passes, it will roll back more than 30 years of law born out of the Watergate scandal, eviscerating one of the few remaining protections stopping corporations from heavily influencing, if not outright buying, American elections, reform experts say.
House Republicans' much-touted "Pledge to America" bashed Democrats for "limiting openness and debate" during the legislative process and vowed to "ensure that bills are debated and discussed in the public square." The Pledge says the GOP "will fight to ensure transparency and accountability in Congress and throughout government." And in House Speaker John Boehner's first remarks after taking control of Congress' lower chamber, he spoke of a greater emphasis on "real transparency" and "greater accountability." He went on, "Above all else, we will welcome the battle of ideas, encourage it, and engage in it—openly, honestly, and respectfully."
Public financing of presidential campaigns provides matching tax dollars to the small donations received by candidates who agree to publicly finance their campaigns, instead of relying on private donations. The intent is to encourage small donations, and the burden on taxpayers isn't much: Americans can voluntarily contribute $3 to the fund on their federal tax filings. The public finance system was created in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal in the mid-1970s. After President Richard Nixon's re-election campaign was found to have illegally accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from big corporations, Congress created a public financing system so that candidates wouldn't have to rely on corporations and deep-pocketed donors to finance their campaigns.
Already good government groups and campaign finance reformers are drumming up opposition to the GOP's plan. Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the public interest group Public Citizen, says his organization and others like it will urge lawmakers to oppose the GOP's bill because it violates the GOP's transparency promises, both on the 2010 campaign trail and now as the House majority. "This just came out of the blue, has had no deliberation and no discussion within the Republican and Democratic conferences," Holman says. "They have just been seated and they're already breaking the ground rules on how they'll do business."
It should come as no surprise that the Republicans are liars, and will tell any lie to get elected. It is also not surprising that Republicans would turn their backs on the "Deal with America", especially after the fiasco that was the "Contract with America."
Men like Rep. Cantor do all they can to work in the shadows of our elected house to do bidding of their corporate overlords. Such work would not stand the light of day, much less a proper public hearing.
Or even a committee meeting for that matter, because it would become instantly apparent that the goal of this bill is to make the government and our electoral process less transparent.
Public shaming does not work on the GOP, their rhetoric is proof enough of that. While it is amazing that their base takes it lying down, being lied to election cycle after election cycle, it is even more amazing that men like Rep. Cantor and Speaker Boehner have no qualms about lying to the entire nation.
If we could harness the energy of the pants on fire of the GOP, we could solve our energy crisis overnight.
But lying is not new for politicians, even on this scale. What is new is the GOP's goal of handing over our democracy to the corporations and the elite behind them. One bill after another it has become more and more obvious that the Republicans want to ensure a corporate state over our democratic republic to enshrine their hegemony.
If this covert bill passes and gets past the Senate and somehow becomes law instead of being vetoed, the corporations and paymaster elite controlling them will have more sway over our republic than the citizens themselves.
The influence that unaccountable corporate entities would shape policy and candidate choices beyond the control of even a well-organized citizen group, no matter how much they screamed or work. At the end of the day, money talks louder.
And the elite have all the money, mostly because Republican policies over the last decade looted most of the citizens of this country and placed the wealth of our republic in few and fewer hands.
And now the Republicans want to put funding of campaigns in corporations' hands, so that our choice in who represents must be one who represents the corporations first, and not our own best interests. It would become a puppet show of the moneyed elite. It is as if the goal of the GOP is usurp our citizen-based democracy with a corporate oligarchy.
This would all become transparently obvious, if the Republicans held transparent and open public debate behind this bill.
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