Those who still believe the hogwash that the the United States is a two-party, representative democracy should ponder the following. On Wednesday, the amendment to the Defense Appropriations Act of 2014 proposed by libertarian-leaning Rep. Justin Amash (R-Michigan) was narrowly defeated in the House by a vote of 217-205. The amendment would have ended the authority for the unconstitutional, police-state metadata-phone call spy program carried out by the NSA whose existence was leaked by the heroic whistleblower Edward Snowden last month. Interestingly, the amendment had bipartisan support, with 99 Republicans and 111 Democrats voting for it. Its opponents included the leadership of both parties, as both House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California) voted against it. This seeming paradox is easily unraveled if one follows the money. According to an analysis commissioned by Wired, over the past two years those representatives who opposed the amendment and supported the spy program received more than twice the amount of cash contributions from defense and intelligence firms (e.g., Lockheed Martin, Boeing, United Technologies, Honeywell International, etc.) as those who did not. On average, House members who voted to uphold the domestic spy program received an average of $41,635 whereas those who voted to revoke authority for the program averaged $18,765. By the way, the leaders of the two “opposing” parties in the House, Boehner and Pelosi received $131,000 and $47,000, respectively, from the defense-intelligence establishment.
This is just another reminder of the thesis of the great Italian sociologist and classical liberal Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) that every democracy is inevitably transformed into a “demogogic plutocracy” that is run by a ruling elite of “fox-like” politicians and their corporate capitalist cronies.
HT to Wolf von Laer.
