Molly Ivins: The death of democracy

You may be wondering why House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is raising money for a legal defense fund and telling his fellow Republicans in Washington to be prepared to name his replacement, in the event he is indicted. DeLay and Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick may have achieved the near-impossible by breaking Texas campaign finance laws. Since Texas essentially has no campaign finance laws, this is no mean feat.

In Texas, anyone can give any amount of money to any candidate -- the sky's the limit -- you just have to report it. You would think that pretty much solves any legal or ethical complaints, but there is just this one little tiny rule: no corporate or union cash to candidates.

PACs are one way around that, as are "issue ads." As Jake Bernstein of the Texas Observer wrote: "An unprecedented coordination between the Republican administration and big corporate interests held the country tightly in its grip. In most instances, the machine simply enjoyed the exercise of raw power with little effort to justify its actions. Come election time, though, the party of privilege and its moneyed patrons drowned out opponents with the sheer volume of their propaganda. Never before had so many dollars been spent to mass-market a political image. Above all, the machine pushed the message that it was the true guardian of patriotism, indistinguishable from the Stars and Stripes. Then, once in power, it opened the public treasury to a rapacious corporate elite.

"Business lobbyists dictated the law at every level. Legislation was cooked behind the closed doors of private clubs and then passed into law. While the lobby fought ferociously against any check on its prerogatives, it had a special distaste for corporate taxes. Aided by its legislative enablers, the corporate elite indulged in a natural inclination toward monopoly -- especially when it came to media and transportation."

more...

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=16728

http://www.mediatransparency.org/stories/apparat.html

The Apparat: George W. Bush's back-door political machine

"A look at the 15 most widely syndicated newspaper columnists makes the point: Nine -- 56 percent -- are solidly right-wing. Of the remaining six, only three are solidly liberal -- Molly Ivins, Nat Hentoff, and Ellen Goodman.

The far right machine also controls the microphone. The top 27 syndicated on-air hosts are right-wing. There is not one liberal voice among them. Journalists and personalities of the right reach millions of people through hundreds of radio and television stations, and cable channels.

The impact of this machine on the 2004 national political campaigns will be hard to calculate. It has only just begun.

Spokespersons for the radical front have already fanned out as ready-to-air guests on talk and interview programs, transmitting the identical pro-Republican line of the week. They pen hundreds of boiler-plate op-ed pieces daily, which newspaper editors are often happy to run, possibly because they are offered for free. The radical front links web sites to mobilize barrages of e-mails, letters, and phone calls promoting Republican causes.

For a graphic idea of the reach of the propaganda operation, just one organization, the Heritage Foundation, notes in its 2002 Annual Report that more of its experts were seen on national television within that single year than during the entire 1990s. In 2002 alone, Heritage analysts were featured on more than 600 television broadcasts, more than 1,000 radio broadcasts, and in some 8,000 newspaper and magazine articles and editorials."

We are in serious danger of losing everything we Americans once held dear that so few of us seem willing to try and keep alive: Liberty.