When did we cross the Rubicon?

Our country was founded on the principles that good honest people would gravitate to public office and that was true for many years but I'm not so sure anymore. As a matter of fact I'm not sure if any of our politician in todays Congress or executive branch could be labeled as honest, if there is any they are few and far between.

protecting the "inalienable rights" part of that historic document. MKJ

It seems many of our people would rather protect that than the Constitution.

the beginning of the end of the end.

How many more lobbists are there now in D.C. than when Clinton was pres.? They have tripled at least?!

There should be no lobbiest

no way is it right for a special interest group to have any say in any of our legislation anytime anywhere ever. No one should be able to give any government official including all three branches any money or special treatment of any kind.

Having grown up in FDR's New Deal America and seeing the enormous power of eradicating disadvantage, seeing what happens when ordinary citizens lose control of their politicians, having benefited from an education which, before WW2, would have only been available to the wealthy ... we got the benefit of guys wearing white hats.

But those wearing black hats have ALWAYS been there. When the U.S. was the sole industrial power on the planet, the corporate fat cats got lazy and overfed.

I guess they just don't like to see poor people better themselves, I don't know

Power fears informed intelligence. It was often forbidden to teach slaves to read and write.

And we are about to fall off a precipice.

I was a very impressionable 15 years old.

:hi:

n/t

was the Supreme Court decision in November of 2000 to stop the recount in Florida.

That the Democratic party refused to stand up for not one, but two, of its winning Presidential candidates, was evidence that it was all over but the stage we are now in -- that is to say, the shouting.

I pray I am wrong and that our Democratic congressmen/women will rise to the occasion. My problem here is their track record.

You can go all the way back to Nixon and look at how he tried to seize power and the secrecy of his administrations.
The next big event is the Reagan Admin and the whole Iranian hostage debacle under the Carter Admin.
But the republic survived those blows so one would have to say that it was at some point during the current regimes last 7 years.

IMO: We could have survived bu$h's first term, 9/11, attacking Iraq and all they did would have just left some major scars on democracy but the defining moment was when they stole the third consecutive election. That was the stake through the heart of the Constitution.
What they are doing now is just flaunting their conquests. It is only a matter of time before they dismiss Congress and the Supreme Court completely and put the final touches on their new empire.

that we live in terrabush or whatever the hell they want to call it, now and not the USA anymore

corporate 'personhood'.

Ever since then, with every generation, monied interests have been supplanting human interests, more and more, till we arrived here, where those corporate 'persons' have the wealth and power to buy every election.

Good people don't like being bought, so they are either run out early or they never get in the game to begin with. So we are left with the dregs. The opportunists. Those to whom the constitution is just a damn piece of paper.

I assumed it was a more recent ruling/law. It along with the electoral college should be changed. One person, one vote.