100%

With all the money in politics now, and the fact that the campaigns with the most cash behind them almost always win, our representatives don’t have to be answerable to voters any longer. They just have to be answerable to the people spending the most cash.

Even then, the corporations and foreign entities that fund most of the campaigns right now just throw their cash behind the winners if the person they initially supported loses.

In the minds of people like Leon, you can literally buy elections simply by outspending the candidate you don’t like–and, looking at the statistics, he’s right. Then, even if they lose, they just chuck a bunch of money at the winning candidate. These people have no ethics, no respect for law, and they would rather destroy our institutions than have them work against them. And, unfortunately, they’re so wealthy now that they can, in fact, destroy our institutions.

And this will hit the people hardest who voted for them.

Back in the day, Wells Fargo would intentionally run higher charges first in their cycle so that people couldn’t skirt the edges of overdraft. Like, if someone made a $35 purchase, and three $1 purchases over the same two day period, they would immediately run the $35 purchase and then charge three overdraft fees for each of the $1 purchases instead of running the three $1 purchases first (even if they came first) and then charging a single overdraft fee when the $35 purchase hit.

I believe they got a fine for it.

This is the truth.

Politicians need to learn to fear repercussions from the people they are supposed to represent.

They don’t fear the vote any longer because, consistently, the politicians who spend the most money win. They just need to promise billionaires enough ill-gotten profit and they believe they’ll win. They don’t need to care about us at all–unless we force them to care.

Truth. There’s a reason why they don’t have any art, don’t have any music, don’t have any movies worth watching. They lack all creativity, are almost completely devoid of imagination, and their frontal lobes just consume energy without doing any frontal lobe things. It’s a very specific type of person who obeys like this, and they just mimic their leaders; if their leaders are shitty human beings, then they think they’ll rise in the hierarchy by being shitty as well.

It’s a pattern that was primarily established when the Reagan Administration (and Don Regan, the CEO of Merrill Lynch) took over in the 1980s. Most of the ideas come from Lee Atwater who was an absolutely horrendous human being.

They have been running almost exactly the same playbook since then.

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Fucking interesting!

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It’s amazing how consistent this is with fascists.

You can look back at their statements and it’s true like 86% of the time–every SINGLE THING they accuse others of doing is something that they, themselves are demonstrably engaged in.

When those people post on the internet, it really should just be a long line of regular people replying ‘Every accusation is a confession.’

It’s worth keeping in mind that the people who made this decision at Columbia are, themselves, wealthy. They are behaving as wealthy people do–they only respond to power, they only care about power, and they will do ANYTHING to maintain power.

It’s never about non-monetary things with wealthy people. They don’t care about other people, even each other, or about high-falutin’ things like academic freedom or free inquiry or free speech because unless those things bring them more power, more money.

They will sacrifice everything, anything, and anyone to maintain their status and they will ALWAYS bend the knee to anyone with more power, more capital, than they have. They have no investment otherwise. You can’t keep your power if you have any focus other than your own power.

Nothing run by wealthy people is ever safe for the rest of us.