Once again the question is if the handful of Republican senators who, very occasionally, will do the right thing will or will not vote for the appalling tax bill, the final text of which was not announced as of my starting to type out this sentence. Whatever they vote on, if the Senate does, it is known that it is a huge give-away to the filthiest of the filthy rich, it will severely damage the poorest of the poor and the working class and the middle class and even those in the upper middle class, graduate students, the janitorial staff at schools whose children get reduced or free tuition in lieu of better pay. etc. And whatever votes are cast for it, we know those will be based on massive lies of the most transparent kind. It's a sad day when something like this rests on the variable virtues of Susan Collins and John McCain.
I have heard Rachel Maddow and others express wonderment at how the Republicans could dream of voting in such a massively unpopular and gargantuanly irresponsible piece of crap but, really, that's not any kind of mystery. It is a direct result of Supreme Court rulings supported by the Free Speech industry, the ACLU, many brand name civil liberties champions etc. which
A. made money equal speech and therefore free speech, Buckley vs. Valeo. Buckley vs. Valeo, joined in by even some of the icons of liberalism on the court, meant that the more money you have the more speech you have and the less money you have the less speech you have. You'll still have your one voice, but, then, so will the billionaires who also have all of that "speech money" the courts created in that abominable ruling.
B. a series of rulings striking down campaign finance reform laws on the basis of free speech and the 1st Amendment, as defined by the civil liberties industry.
C. the Citizens United case which made corporations "persons" with the full range of 1st Amendment rights that their other rulings have.
D. various and sundry other corporate personhood rulings, based not on the Constitution but a footnote inserted by a rather sleazy Supreme Court clerk.
Anyone who didn't realize that that free speech line of crap would end up enabling the filthiest of the filthy rich, enable them to control the media, swamping the democratic rights of people of good will, advocates of equality and justice and economic justice would have to be a drooling idiot because it was inevitable that those free speech rulings would do exactly what they have. Among those drooling idiots have to count many liberals and the a duped public, none more so than liberals who were duped into sending their donations to the ACLU and other groups that briefed in those cases in favor of the billionaire oligarchs - would end up with the more corrupted of the parties, when they got power, voting in exactly this kind of massive giveaway, creating the kind of taxation system that the Roman Empire had at its worst where the poorer you are the more grinding your tax burden would be, the richest oligarchic class paying nothing and getting the massive benefits of the theft of everything the poor produced.
I point this out because, though I have great respect for Rachel Maddow, I remembered that recently she touted the increased level of donations to the ACLU in the wake of the Trump installation as some kind of wonderful thing when the ACLU has long been a total fraud on the left, making a few impotent noises about rights while enabling the worst of those who want to destroy what their PR work allegedly attempts to do.
The First Amendment as defined by the civil liberties industry and the Supreme Court is a tool of oligarchy, it has been used to swamp the right of Americans to a government of by and for The People because in order for that to happen THE PEOPLE must know the truth and they must be able to depend on enough of THE PEOPLE knowing the truth and having the good will necessary to elect honest people instead of the class of crooks that comprise the Republican majority in the Congress and way too many of the Democrats - though as far as I've heard, they don't expect any Democratic votes for this abomination of a tax bill. So, Rachel, it's not great mystery how this happened. The civil liberties industry, the Supreme Court first enabled the telling of lies, then they enabled the billionaires to lie and swamp the truth. Egalitarian democracy, equal justice CANNOT exist under those conditions and a putrid oligarchy will rise, enabled by that "speech" a so conceived.
Until the First Amendment is held to not protect lies and the lying mass media that carries them, that money does not equal speech, that billionaire don't get to have more speech or to magnify theirs in the mass media, the oligarchs will rule As written and as understood, the Bill of Rights, and especially the first two amendments, is a guarantee of this.
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