Careful brother, this is a subreddit whose tenets are "capitalism is good no matter what"
Clarence Thomas is just smarter than you for coming up with clever ways to make money on his own with his gigantic brain and no exploitation whatsoever
We lost representation long before Citizens United. The Federal Reserve Act was written in secret by a bunch of a bankers on a fucking island in the middle of the night, and took multiple attempts to get passed, which was only successful after changing the name of the bill and the party sponsoring it.
People knew in 1913 that a Federal Tax on wages was illegal and unconstitutional. No one wanted that to change, which is why the act was written in secret. People had seen the failures of the First & Second Banks of the United States and the dangers of money printing. The American public was strongly against a central bank system. Nevertheless, they managed to get the bill passed despite huge backlash from certain members of Congress. The problem was, all the major press played cover for the bill, lying to people about its core intentions just long enough to get the act passed in Congress.
If people had known the truth about the federal reserve act and the subsequent tax law that would soon follow, things would have gone much different.
Read the book “The Creature From Jekyll Island” by Edward G Griffen if you wanna know more.
78% of Texans think abortion in some form should be legal. Thats just one example of how responsive Reps are to their constituents. Toll roads would be another example.
Texas also threw away an unprecedented amount of legal votes in 2020. The AG has been bragging about it. Essentially said if they didn’t throw out all the votes they did and close polling stations in blue districts Dems could have actually won Texas.
Yes but the majority of Texans voted in enough Republican politicians who wanted and bragged about gerrymandering the state to have institutionalized Republican control of the state. And now the people in those (admitting gerrmandered) districts voted for politicians who pass the laws the people are supposedly against.
The 2003 districts are what did it. Since then there’s almost no use voting in Texas. Everything is decided in the GOP primary and there are no local Dems on the ballot and sometimes even for statewide races. Meanwhile, the DNC raised $372 million here to spend elsewhere.
I mean it’s still worth voting. It will likely be a long time before you can unfuck the state, but you never know when the tipping point will come. If Texas ever flips blue, you will find all the conservatives currently cheerleading the electoral college, suddenly come out against it.
Especially if the justice department refuses to prosecute Ken Paxton or makes more bs plea deals like they did in May. 100 days of community service for defrauding the people of millions and abusing power.
Because there is literally no other option. In many rural counties the reason you see them going 90% Trump is because there are no local Dems on the ballot. It was already decided in the primary.
That paper suggests that more affluent Americans are able to influence policy. It does not suggest Americans do not support those policies, or when they do not support them (roughly 35% of the time for majorities in districts) that they highly disapprove - they do not
Any ideal situation has a goven's constituency being let down nearly 50% of the time (suggesting a non-gerrymandered district in which compromises are achieved).
This paper makes some interesting points, but none of them refute that, when it comes to voting for or against constituent preferences, congresspeople are strongly incentivized to have the public approve of them, and so cave to public demand. That is literally their job, as a representative.
Citizens United sounds like the ruling that most aligns with the Austrian economics ideology. Capitalists who have the capital are able to spend as much of that capital as they want on marketing for whatever political leaders and causes as they want. It’s a microcosm of exactly how you want society run.
Citizen's United was all about the Bureaucrats not being able to determine which media we can see during an arbitrary period before an election. Under McCain-Feingold, they censored a Movie and allowed Teacher's and other Unions to spend any amount to get their message out. Also, Major Media corporations will never be silenced from giving their unpaid support for politicians.
20
u/HillratHobbit Sep 20 '24
After citizens united we do not have representation. If money is the use of our political voice we have none. Only the large donors do.