Elections 2010: The Best Campaign That Money Can Buy
by UAW Region 8 Webmaster John Davis
With the mid-term elections just a couple weeks away, the airwaves are filled with ads about “taking back our country.” Road signs are everywhere pushing candidates that want to “Fire Pelosi” and “restore America.” Restore it to what?
From 2000 until 2008 the rich and powerful had a blank check to do as they pleased in this country and what they did was wage a never ending war against the middle class. When President Obama was elected in 2008 and the playing field was leveled, and the rich and the powerful have thrown everything but the kitchen sink at the President and the middle class. Plus, they have used their personal propaganda machine Fox News to run around the clock misinformation to keep the pot stirred. When they 24 hour cycles weren’t enough, the Tea Party was invented and launched by David and Charles Koch of Koch Industries based in Wichita, Kansas. The brothers are worth over one hundred billion dollars and have a long history of fighting everything that benefits the middle class. Like their father before them, the Koch brothers have been an enemy of Social  Security, Medicare and public education.
According to a recent New Yorker article, over the July 4th weekend this year the Americans for Prosperity held a training session for tea party activist in Texas “to fight special interest and lobbyist in Washington.” The event was called “Texas Defending the American Dream” with an advertisement calling the event an “uprising against corporate power. Americans for Prosperity was founded by David Koch in 2004. From 2005 to 2008 Koch Industries outspent ExxonMobil in fighting legislation that would rein in the damage their oil, chemical and paper companies caused. A this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States.
The Tea Party with their libertarian roots can be traced back to the 1980s and the Koch brothers who are against minimum wage, Social Security, Medicare and government regulations. The Koch’s finally learned that throwing money at a cause alone wouldn’t work if you could control how people voted. The current Tea Party was their revitalized effort to make it a “grass roots movement” to secure votes. When the Supreme Court ruled that limits on corporate spending were unconstitutional earlier this year, the doors were opened for the unprecedented spending that has been done by corporations both foreign and domestic during this election cycle. It should also me noted here the Court allowed this decision on a 5 to 4 vote for Justice Clarence Thomas being a deciding vote. His wife Virginia Thomas has worked in fundraising for the Republicans for years and recently made headlines by founding Liberty Central, a Political Action Committee for the “Tea Party.” Justice Thomas’s vote greatly benefitted his wife’s foundation. What makes this laughable is the talk of conservative commentators about “activists’ judges.”
Because of this ruling, the airwaves are filled with ads paid for by multinational corporations who are seeking paybacks from their candidates once elected. The U.S Chamber of Commerce who recently poured money into to stall the President’s attempt to close a loophole in the tax laws that provides tax breaks to companies who move work out of the country, has dumped 75 million on this election with the hopes of defeating Democrats to flip the majority in the House and Senate to provide the legislation that will continue the redistribution of wealth. Fox News recently donated one million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to use in this cycle, while Fox personality Glenn Beck ran a fund raising drive for the Chamber of Commerce on his radio show.
Where the hypocrisy of this election really comes into play is the content of the ads these millions in corporate dollars are buying. A consistent campaign message that has been run in ads attacking Democrats across the country states the “Obama Stimulus Plan used tax dollars to create jobs in China.” This is simply not true. Part of the stimulus bill was reserved for the transition to green power here in the United States. Wind Turbines for wind farms was one way to do that. Initially the turbines were not being manufactured in the country and it was considered to spend part of the funds to purchase the turbines. But, the U.S. Steelworkers union worked a deal to allow those turbines to be manufactured here so no jobs were created in China. It should also be noted that REPUBLICANS tried to add an amendment to the Stimulus Bill that would have removed the made in American requirements for the funds. Former Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain was the one who put forth an amendment to the Stimulus Bill that would eliminate buy American requirements in the bill. That amendment failed 65 to 31.
These ads run nonstop with the deep pockets of U.S. and foreign companies footing the bill for these lies. The question is going to be will the American public fall for the lies? I personally have seen this same attack used in ads against three Tennessee Democrats and one Alabama Democrat. One thing is for certain and that is the future of this country is on the line with this election. The middle class hangs in the balance as the dollars of the rich are used to buy this government for their personal use. They want to “take back their country” by closing out working class Americans to the political process.
As it has been said, a working man voting Republican is like “a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.” The question will remain in this election, “how many middle class chickens are willing to batter themselves by voting for the Republican fryer! |
