Letter of the Week: Democracy loses

This week's letter come from Sue Bastian who takes direct aim at the recent Supreme Court decision that removed campaign spending restrictions on corporations in federal elections, a move that is expected to increase Corporate America's influence on our government. Thanks for the letter Sue. You can pick up your winner's spoils, a bag of Strictly Organic Coffee at our office, 704 NW Georgia – no corporate influence peddling required.

The Supremes pounded the final nail in the coffin of democracy with their recent decision to unleash the few remaining restraints on the corporados and banksters to own and control government.
In 1886, the Supremes granted personhood to corporations endowing these artificial entities (legal fictions) with all the rights of real persons except the right to vote.
In 1976, the Supremes ruled that money is synonymous with free speech essentially deciding that corporations could buy elections using money as an expression of free speech. Now corporations could vote.
The McCain-Feingold Act in 2002 restricted some of the more onerous practices of corporations in federal elections.

Freedom is a funny thing, or maybe not. It takes on gravity when we are told that America was attacked on 9/11 because, “they (whoever they might be) hate our freedoms.”
Funny that what most citizens hate is the erosion of individual freedoms in the USA after 9/11. As someone said, 'If freedom was the main reason for the attacks, Holland should have been attacked a long time ago.
Some of freedom's irony lies in the definition of the word. For the most of the working and middle class folks of the world, it means having individual rights and freedom from exploitation. For the wealthy elite (and their agents, the politicians) it means freedom to exploit and freedom from interference in any of their escapades.

That's what the editorial in the January 28 editorial sounded like to me. Over these past months, I have increasingly wondered what was driving the Bulletin's almost hysterical opposition to the ballot Measures 66 and 67.
I understand the loss of people's confidence in government, in part because of the influence of lobbyists. Government has a sacred trust to provide for the welfare of the whole people – not just those who can get them re-elected. Equally sacred is the task of a free press to tell not only the truth but to care for the welfare of the whole people – not simply the advertising accounts that fund the paper. In my life, I have known individual reporters and publishers who worked hard to be independent – even of those who funded them. Alas, I have not seen that in The Bulletin, either in its editorials or staff articles, in this campaign.