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God, I'm Old

But wait, there's more...

The New War of Independence -- Against Corporate Politics

Via HuffPo

Excerpt:

"This is the age of corporatized politics. That means we may admire our leaders, but we can't depend on them. We're paying the price for Thomas Jefferson's unfulfilled desire to "crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

"That's why we celebrate July 4, not September 3, as our Day of Independence.""That will disappoint the history-challenged right-wingers whose patriotic posturing is limited to speaking in their odd pseudo-military lingo, that echolalic Esperanto for fantasy revolutionaries. They don't realize that war is a tactic, not a system of values. And "independence"? Today's "Tea Party" wasn't named for the tea-dumping patriots of Boston, but for some self-entitled commodities traders shrieking "losers!" on cable television. They were sneering at struggling homeowners, mocking middle-class people like the Tea Partiers themselves. And they were enraged at the idea that ordinary families might be rescued the same way their own financier class had been rescued."

"They won. Nobody's rescued the middle class yet. Unlike them, the Founders believed in common purpose. They shared George Washington's goal of "protecting the rights of humane nature and establishing an Asylum for the poor and oppressed of all nations and religions." They understood what conservatives don't: There's a difference between declaring independence and telling people they're on their own."

"We fought for the principles of self-representation and economic freedom. Those principles are under attack again today. But there's no place for rhetorical violence (or any other kind) in today's debate. When corporations intimidate us with economic pressure and distorted information, the best responses are communication and mobilization."

"We resisted Britain's state-sanctioned monopolies in 1776. Today's government-sanctioned corporations hang out on Wall Street, not by the chartered Thames. The spirit of the East India Company lives in the five banks which now control nearly 96% of the derivatives market in this country. Our financial oligarchs receive Treasury Department money, Federal Reserve giveaways, and get-out-of-jail-free cards for a corporate crime wave that would make Al Capone blush."

Read the rest here: