Rotten Capitalism

US “democracy” and other things of the past

With the emerging Super PACs the US democracy oligarchy becomes more flawed every day.

The Economist just reported about Newt Gingrichs funding:

Newt Gingrich, the best funded of his opponents, had only $2.1m left to spend, having raised only $9.8m. […] Mr Gingrich’s one, meanwhile, got $10m from Sheldon Adelson, a casino magnate, and his wife.

Wait, 50% of his campaign money comes from one single person!? So Mr. Adelson is basically as important as all other Gingrich supporters together.

Mr Gingrich says that the only promise he made to Mr Adelson in exchange for all this largesse was to stand up for America and its allies—one of which, Israel, is especially dear to Mr Adelson, who is said to describe himself as “the richest Jew in the world”. But it must be nerve-racking to rely so heavily on the generosity of a single, potentially fickle donor.

We couldn’t care less how nerve wrecking this may be for Gingrich, The Economist is clearly missing the point.

Assuming that Gingrich would become president, then the powers of Mr. Adelson are basically unlimited. He would have large influence on the president of the USA, a world superpower which fights wars in different countries, is key to the Israel and Palestine conflict and finally has the power to bring the whole world economy down.
In this respect, once of a sudden 10m sound like a pretty good deal, not?

However, finally, also Obama has given in and started his own Super PAC. In their own words:

But this cycle, our campaign has to face the reality of the law as it currently stands. […]With so much at stake, we can’t allow for two sets of rules in this election whereby the Republican nominee is the beneficiary of unlimited spending and Democrats unilaterally disarm.

So here it is America in 2012, as Peter Reich puts it very well in his latest blog post:

So now a relative handful of super-rich Democrats want fight a relative handful of super-rich Republicans. And we call this a democracy.

We call it: rotten capitalism.