Professional Documents
Culture Documents
It was roughly a year ago that the American people, thoroughly fed up with George Bush
and the damage he had wrought on the American democratic system, voted in Barack
Obama on the hope that he would usher in a new era of “change”. On the eve of his
acceptance speech, countless supporters huddled together in the cold Chicago winter, crying
(remember Oprah) and cheering for the new messiah, who would heroically step in to
rescue their runaway train hurtling towards the cliff. Even Jesse Jackson came armed with a
continuous supply of fresh tears (fake ones in all probability).
Fast forward to one year later and ask the question - So how did, the Obama produced and
directed “Change You can Believe In” fantasy movie pan out? Pretty good you say…he wove
such a great tale that it out did even the Chronicles of Narnia. Heck, it was so good it even
got him elected!
So now we are stuck with a movie-star President who excels at photo-ops and fantasy
rhetoric, but thoroughly lacks the courage to stand up to the military-industrial-financial
complex and corporate lobbies. If only Obama had the guts to match his oratory firepower.
Now to be fair to Obama, the fault is not entirely his because he has a bunch of toothless
Democrats on this team, who despite winning a majority in both the House and the Senate
are utterly incapable of passing a single decent legislation.
Year after year, the American people continue to be fooled into forcibly dividing themselves
into Democrats and Republicans, on the basis of political ideology laced rhetoric that has
NOTHING to do with reality, or actual governance policies.
The Republican camp votes for which ever candidate spews their jargon: “free-markets”,
“lower taxes”, “capitalism is the best”, “who needs the world when America is a
superpower”, “we support our troops (by blindly sending them in harms way)”, “pro-life”,
“anti-abortion”, and “anti-socialism”.
The Democrats on the other side are programmed to vote for anyone whose speeches
include: “gay-rights”, “women‟s right to abortion”, “no more wars”, “labor rights”,
“environment”, “higher wages” and “socialized healthcare”.
And so we have ushered in the rise of Sarah Palin and Barack Obama and all our toothless
leaders in Congress. Sarah‟s right-wing buzz word filled speeches have been sending tea-
party folks in a tizzy. Yes the healthcare public option is socialism - but social security and
Medicare are NOT. Yes we support lower taxes, but we take no responsibility when it comes
to exploring means to pay off our national debt. Yes we want to lower the deficit, but we will
willingly add to the national debt to fund the war.
The Democrats too have reacted enthusiastically to Obama‟s speeches, but have failed to
hold him accountable for escalating the war in Afghanistan, back-pedaling on the public
option, not bringing war criminals to justice and closing Guantanamo.
And so the saga of our sham democracy continues. Despite changing a President and the
ruling political party, there has been scant change in the policies that govern the nation. The
real rulers of this country - powerful corporations continue to sacrifice democracy at the
altar of unbridled greed and profits. They have rendered the American democracy toothless
by:
1) Systematically dumbing down the population via controlling the news media
which in turn controls information. This is best evidenced by the politicization
and tabloidization of national news organizations, like Fox on the right, MSNBC on
the left and Anderson Cooper‟s intense coverage of balloon-boy. Rather than having
intelligent discussions to inform the public of the very real and potentially
catastrophic issues facing the nation, much of the prime time news is devoted to
inane discussions like the Tiger Wood‟s car crash or Glen Beck/Jim Cramer‟s mad-
men rants.
2) Controlling the legislative i.e. the law making process. Through intense
lobbying and by financing the election campaigns of our “democratically” elected
representatives in Congress, corporations have managed to ensure that the nation‟s
laws favor their interests over the individual citizen‟s rights. One only has to look at
the loan shark like practices of credit card industry (retroactive rate hikes and hidden
fees) that trap borrowers into an endless cycle of debt, to see how exposed the
system leaves the average citizen.
3) Controlling the nation’s currency via the Fed. The U.S. Congress no longer
controls the government purse. It signed away that responsibility in 1913 over to the
Federal Reserve. The Fed is a private body answerable to nobody but the banks. The
heads of banks such as Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan sit on the Fed‟s regional
boards - and they are its real masters. The Fed has free access to print money and
lend unlimited sums of taxpayer money to banks, without any oversight.
4) Controlling our security through the proliferation of private armies such as
Blackwater.
Secondly, the best way to strengthen our democracy is to get informed on the critical issues
facing our nation, so that we have the ability to discern facts from corporate/ideology driven
propaganda. Now much to our delight this is already happening as more and more people
move away from traditional “controlled” news sources such as cable and newspapers, and
look to independent news sites/blogs on the internet.
Lastly we should all support the bill to audit the Fed. It is our money and we need to have
complete and transparent oversight, over what the Fed does with it.
The Firecracker Report is a financial and geopolitical analysis blog started by a team of ex-
Wall Streeter‟s with extensive banking and investing experience. We strongly feel that in the
current era of corporatized propaganda driven news the „real‟ news often goes unreported.
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