Illinois or Should It Be Called Plutocraticstan?
One of John Stuart Mill’s concerns in his “Essay on Liberty,” written 153 years ago, was the potential tyranny of the majority to suppress the minority. Had he lived today, he would have written a treatise on the absolutism of the wealthy — this powerful minority and their parasitic lobbyists (who choose what our legislators often consider for policy and proposed laws) instead. These individuals, through a form of political despotism, legalized coercion and self-proclaimed infallibility, steal the guaranteed liberties and rights of the rest of us. It is the members of the state’s plutocracy that decide all issues for everyone. Mill erred in his belief that democracy could count on “learned and dedicated men” to guide its development. He did not take into account the fallibility of future legislators and the selfish interests of those who procure them.
Such is the case in the State of Illinois where the government is held hostage by affluent and influential “special interests” (to protect the riches of the state’s wealthy ruling class); where both the republican and democratic parties (or the “Money Party”) are one side of the same tarnished coin corrupted by briberies (campaign funding) made legal; and by the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, in particular, that can manipulate the state’s politicians without consequences, set the legislative agenda, and hoodwink and oppress an oblivious populace.
What is the relationship between dishonest politics and corrupt partnerships? A substantial amount of campaign money affects the ability and the will of our state legislators to make ethical decisions; it is money that motivates legislators to believe that radical “pension reform,” for instance, is a road to navigate for reducing the state’s future budget deficit, though we know that “the road to hell is sometimes paved with good intentions.”
In the attempt to pass a radical “pension reform” bill, perhaps this spring, legislators and profit seekers who support them do not consider the effects that they will impose upon the lives of teachers and other public employees. The fact that these legislators do not read the bills that they may or may not pass is an embarrassing and dangerous injustice, no matter how “busy” they are planning their continuous campaign funding. (A caveat for teachers and other public employees is to read the likely amended 314-page Senate Bill 512. We can be sure that most of the legislators who might vote for this bill will not read or examine the bill’s consequences).
Bob Dylan once said, “Money doesn’t talk, it swears.” How can we trust our legislators who support policy and laws that are initiated by the plutocrats’ contributing lobbyists? How about another easy question to answer: who benefits the most from political connections or subsidizations?
What does insiders’ fund raising accomplish besides maintaining the status quo of unregulated cupidity and irresponsibility of our legislators? It creates a polarization between the rich and the rest of us; it protracts a policy-making for “special-interests” patrons, such as members of the Civic Committee and Civic Federation, where donations create obligations, allegiances and reciprocities. All of which diverts an elected legislator’s essential commitment to and concentration on representing his or her constituents. Plutocratic lobbyists are no longer subtle about their tactics, about the contaminating financial dependency that they instigate with legislators, and about their continuing influences upon policy and bills that are passed in Illinois (and in other states across this country for that matter).
If we asked our legislators whether their decisions were independent of their highly-addictive campaign funding, what would they say? That their financial support does not affect the issues and the issues’ outcomes that they consider for the rest of us? That it does not affect their votes on policy and bills or the tax benefits that they will grant to the state’s wealthiest corporations? That exorbitant campaign funding does not distract them from their elected purpose and their oath of office to represent the electorate? That injustices perpetrated by the influential self-interests of biased brokers with their moneyed-access of power that is granted to them do not exist; that the “special interests” of Political Action Committees, sponsored by Tyrone Fahner of the Civic Committee, also mean “bankrolling candidates who are willing to cross labor unions and vote to reduce pension benefits and/or require workers to pay more for them” (Illinois Review, 26 January 2012).
What are we going to do about a “rigged system” where Fahner's “We Mean Business” signifies destroying public pension systems, where “shared sacrifice” exempts the wealthy from their so-called proposed “reforms” and eliminates taxation of their corporations, where their money precludes changes to a corrupt political system, where the rising inequalities that continue to exist in Illinois are funded by these powerful and wealthy interests’ groups, where the legislators’ self-serving flat-tax rate that they refuse to transform proffers unequal opportunities and quantifiable payoffs for our state’s largest corporations and their executives, and ensures benefaction for the re-election campaigns of Illinois politicians? So what are we going to do about the plutocracy’s self-perpetuating greed continuously bolstered by their slanted data, their influence on our state’s elections, and the legalized damage done to a dying representative democracy?
What are we going to do about our quiet, selfish indifference and acquiescence that sustain this politically-bankrupt state (of affairs)? How about telling them what you think and what you will do in order to stop their depravity:
http://www.elections.il.gov/DistrictLocator/DistrictOfficialSearchByZip.aspx
