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Jimmy Carter Rages At What The U.S. Has Become: "Just An Oligarchy With Unlimited Political Bribery"
Submitted by Eric Zeusse,
On July 28th, Thom Hartmann interviewed former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and, at the very end of his show (as if this massive question were merely an aftethought), asked him his opinion of the 2010 Citizens United decision and the 2014McCutcheon decision, both decisions by the five Republican judges on the U.S. Supreme Court. These two historic decisions enable unlimited secret money (including foreign money) now to pour into U.S. political and judicial campaigns. Carter answered:
“It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for President or being elected President. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and congress members. So, now we’ve just seen a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over. …
At the present time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already in Congress has a great deal more to sell.”
He was then cut off by the program, though that statement by Carter should have been the start of the program, not its end. (And the program didn’t end with an invitation for him to return to discuss this crucial matter in depth — something for which he’s qualified.)
So: was this former President’s provocative allegation merely his opinion? Or was it actually lots more than that? It was lotsmore than that.
Only a single empirical study has actually been done in the social sciences regarding whether the historical record shows that the United States has been, during the survey’s period, which in that case was between 1981 and 2002, a democracy (a nation whose leaders represent the public-at-large), or instead an aristocracy (or ‘oligarchy’) — a nation in which only the desires of the richest citizens end up being reflected in governmental actions. This study was titled “Testing Theories of American Politics,” and it was published by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page in the journal Perspectives on Politics, issued by the American Political Science Association in September 2014. I had summarized it earlier, on 14 April 2014, while the article was still awaiting its publication.
The headline of my summary-article was “U.S. Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy Says Scientific Study.” I reported: "The clear finding is that the U.S. is an oligarchy, no democratic country, at all. American democracy is a sham, no matter how much it's pumped by the oligarchs who run the country (and who control the nation's 'news' media).” I then quoted the authors’ own summary: “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
The scientific study closed by saying: “In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes.” A few other tolerably clear sentences managed to make their ways into this well-researched, but, sadly, atrociously written, paper, such as: “The preferences of economic elites (as measured by our proxy, the preferences of ‘affluent’ citizens) have far more independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do.” In other words, they found: The rich rule the U.S.
Their study investigated specifically “1,779 instances between 1981 and 2002 in which a national survey of the general public asked a favor/oppose question about a proposed policy change,” and then the policy-follow-ups, of whether or not the polled public preferences had been turned into polices, or, alternatively, whether the relevant corporate-lobbied positions had instead become public policy on the given matter, irrespective of what the public had wanted concerning it.
The study period, 1981-2002, covered the wake of the landmark 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Buckley v. Valeo, which had started the aristocratic assault on American democracy, and which seminal (and bipartisan) pro-aristocratic court decision is described as follows by wikipedia: It “struck down on First Amendment grounds several provisions in the 1974 Amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act. The most prominent portions of the case struck down limits on spending in campaigns, but upheld the provision limiting the size of individual contributions to campaigns. The Court also narrowed, and then upheld, the Act's disclosure provisions, and struck down (on separation of powers grounds) the make-up of the Federal Election Commission, which as written allowed Congress to directly appoint members of the Commission, an executive agency.”
Basically, the Buckley decision, and subsequent (increasingly partisan Republican) Supreme Court decisions, have allowed aristocrats to buy and control politicians.
Already, the major ‘news’ media were owned and controlled by the aristocracy, and ‘freedom of the press’ was really just freedom of aristocrats to control the ‘news’ — to frame public issues in the ways the owners want. The media managers who are appointed by those owners select, in turn, the editors who, in their turn, hire only reporters who produce the propaganda that’s within the acceptable range for the owners, to be ‘the news’ as the public comes to know it.
But, now, in the post-Buckley-v.-Valeo world, from Reagan on (and the resulting study-period of 1981-2002), aristocrats became almost totally free to buy also the political candidates they wanted. The ‘right’ candidates, plus the ‘right’ ‘news’-reporting about them, has thus bought the ‘right’ people to ‘represent’ the public, in the new American ‘democracy,’ which Jimmy Carter now aptly calls “subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors.”
Carter — who had entered office in 1976, at the very start of that entire era of transition into an aristocratically controlled United States (and he left office in 1981, just as the study-period was starting) — expressed his opinion that, in the wake now of the two most extreme pro-aristocratic U.S. Supreme Court decisions ever (which are Citizens United in 2010, andMcCutcheon in 2014), American democracy is really only past tense, not present tense at all — no longer a reality.
He is saying, in effect, that, no matter how much the U.S. was a dictatorship by the rich during 1981-2002 (the Gilens-Page study era), it’s far worse now.
Apparently, Carter is correct: The New York Times front page on Sunday 2 August 2015 bannered, "Small Pool of Rich Donors Dominates Election Giving,” and reported that:
"A New York Times analysis of Federal Election Commission reports and Internal Revenue Service records shows that the fund-raising arms race has made most of the presidential hopefuls deeply dependent on a small pool of the richest Americans. The concentration of donors is greatest on the Republican side, according to the Times analysis, where consultants and lawyers have pushed more aggressively to exploit the looser fund-raising rules that have fueled the rise of super PACs. Just 130 or so families and their businesses provided more than half the money raised through June by Republican candidates and their super PACs.”
The Times study shows that the Republican Party is overwhelmingly advantaged by the recent unleashing of big-corporate money power. All of the evidence suggests that though different aristocrats compete against each other for the biggest chunks of whatever the given nation has to offer, they all compete on the same side against the public, in order to lower the wages of their workers, and to lower the standards for consumers’ safety and welfare so as to increase their own profits (transfer their costs and investment-losses onto others); and, so, now, the U.S. is soaring again toward Gilded Age economic inequality, perhaps to surpass the earlier era of unrestrained robber barons. And, the Times study shows: even in the Democratic Party, the mega-donations are going to only the most conservative (pro-corporate, anti-public) Democrats. Grass-roots politics could be vestigial, or even dead, in the new America.
The question has become whether the unrestrained power of the aristocracy is locked in this time even more permanently than it was in that earlier era. Or: will there be yet another FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) to restore a democracy that once was? Or: is a President like that any longer even possible in America?
As for today’s political incumbents: they now have their careers for as long as they want and are willing to do the biddings of their masters. And, then, they retire to become, themselves, new members of the aristocracy, such as the Clintons have done, and such as the Obamas will do. (Of course, the Bushes have been aristocrats since early in the last century.)
Furthermore, the new age of aristocratic control is not merely national but international in scope; so, the global aristocracy have probably found the formula that will keep them in control until they destroy the entire world. What’s especially interesting is that, with all of the many tax-exempt, ‘non-profit’ ‘charities,’ which aristocrats have established, none of them is warring to defeat the aristocracy itself — to defeat the aristocrats’ system of exploitation of the public. It’s the one thing they won’t create a ‘charity’ for; none of them will go to war against the expoitative interests of themselves and of their own exploitative peers. They’re all in this together, even though they do compete amongst themselves for dominance, as to which ones of them will lead against the public. And the public seem to accept this modern form of debt-bondage, perhaps because of the ‘news’ they see, and because of the news they don’t see (such as this).
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the puppet selected by oligarchy and voted in to the WH by cattle, has to know it first hand.
I take his word.
Jimmy Carter is just telling the truth.
Something a lot of us do not hear very often or see.
Those on the recieving end of the $ love it too much to ever admit that they are liars, whores and traitors.
I predict that within 2 weeks time,Jimmy will trip on a peanut shell,lose his balance,and crash face-first into his glass of Bourbon,and Ginger Ale,driving the parosol toothpick through his eye,and deep into his cortex,killing him instantly..
Wouldn’t it be nice if the United States National Endowment for Democracy set up shop in the USA and preached the ideology of democracy (government of, for and by the People) and overthrow of criminal tyranny here in the USA? Ha. Ha. Ha.
If US AID set up shop in Detroit and Camden, NJ, it could assist to throw out the fascist tyrants in American government with millions of US dollars. Ha. Ha. Ha How bizarre is that?
Americans have got to be the dumbest brainwashed short-haired monkeys on Earth that do not know the difference between Fascism and Democracy. Ha Ha. Ha.
I doubt I will hear any mention of this story on National Public Radio.
But you can bet if it had anything to do with gays or gay marriage, NPR would have it on a continuous loop throughout the day.
The news priorities in this country are incredibly screwed up. Purposefully I might add.
NPR is leaning middle of road conservative
Jimmy who?
Everyone talks about the bribery aspect of the oligarchy - even so much as to soft-peddle it as Carter does here "and sometimes get, favors"
The real issue is the blackmail - the NSA and various intelligence agencies DO indeed control the system through carrot and stick. These systems destroy those who would reveal or upend this system of control. Oligarchy with bribery sounds frankly participatory compared to the security-state that we actually have.
Upgrayed - (do love the movie Idiocracy). In the end politicians control intelligence agencies. They could show who are taking bribes. It would be a form of soft civil war. They lack balls so will eventually suffer with the general population, they are just last in the pecking order. The FBI came close in 2004 announcing a financial crime wave.
Kudos to them for announcing that took some courage, however didnt they realize the American population has no real power? You have government officials willing to take a physical and/or symbolic career bullet? NO. Pain will change this mindset but by then we are at the point of where the Soviets were. We're already close.
The military stages a coup or we become Mexico over time. Since 2008 was probay the best time to do so I expect we continue to become Mexico or Russia nukes us as we flail about to close to there borders. I hate to say it but if I was encircled by a dying empire and the Chinese I would have already pushed the big red button. Best not put me in charge LOL
yimminy freaking crater, boy what imagages this invokes in my mind!
Political parties would not control the board if it were not for the same clique that controls the media, Over time, a new secular religon was born, based on the worship of centralized power as the only force able bring "justice", as defined by them, to the nation and the world. It is too late now to fix it.I can't see the end game, but as more people wake up to the fact that we are living but no longer free, there might be room for a grass roots revolt. It will make the civil war look like a picnic if it happens, but the collective realization of our pathetic servile state is years off. If we blunder into a nuclear war, the ashes of the nation that is left might allow a basic political reorganization and decentralization of power if the central government is powerless to rule in the ash pile that is left. Short of change borne of cataclism I can see no short term hope. Have a good day y-all.
Money is the least of it. Someone give Jimmy another cookie.
I guess we can gauge how much we may have been duped, by gauging the number of Cocktail parties the new era of Mavericks are invited to in Feburary 2017.
This is incredibly galling. It was Carter's naievete that threw the door wide open for Zbigniew Brzezinski's Trilateralists. Kinda like Pandora complaining about what she let out of the box. Really, WTF?!
Jimmy is controlled oposition. He was down in Guyana south america as an election advisor. They discovered allot of oil off the coast. The us goverment bought the election and Jimmy felt ill and had to leave before the election. Not one word from him on it.
I am still baffled why people continually fight against the grain in the money side of the election racket. The solution is so much more simple, elegant, and efficient. It also has the added bonus of not dealing with this 2 year long horse-race bullshit.
2 very simple changes.
1) Election campaigns are restricted to 60 days. 30 days for primary, 30 days for general. (With that short of a duration, a billion dollars doesn't mean much more than half or a quarter of that, there is only so much media you can buy in 60 days).
2) "None of the above" to be inserted as a choice on the ballot. If "none of the above" wins, the election must be rerun and none of the previous candidates can participate.
He's just grumpy ever since he stopped being a member of the "oligarchy with unlmiited bribery." Hypocrite
A tool of Zion speaks about the condition of the country he helped plunder and destroy.
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission..
He still has a guillotine appointment.
I sent my 2 senators notes, which I do, frequently, with Jimmie Carter's quotation.
Years ago, the other living ex presidents were not speaking to Jimmie Carter. They would not stand near him. At the time, I thought it had something to do with Israel. but my memory, of it, is vague.
Good article, great discussion.
Jimmah Cunter, how'd that democratic Khomeni thingy work out for ya?
Rosalyn beats the shiiite out of him if he spouts off too much so the old coot has to have an outlet.
Maybe he and Ros are considering switching idenification..........perhaps Ros wants some peanuts?
Jimmah, OBAM "one big ass mistake".....then OBAM Ahhhh The great destroyer of nations...... Jimmah is peanuts.
Jimmy's only objection to Citizen's United is that it allows bribery by corporate groups, who give money to D's and R's about evenly. He only approves of bribery that benefits his guys disproportionately.
Yes, Jimmy is right, there is massive bribery in the US. But if he's going to attack corporate cronyism, he needs to attack union cronyism and NGO cronyism. All three of them feed off the public trough and all three buy politicians to keep the taxpayer money rolling their direction.
carter who? the ziofreaks banned him from speaking
does he call out frbny as the enabler/creator of the oligarchy?
broke a long standing tradition of former presidents givng speeches at conventions
http://forward.com/news/14110/jimmy-carter-conspicuously-absent-from-pod...
Denver — Former president Jimmy Carter’s controversial views on Israel cost him a place on the podium at the Democratic Party convention in late August, senior Democratic operatives acknowledged to the Forward.
Breaking with the tradition of giving speech time to living former presidents, convention organizers honored Carter with only a short video clip highlighting his work with Hurricane Katrina victims and a brief walk across the Pepsi Center stage.
The sidelining of Carter was driven by recognition in the Obama camp and among Democratic leaders that giving the former president a prominent convention spot might alienate Jewish voters.
Jimmah!!! No thanks to you! You were bought and paid for and you come back with this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v8yiDuHAuo
Dont look at me, I was born into this bs american dream. Now if some one lifts a shirt, i start screaming at them. Im waiting for a shootout. Im not the forgiving type.
YOU are responsible for all the evil committted by the United States of America. YOU decide to vote either Republican or Democrat, hence perpetuate the same evil policies. It's not Zrebrinski or Reagan or the Neocons or the military-industrial complex: it's YOU you fuck. You evil, evil dog. It's you the average American citizen who has the right to vote and votes D or R every time.
Quote from another poster (his handle is 'I am not one of them' I believe):
"...you have murdered 50 million people in the last 70 years, benevolent my ass
bombing wedding parties, because best chance of killing MAMs, because you're invading or occupying someone's country and you want to eliminate resistance
double taps
School of the Americas, the Phoenix program.
torture by the tens of thousands, all over the World, by proxy and on NAVY ships, Diego Garcia, Guantanamo, Iraq, Afghanistan, the horror, the horror
murdering journalists because they report your atrocities
My Lai makes you naive, murdering whole villages filled with women, children and babies as policy to empty areas of humans
the CIA and Navy Seal assassins
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only country to ever use nuclear bombs on people/civilians
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, murdering maybe 4 million, then creating the Khamer Rouge to cover up how many you murdered in Cambodia
using proxy murdering bands of mercenaries like Al Qaeda, ISIS to covertly murder civilians for effect and excuse to bomb infrastructure and overthrow Governments a la ruse
kidnapping children on the coast to bring them near Damascus to murder them and try to blame Syria for gassing them
Darfur, Rwanda, Congo massacres, strife in all of Africa so you can extract the wealth
East Timor, Papua and Sumatra
it goes on and on and on
you're barbarians, benevolent my ass..."
I am a left leaning democrat on most issues, but I blame Jimmy Carter for nearly destroying the party in the 1970's with the worst inflation the USA ever saw till now even though Nixon and Ford started that (Nixon wage and price controls and Ford with his pathetic WIN Whip Inflation Now program).
Carter's focus on foreign matters like human rights, as important as those are, left the nation without a rudder during one of the worst economic periods we had ever seen other than the great depression. It also rightfully had the effect of getting America framed up as imposing our cultural values on nations which had nothing in common with us.
I must say in his dotage and advanced age he said something I totaly agre with. The USA as a fair and equal nation of citizens is as dead as ancient Rome. Our political system is bought and paid for by the top 10% (more like one percent) and justice is now for sale to he who can afford it. Never mind that his points are now so painfully obvious that even grade schoolers know they live in a corrupt nation controlled by a very few elite "patricians." And that downward mobility is all they can look forward to.
"Or: will there be yet another FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) to restore a democracy that once was?"
Are you kidding me? From the champion 'misery index' peanut farmer lover of every social welfare transfer program he could get near? Only a true lover of Che Guevara would beg for even more FDR socialism as the cure for blended socialist-technocratic-fascism.
What is lost every time I read this kind of 'blame' drivel' is that the USA was constructed as a representative republic on purpose, NOT a democracy, with hard property rights that applied to all groups and classes. And a capitalist economy (which has never been allowed to exist without daily government lobbied tinkering 'for the children' or whatever excuse of the day).
So now all the government and legal rights tinkering has produced today's Frankenstein economy run by the few, and a living document bastardization of the Bill of Rights for any "sounds good to me" terrorist under the bed-needy people sales point of the day. But then again the word "Republic" and its difference from a democracy has been shoved way down the public school progressive indoctrination camp memory hole since FDR.
Only thing I want to know from peanut brain Carter:
When are you finally going to die ????