A few days ago, we showed just which "democracy" in the free world provides the best bang for one corporation's individual's buck. The answer: the United State of America, where "for every dollar spent influencing politics, corporations get $760 back [9]."
[10]
We doubt the above glaring example of terminal capture of the three branches of government by moneyed corporate interests is what drove it, but yesterday Obama, seen here with America's crony capitalist #1...
... suggested that if American voters want to "counteract" the role of money in politics, it may be worth making voting mandatory.
"It would be transformative if everybody voted," Obama said during a town hall event in Cleveland, Ohio. "That would counteract (campaign) money more than anything. If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country."
[11]
Obama also added that the people who tend not to vote are "young, they're lower income, they're skewed more heavily toward immigrant groups and minorities ... There's a reason why some folks try to keep them away from the polls."
He's right, however there is another far bigger reason why those young, immigrant "folks" stay away from the polls: their completely disillusionment with the "most transparent administration in history" and a mendacious president whose promises of "hope and change" only envisioned the richest 1% even as nearly 50 million Americans continue to subsist daily on foodstamps.
Oh and the whole, "illegal immigrants don't pay taxes so they can't vote" thing. Although Obama is already aggressively working on making sure (tens of) millions of immigrants who are in the US illegal can also vote if they so desire.
Apparently this brazen attempt to pander to the current and future generations of democrat voters was not lost on everyone, and earlier today the White House walked back President Obama’s comments in favor of mandatory voting in the U.S.
AS reported by the Washington Times [12], “The president was not making a specific policy prescription for the United States,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest.
At a town-hall event in Cleveland on Wednesday, Mr. Obama described compulsory voting as “a better strategy” in the short term than pushing for a Constitutional amendment to counter increased campaign spending in the U.S. since the Supreme Court’s ruling in the “Citizens United” case.
Mr. Earnest said Mr. Obama was giving “a pretty open-ended answer” in response to a question about the impact of money in elections.
Sen. Marco Rubio, Florida Republican, slammed the notion of mandatory voting, noting the decision to skip an election is a form of free speech protected by the First Amendment.
One thing is unclear: whether it is funnier that someone still believes the amendments to the constitution, or even the constitution itself, have any relevance in a nation which is turning more authoritarian and klepto-fascist by the day, that somehow illegal immigrant voting will make any dent on the 26,000% IRR that Goldman Sachs gets from purchasing Congress [13] (and controlling the world's central banks), or that someone even pretends to care what happens to future generations in a nation which will have $20 trillion (and over $100 trillion in other forms) in public debt.
