There were many disagreements during Thursday night’s GOP presidential debate in Detroit, but frontrunners Donald Trump and Ted Cruz agreed on one thing: Money buys influence in politics.
Cruz challenged Trump for making campaign contributions to Democrats. Trump responded by saying that he has “supported Democrats, and I’ve supported Republicans. And as a businessman, I owed that to my company, to my family, to my workers, to everybody to get along.”
His clear implication was that financial support to politicians helped him advance his business interests.
Cruz allowed that making campaign contributions as a way of buying influence was understandable:
Donald mentioned a moment ago that he was just doing business when he was writing checks to liberal Democrats. But that’s not, in fact, the checks he was writing. Listen, we could all understand if you write a check to a city commission because you’re looking for a zoning waiver on building a building. That may be corrupt, but you could understand real estate developers doing that.
Cruz instead accused Trump of making the contributions as an expression of his political support — which, of course, is the only historically acceptable reason to give money to campaigns:
That’s not what Donald Trump did. Donald Trump supported Jimmy Carter over Ronald Reagan. Donald supported John Kerry over George W. Bush. If you don’t like Obamacare, Donald Trump funded Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi taking over Congress to pass Obamacare.
Trump objected that his contributions were not political in nature, but purely transactional:
Actually, it was for business. It was. It was. It was for business. I pride myself, including outside of the United States. I’m doing almost 120 deals outside of the — which I hope to be able to stop very soon and let my children handle it — but we’re doing many, many deals outside of the United States.
I support politicians. In 2008, I supported Hillary Clinton. I supported many other people, by the way. And that was because of the fact that I’m in business.
Neither the moderators nor the other candidates objected to this characterization of political giving. In a political campaign full of smoke and mirrors, it was a rare moment of brazen honesty about the corruption in our system.
Related:
Anonymous has hacked into Drumpf’s voicemail and has exposed the cozy relationship that the media enjoys with him and his patronage. They are doing all his advertisements for free by putting him center-stage on all their shows and news.
Here’s one to chew on……
What if Donald J. Trump DOES want Hillary to win….what if his presence on the Republican ticket…causing the destruction of that party….was just another “step” for Hillary’s path to the presidency?
I just hope that the FBI indicts Hillary for the email scandal….among her many crimes…
That is, unless the American people will still let her run for the White House while under indictment…..at this point….wouldn’t surprise me.
I believe that Donald Trump is a disgusting individual. I also think he is an exceedingly dangerous person, an outright fascist, which he demonstrates clearly every time he thanks his followers from the podium for beating someone up in the crowd for heckling him at his rallies.
I believe that our nation is in great danger, because I believe there is a realistic possibility that this dangerous fascist could actually win this election.
I am concerned because many of us seem to be missing, by a wide margin, the most salient things that the Trump candidacy is shouting for us to learn from it. Too many of us remain smugly satisfied to ridicule him. Too many of us are satisfied to take pleasure in the distress he is causing for ‘the Republicans’. Too many of us remain fixated at this more simplistic level of the Democrats and Republicans. Too few of us see clearly that the events we are seeing are shaking the foundations of a Power Structure at a far higher level than these parties, which themselves are only subordinate factions of a far superior power.
Surely, as ‘progressives’, (to use a generalized term), we can all see that the US Power Elite itself has now gone into full panic mode over the Trump candidacy, after realizing that Trump presents a serious threat to THEM.
They previously have considered him a clown, (as have most of us), and have assumed that he would fade away. He has proven them (and us) wrong, at least so far, in that regard.
The Power Elite, through spokespeople like Mitt Romney, and many others, are now attempting to politically assassinate Trump before he advances any further. Thus far we don’t know how effective or not their political assassination campaign will be.
They are basing their campaign on Trump’s obvious racism, xenophobia, and general over-the-top bigotry, and in doing so they are hiding behind a ruse of righteousness, pretending that it was not THEM who so lovingly raised and nurtured this beast of racism, xenophobia, and general bigotry, and rode it to ascend to power.
Now that Trump has absconded with their beast, and is riding it to glory himself, they are suddenly projecting a carefully crafted mask of righteous regard for justice and fairness to all. (It makes one ill to witness this degree of rankly dishonest hypocrisy, but these people proved long ago that they are completely devoid of any vestige of honor or shame).
Mitt Romney, speaking to represent the ranks of the Power Elite, (who obviously have good reason for hiding their true motivations), castigates Trump for having stolen their fearsome steed, but in doing so he puts forth their ridiculous pretense that it was not THEIR beast before Trump so boldly mounted it.
Romney, and the other spokespeople of this Power Elite Cabal that has captured our nation under its control, and ruled over us for so long, are very careful, of course, to obscure the TRUE reason that Trump has put this deathly fear into them.
Surely it is easy for us all to see that Trump is so deathly fearful to them because he is a self-financed renegade. He has no fealty to the Power Elite at all. He owes them nothing. And he is openly challenging the bedrock foundation of what NY Times writer Paul Krugman has called their “con-game”.
This elaborate “con-game”, fashioned from the very appeal to people’s basest tribal motivations that Trump uses so skillfully, has been carefully crafted, over many years, to bamboozle the American citizenry into voting for the candidates of the Power Elite, (both Democrats and Republicans), who, once elected, have done everything in their power to enrich their sponsors, from this Cabal of the super-wealthy, at the expense of the bamboozled common citizens who voted for them.
After all these years of crafting this ‘con’, Trump is exposing it, and in doing so, he is threatening to destroy it.
As Henry Gondorf (Paul Newman) taught Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford), in ‘The Sting’, (for those old enough to remember it), once the ‘mark’ perceives the ‘con’, it’s over, and the mark is then going to be very angry, and is going to come after the con men.
When playing the “big-con” the most crucial element is that the mark must stay conned.
Racism, xenophobia, abortion, gun rights, gay rights, and all the other ‘red meat’ issues, have together comprised a successful ‘big-con’ for the US Power Elite Cabal for a very long time. Many people have stayed conned for the duration of their lifetimes. The hapless common people have been caught on the hooks of their own prejudices and bigotry, which the Cabal has manipulated skillfully, and they just have never been able to figure the whole thing out. (Thomas Frank covered this quite well in his landmark work, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”).
But Donald Trump is explaining it to them, in very simple and direct terms that they understand quite well. He is exposing the con. He is pulling back the curtain, to reveal the wizard furiously pulling at his levers and dials, trying feverishly, and desperately, to maintain the illusions he has so carefully crafted.
And THAT is what makes Trump so dangerous to the Power Elite Cabal.
Let’s review some of the truths Trump tells:
The Power Elite Cabal openly lied to us to take us to war in Iraq, a war that cost at least hundreds of thousands of human lives, and has at this point cost us over $2 TRILLION dollars, and whose ultimate cost could reach $6 Trillion or more, by the time we pay off the interest on the loans we have taken out to afford this crushing expense.
There were no WMD, and they KNEW it.
While we are spending all those trillions of dollars in the Middle East, our own nation is crumbling all around us. Our roads and bridges, our whole transportation network, and all our infrastructure, is crumbling into ruins.
Our policies in the Middle East, destroying nation after nation, leaving no credible institutions of government or authority behind when we’ve finished with our destruction, are what has allowed terrorism to thrive and grow. Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad, and Moammar Qaddafi may have been bad guys, but they maintained control of those nations, and did not allow terrorists to thrive, or even function at all.
If we want peace between Israel and the Palestinian people, we must support Israel, sure, but we must remain neutral, and also support the aspirations of the Palestinian people.
And we should NEVER elevate the interests of Israel above our own, as we so often do now.
We should talk to the Russians to sort out our differences. Putin is NOT the demon he has been made out to be. He presents himself, and the interests of Russia, as reasonable and rational. There is no need for Russia to be our enemy. We have many common interests that we can build a mutually beneficial relationship upon.
Russia has been made into an enemy to support the Power Elite Cabal’s lust for world domination, for world rule, and to provide cover for more wasteful military spending that enriches a few at the expense of the common people. What we did in Ukraine was a naked aggression against Russia. They had no choice other than to react to protect their own vital interests.
If we are going to maintain permanent military garrisons all over the world, then the countries that those garrisons protect should pay us for the protection service we are providing them.
Why should America undergo the expense of policing the entire world? Why should we police the world at all? If people in other countries acquiesce to bad governments, why should we accept that as our responsibility?
We should have the finest and most powerful military in the world, but we could have that for HALF of what it’s costing us now, or even less. If we squeezed out the corruption and stupendous amount of graft and waste, unimaginable amounts of money poured into the pockets of a few wealthy defense contractors, and their primary stockholders, (which are the charter members of the Power Elite), at the expense of the rest of us, we could have a MUCH better military at a MUCH lower cost.
Why can we not see that our free trade policies only benefit China, and other low wage countries, at the expense of the American people? Why can we not see that the primary beneficiaries of these policies, which are impoverishing the American common people, are the wealthy elites, both the elites in those foreign countries, and our own?
We need to protect American jobs, and the wages of American workers, with sensible trade policies.
Why can we not see that it is unfair to tax the wealthy at lower average rates than those paid by the common people?
Trump has said ALL these things. He has said them clearly. He has said them emphatically. He has said them repeatedly.
THESE are the things he says that electrify his followers, and send the chill of death down the spines of the Power Elite Cabal.
Sure, he is a racist bigot, who, like any demagogue, is appealing to people’s basest tribal instincts and motivations, but surely, as progressives, we are not so foolish as to believe, (as Romney, with his tired old “shining city on the hill” metaphor, or US House Speaker Paul Ryan, with his ridiculous “party of Lincoln” absurdity, assert), that the primary motivation of the Power Elite is that they are concerned over racism and bigotry.
It is Trump’s clear challenge to the Elite Cabal’s worldview, their policy of world domination, and their basic economic policies that benefit The Rich in America at the expense of the common people, this challenge to the overall program and belief system of the US Power Elite, that makes Trump so dangerously threatening to them.
Don’t get me wrong, and let’s be very clear. In recognizing that even a dangerous demagogue can speak truth to power, we cannot lose sight of the obvious fact that Trump is indeed, and quite clearly, an exceedingly dangerous demagogue, and a clear threat to our nation, and to the safety and security of each one of us, and to that of those we love.
But let’s at least understand the immense irony that the primary reason the US Power Elite Cabal is so frightened by him has nothing whatsoever to do with racism, xenophobia, and general bigotry, which the Power Elite itself has long sought to exploit to achieve its own objectives.
What makes Trump so dangerous to us all is that he is a rank fascist, which (as mentioned) he fully exposes every time he thanks his followers for beating someone up at his rallies. (Whenever he does so, it does not take an especially fertile imagination to squint one’s eyes and imagine passionate goons in brown shirts with red armbands doing the violent bidding of their hero, to whom they raptly refer with the simple term “the Leader”).
But the HUGE irony here in front of us, like the proverbial huge pink elephant, which so many of us do not yet seem to want to see, is that Trump is so dangerous to the US Power Elite for the TRUTH he tells.
In focusing on Trump’s obvious foibles, and especially in being satisfied in taking pleasure in smugly ridiculing him, we are only making a superficial scratch in the surface of the full realization of the true magnitude of the events we are witnessing, and in doing so, we are squandering one of the most powerful ‘teaching opportunities’ we have ever had to expand the political consciousness of the general citizenry.
When the citizens come to understand the “big-con”, their ability to see things they have never seen before will greatly expand. Let Trump open people’s eyes, as he teaches people to see the “con”.
When their eyes are opened, it will be up to US to help them see more. If we are skillful enough in our message, we might even be able to lead many of them to see Trump himself for exactly who and what he is. But we must have a message that resonates with them, a message that addresses their anger, fears, and concerns without resorting to base hatred and bigotry.
Politics is a numbers game, and the numbers are VERY large. The object of the game is to get the most people in OUR side. Trump is leading good people astray. Those people are a large segment of the yeoman American working class. Are we so foolish to think we can defeat the Power Elite without the support of the largest segment of the American working class?
The Trump phenomenon is shaking the US Power Structure to its foundations, but it is NOT because of his repulsive personal quirks, his gargantuan narcissism, his ugly bigotry, or what appears to so many of us as his general clownishness.
Unlike any other politician we have seen in our lifetimes, Trump is presenting a clear and dangerous threat to the US Power Structure itself, which heretofore has appeared to be invincible.
He is doing this through the TRUTH he tells.
Our task is to find a way to make that truth serve the larger truth we tell.
This was a very insightful and eye-opening remark. Do you write, or have a Twitter? I’d like to read more material like this.
How is it even a semblance of a democracy when 80% of republicans and 90% of democrats surveyed believe that money in politics is a corrupting influence, but yet the corporate money keeps pouring in along with money from foreign powers that buys enough influence to force our nation to be partner in war crimes and the last bastion of apartheid.
How is it even a semblance of democracy when the politicians with their gerrymandering in fact pick the politicians? The absurdity of this is evident in that congress is able to illicit a 90% re-election rate despite a disgusting 9% approval rate.
Another reason to vote for Trump: He’ll just blurt out all the little secrets the 1% want hidden. Given enough time he might even cause the American public to finally get wise as a whole as to exactly how they are being played, they might not understand the exact reason of why they are angry but even the biggest dullard gets mad if someone points out he’s being cheated a thousand times to his face. Right now you flail around trying to figure out exactly what they are doing to dupe you, well elect Trump and wait a couple of years and he will have blurted out to you pretty much in no uncertain terms the what and how of your manipulation.
I like this guy more and more, he’s a dangerous self important megalomaniacal freak with a really bad comb over but the deleterious effect he’ll have on US control of other governments and the involuntary spasm of honesty he has on camera about the mechanisms of how they control you are well worth the price of admission. If you ever want to be free in your lifetime elect Trump, remember: It’s always darkest before the dawn.
Yes, it was a stunning through-the-looking-glass moment when Trump was accused of legal, but anti-conservative politics which he wouldn’t stand for. And thus he emphatically proclaimed that it was not, in fact, anti-conservative politics, it was simply good-ole-fashioned, corrupt politics.
And that it four times involved Hillary Clinton did not go unnoticed.
The disappearing auto industry in America and jobs lost.
It’s no wonder the prior President of Mexico President Vicente Fox is throwing vicious profanity and the current President Enrique Peña Nieto furious about the vanishing jobs in the auto manufacturing industry. I found a very interesting diagram of multi national companies that have moved to Mexico, thereby stealing jobs and manufacturing from workers in the United States. This is not fair trade, NOT FREE TRADE IN MEXICO’S AUTO PLANTS. Mexico has seen a 40 percent rise in auto jobs, since 2008 to 678.000 last year, while the United States saw only a 15 percent increase in the same period. Neither Sen. Cruz, Rubio nor Kasich are dumb on the loss of jobs to Mexico for the $55.6 billion for the year. America’s trade imbalance with Mexico is at quite high right now in terms of dollars. Last year, for example, the U.S. imported $53.8 billion more of goods from Mexico in 2014 than it exported. Over the first six months of 2015, the figure is $27.8 billion,
THIS IS WHY MILLIONS OF CITIZENS ARE VOTING FOR DONALD TRUMP.
1. Puebla,Mexico has become the most striking place in North America to build auto factories, a shift that has siphoned jobs from the U.S. and Canada. Along with low labor costs, persuaded Audi to build an SUV factory in the state of Puebla. The German automaker will save $6,000 per vehicle in tariffs when it ships a Q5 to Europe compared with building the same vehicle in the U.S., said Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Center for Automotive Research.
2. Near San Jose Chiapa, in southeastern Mexico, 1,800 Audi employees, and hundreds of other workers, managers and officials are working to complete the $1.3-billion facility. It will give Audi with its first North American manufacturing capacity and in addition open a cost-effective doorway for export to the rest of the world.
3. Toluca, Mexico Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has made a commitment to invest $5.3 billion in its U.S. plants over the next four years as part of its new tentative agreement with the UAW that is sure to be painful to employees at a number of plants in Michigan and the Midwest. The plant reorganization will includes the loss of at least three key new cars and SUVs moving to Mexico — including the Chrysler 200 currently made in Sterling Heights — while production of popular pickups and crossovers is increased in the U.S., the risk of alienating UAW workers and will raise a number of questions just as 39,000 workers are preparing to vote on the agreement.
4. Celaya, Mexico — Honda has begun production the redesigned 2015 Honda Fit at a new in Mexico. The new plant will increase Honda’s ability to meet customer demand for fuel-efficient subcompact models from within the region. Located the central Mexican state Guanajuato, the $800 million plant began production less than two years after construction started, and will employ 3,200 associates with an annual capacity of 200,000 vehicles and engines. In addition to the 2015 Honda Fit, the plant will begin production late this year of an all-new compact sport utility vehicle.
5. Mazda’s new Salamanca, Mexico, plant had its official opening on Feb. 27. The factory is the latest in a string of assembly plants opened in Mexico by Japanese automakers. The Salamanca plant is Mazda’s first North American production base since the automaker stopped making cars in 2012 at the plant it shares with Ford Motor Co. in Flat Rock, Michigan.
Major global automaker now either builds in Mexico or plans to erect an assembly plant in the country. Billions in investment have arrived. About 66 percent of Mexico’s auto exports currently go to the U.S. market, 8 percent to Canada, 11-12 percent to Latin America, 8.3 percent to Europe and the remainder to Asia and the Middle East. If you pass by Queretaro, it’s one factory after another. And it’s all auto parts,” said PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Lozano, who noted that some 550,000 people now work in some aspect of the nation’s auto industry.
Overall production is soaring. Mexico built 2.93 million vehicles last year, the vast majority for export, and it is expected to speed past 4 million vehicles by 2017. As production soars and plants hire new workers, different Mexican states pull out the stops to draw automakers to their areas, trying to induce them to invest.
6. San Luis Potosi, Mexico, Ford said in November that it will stop building Focus compact cars at a factory in Wayne, Michigan in 2018. Officials at the United Auto Workers union have said the replacement for the current Focus will be made in Mexico.
7. Silao, Mexico: General Motors Co outlined plans on Wednesday for investing $691 million to expand its Mexican operations, including the previously unannounced expansion of its Toluca engine plant. With numerous free trade agreements, a cheap, well-educated labor force, and closeness to the lucrative U.S. auto market; GM’s investment will boost employment and development in Silao, San Luis Potosi and Toluca, Hernandez said. GM did not say how many jobs it will add in Mexico, where it employs 15,000 people at four complexes and its headquarters in Mexico City.
8. Monterey, Mexico: South Korean car company Kia Motors Corp. announced it will open a new factory in Mexico. The new plant is projected to build hundreds of thousands of cars and will help increase Kia’s presence in the United States and Latin America. Other car manufacturers in Mexico include Ford, Honda, Mazda, Volkswagen, and General Motors. However, the new factories would push Mexico from its current place as the world’s eighth largest auto producer to the sixth by 2020.
9. Ramos Arizpe, Mexico: GM announced in December it would invest US $3.6 billion in Mexico over four years. Today it revealed that $350 million of that will be spent on preparing its plant in Ramos. Arizpe, Coahuila, to build a innovative generation of the Chevrolet Cruze. Ramos Arizpe has also produced the Century, Cutlass, Chevrolet HHR and the Chevy.
10. Nuevo Leon, Mexico: Kia Motors Corp. will build its first plant here with a billion-dollar investment, producing 300,000 vehicles a year after it begins production in 2016.
11. Chihuahua, Mexico: Automobile production keeps accelerating in Mexico. The first is a new engine facility to be built at Ford’s existing plant in Chihuahua. Currently the company produces the Fiesta, Fusion and Lincoln MKZ in Mexico, as well as abundant diesel engines.
Donald was honest about the reasons for the corporate donorism; Cruz tried to characterize it as benign expressions of disinterested civic virtue.
This is the problem with the Establishment: their endless hypocritical lying about how the system really works, so that it can continue without being exposed for what it really is.
The sad thing is, that if it isn’t ended, which begins with acknowledging what it is, then everyone operating in business is forced to go along, or they cannot be successful.
What toadies all those receiving those big donations are, from Hillary to the other Republicans.
Only Sanders and Trump have been willing to speak against donorist-driven hypocrisy; given that, both ought to be the nominees of their respective parties.
It is not just “business.”
What is presented as a pragmatic business method is
actually part of the state religion. If you do not worship
privatized accumulation of monetary profits,
you are seen as spiritually depraved in the fake U$A.
Donald Trump’s obsession with wealth at whatever the costs
is the shared religion of corporate democrats and republicans.
Greed is their form of grace and blessedness.
“In god we trust” is on the money because money is their god.
To Clark I am sure you know:
“In God We Trust” being put on our money in the early 1960’s was in fact a violation of the principle of Separation of Church and State. It was another phase of propaganda that indoctrinated the masses into buying if the Federal Reserve does it or the President being a man of prayer, God must be with them and all they do “as they are anointed with his oil”, thus there power could have nothing to do with corruption or greed.
At the same time the Eisenhower administration was building train routes to Mecca so that the Saudi masses would blindly follow the Saudi king our oil ally.
In others words, it should not be called a Presidential Election, it should in truth be called a Presidential Auction.
Well said!
“In a political campaign full of smoke and mirrors, it was a rare moment of brazen honesty about the corruption in our system.”
Is it corruption if it is legal?
cor·rup·tion
1. dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery:
“the journalist who wants to expose corruption in high places”
brib·ery
The offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of something of value for the purpose of influencing the action of an official in the discharge of his or her public or legal duties.
(http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Bribery)
If your reading comprehension is functional, you will see that the author is referencing ‘corruption’, therefore my comment responds to that reference.
I have no idea what your comment references.
Is that too obtuse?
If your reading comprehension is functional, you will see that your comment references ‘bribery’, therefore my comment responds to that reference.
Unfortunately, a large chunk of the American populace seems to find nothing wrong with the concept either.
Is integrity just a fairy tale these days? Besides Bernie, I don’t see a single, solitary candidate on either side that seems to know what the word means.
On the contrary, integrity fetches a premium price. So everyone aspires to it.