Top Three Thieves of Democracy Work Out of Sight

You’re in line to vote, but the man in front of you says that his vote is worth 100 times yours.  An eavesdropping woman behind you points out that her vote is 1000 times your vote.  How did this happen?

      The answer:  both the man and woman are rich people who simply buy extra votes with a fraction of their wealth.  Forget about the “one person, one vote” model of the informed citizen.  That might have been okay for colonial America, but today votes are bought and sold like commodities on the open market.  Values be damned.  Mark Twain was right:  “If voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it.”

      It’s not that establishment Republicans and Democrats are trying to hide what they’re doing.  On the contrary, the hope is that by brazenly embracing the vote thievery, then it will appear normal and acceptable.  Besides, public opinion is controlled by another vote thief, the media.

        Newspapers and television stations pretend to be the voice of the community, but are in fact owned by a handful of private investors well hidden from public scrutiny.  Monopolists in distant cities often control local editorial values.  You think the way they want you to–and most people do, without question.

      The third thief of democracy is the IRS, a money laundering government agency that forces people to give up part of their hard-won earnings to fund programs and values that would be anathema otherwise.   Money is collected by the employer, then trickled down via state middle managers to the local level.  Only a rare few notice that ideological strings have been attached.   It looks like free money, so we grab for whatever we can get.