Gotta admit this is pretty strange. I recall saying myself only last week "This is not a guy trying to win any votes." 🤔
@th3j35t3r It's amazing what a person can buy with plenty of billionaires bankrolling them.🤷♂️
It’s genuinely hard to argue that the US government has not just been bought by oligarchs, when Elon funded the campaign and Peter Thiell’s man is now a cheeseburger-loaded heartbeat away.
@DyDave It's the ultimate in lobbying,bypass the lobby and just go straight to the person you want to buy.🤷♂️ Large campaign donations,or as some more correctly call them,bribes,should bring the recipient under a microscope for scrutiny.....but they don't because people have come to accept it as the norm.We should've fought against lobbying a long time ago. @th3j35t3r
I agree 100% and would urge all non -US countries to act immediately.
But they won’t. Because their Parliaments make the laws, and they don’t make that corrupt behaviour illegal. And they take sweet stuff from the lobbyists and say it’s not wrong because it’s legal.
In the USA, it’s Citizens United vs FEC in which the appointed-for-life SCOTUS led by John Roberts decided that money=speech, thereby enshrining the power of wealth.
The fix is in.
@DyDave We used to have honourable,decent people in the UK getting into politics to bring about change,for good,for the people......Tony Benn,Mo Mowlam,Bessie Braddock,Nye Bevin and others.Now?......they're in it first and foremost for themselves.It's rigged alright,skewed to favour the ultra wealthy and it's not getting any better. @th3j35t3r
Yeah, there were some good ones here in AUS too (although I have to admit they there have always been a few corrupt ones around them).
Bob Hawke was pretty good, and I liked the way PM Julia Gillard managed her minority government under duress.
They tend to work more for the people in minority governments, and the Labor ones have always been more open to it, but that option’s not available to American friends 🤷🏼♂️
Hawke’s skill was pragmatic populism. He was a union man through and through, who realised that he lived in a conservative - and racist - nation and rejected it but knew how to play it.
We have universal Medicare and employer-paid compulsory superannuation because of him
We also have the beer I’m drinking.
@DyDave If I could get a beer named after me I'd consider my life complete.😂 Politicians with integrity are a thing of the past now,I doubt we'll ever see any again in my lifetime.I was asked several times in Belfast to go into politics by a few people,it was always an unequivocal "no". I've never been willing to compromise on my integrity and without selling it off bit by bit to the highest bidder I'd have got nowhere. @th3j35t3r
@DyDave Hawke was one of the good'uns for sure.People like that aren't allowed to flourish in modern politics,they're soon squeezed out or,if they stay on,are never allowed to rise to positions of power because their integrity threatens the status quo.Corbyn's a prime example of that. @th3j35t3r