The kingmakers of democracy

The kingmakers are businessmen who turn presidential and congressional members into puppets, lackeys, mouthpieces. Wall Streeters like Lloyd Blankfein Jamie Dimon are the prototype kingmaker businessmen, and as businessmen, thanks in part to the permission granted them through Citizens United, thanks to the Supreme Court, their corporations are people and money is speech. And they can talk as much as they want, depending on how deep their pockets are.

Well, the kingmakers couldn’t care less about the legality of this. No, they love it. It gives them their dream of endless opportunity that they always wanted. To be in control of Congress, heads of regulatory agencies, agents of those groups, and anyone else that needs a little schmere, like the cream cheese of your choice on the bagel of your choice. It’s just a matter of knowing how and who and where to get the package to, mmm, good. Gimme another bite! Tax problems? No problem.

But consider these men not only businessmen as crooks but really as investors in the plans they have for America, which are largely to keep taxes as low as possible and to raise middle and working class taxes as high as they can. Think Warren Buffett who pays less taxes than his secretary and she earns between $300–500 thousand a year.

Also, the investors want to keep doing what they’re doing, stealing the masses’ money, at least what’s left of it. So they’re investing in their future, not yours. You, you can go to hell. There are too many people to feed and keep healthy and housed on the planet anyway.

Consider, too, these people love the good life, even if some seem benevolent or charitable. And they don’t want anything getting in the way of that, like, say Occupy Wall Street. So when Wall Street is occupied, they call out the paramilitary police and have them wipe the streets with the protestors. Am I telling you what you know? Did you know the banks even made money on the settling of the $25 billion in toxic mortgages, finding a way to cash in some more on their awful loans and homeowners’ debt.

These investors will even chew up other investors like Jon Corzine, using at least one front company to help him intermingle investor monies with Corzine’s losses in the hope that by the time the weekend was over so would the losses, and they could pull back and everything would be hunky dory. But that never happened, and somebody, that other player, had to receive the money, somebody big, like a JPMorgan Chase. Some investor so big, nobody would touch him.

These investors also don’t want to know from Social Security eating into their profits via taxes. It’s a dog-eat-dog mindset. And these big dogs have big appetites, not little ones like they expect you to have. They’re investing in having the whole enchilada, say, like Mitt Romney, making millions every year on investments, dividends, and buring them in the Cayman Islands where nobody can look at them, unless he’s running for president, and someone would like to see what’s going on. Even after he was officially asked to show his taxes, he chewed it down to one year, 2010, and the rest? Good luck.

But that’s Mitt. He’s funny that way. The investors want a man who’s electable, even a Chris Christie with some real battle experience in the Republican Washington D.C., crazoid mindset. He or she’s got to be a willing player, know the game, lack all shame, suck it up and do what he or she is told. Get it? It’s not a debate. They, the investors, give the orders, and you, Mr. or Mrs. Presidential wannabe, execute them. If you’re bad for business, in a few years you’ll be on your ass on the White House lawn. So, you need to be shrewd, heartless, and practical to survive. These guys want to turn a profit on every nickel or million they stick in your Superpac’s pockets.

Look at the Republican contenders, motley crew that they are: Romney in the lead, Santorum trying to catch up, Paul hanging on, and Gingrich hanging on for dear life. Here are the stats to date.

It looks like a three-horse race with one dog lagging in the backfield. So it goes.

But that’s not the investors’ problem. It’s up to the candidates to do all the necessary lying and gagging of contenders, just as we saw Rick Perry, Michelle Bachman, Herman Kane, and several others fall in the rabbit hole. Off-message.

But that leaves Obama, leaves him wondering what to say today, tomorrow and the next day and how he will reconcile all the contradictory statements so that he stays on top for the investors on the left. That’s why he reversed himself on taking Superpac money. Somebody must have said, “What are you crazy, man. You want to go it alone with mom and pop contributions? Get out of here.” So he about-faced. Money talks, baloney walks. Or should it be baloney talks or the money walks. One thing’s for sure. You can’t count on a straight election any more than you can count on a lady of the evening saying she loves you. This is “bidness, big bidness.” I mean do you remember where Obama started out?

Maybe I should spare you and I the pain. I voted for him, too. He was going to crush the financial flim-flams of Wall Street; he was going to stop all the bogus lending; he was going to stop all the “dumb wars”; he was going to stop torture and close Guantanamo; he was going to say any and everything you and I wanted to hear. That is, that the liberal Democrat resurgence had begun. Yes, We Can. Oh brother. Yes, we can’t is more like it.

Look at the XL pipeline deal. One week it’s on hold. Now he’s being pressured by the Republicans who are being pressured by their investors to get it “off hold.” And get all that dirty tar sands oil from Canada down thousands of miles of America the Beautiful in that tin-can pipeline to Port Arthur, Texas. There it will totally filthify any of the clean air left. And what’s more, this oil once it’s strained through the atmosphere, it won’t be going to America. It’ll be shipped off to Timbuktu, somewhere across the ocean, especially with the Strait of Hormuz thing going on with Iran, whose head and oil potential is getting pounded on by many of the same investors.

These investors are like a shiver of sharks. One bite and you’re outa sight. Car accidents, food poisoning, pianos falling on heads, etcetera. So, they have come to be respected as our forefathers turn over in their graves at what all they started and fought for here in the good old U.S. of A. Yeah, we’ve had our ups and downs with crazies here: some Republican, some Democrat, mostly the ups with the Dems in terms of social equality and a chance for working classes to survive with dignity. But with the Republicans, working people got the biggest tax hike in the history of this country.

Ronny Reagan had no fear. Those big investors, even then, just loved him. B-Movie-star quality, nice shiny hair, tall, big, ex-football player guy, halting voice which got slower after the Hinckley kid plugged him. Helluva thing for the kid of a family of friends, in the oil business no less, to do. And what was it, Jeb and Hinckley’s brother were discussing that night before the event?

But Ronny, Ronny baby, he had balls. Fired 13,000 air-controllers to break the union’s back. That’s cojones. Lowered taxes for the rich, spent on Star Wars like we were about to be attacked and ran up the deficit to a figure larger than all the presidents who preceded him combined. And they call him a conservative. Conservative, my a-flesh. If he was one, he was a radical conservative, than in itself an “ism” that’s surfaced again in the Tea Partiers. Long after Ronnie got lost in the memory hole.

Of course, they have their investors as well, people who might put their money on a few horses in the race. You gotta pay to play, you know what they say. Superpacs are US—from the Super Supreme Court. That’s just Super; we’re just Super; have a Super day; go away. And give us our country back or we’ll take it back, our country, and throw you all in jail, one by one. That’s the message, fellas. One day you’ll be sharing a cell with Bubba, your worse dream, so keep it up till it or he falls right on you like a load of love and hate.

Once there was a democracy that many, many people spilled their blood for. Today there’s a whorehouse full of tricks, ready to do whatever you want done, for a price. Like the old days of Cuba, when it was run like one big whorehouse, Havana the biggest, and ready for business, dope-dealing, money-laundering, the Mob, assassins, et al.

And the rest was one big sugar field that was owned by the United Fruit Corp, represented by John Foster Dulles, who served as U.S. Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959. John wasn’t too worried at all about the cane fields which was worked day after day under that hot Cuban son by poor peasants, who were not considered human by the Havana crowd who stayed close to home, with the big police force and not so brave army.

And one day this guy Castro shows up, a lawyer who tried out once to play baseball for the New York Yankees, what an irony. And first he’s greeted by Eisenhower with open arms, got rid of all those lousy gangsters. And then, slowly, when he starts to talk, unwind one of those long speeches saying this land is our land, not your land, so get the hell out soon as you can, uh-oh, trouble, worse, Revolution! Only, the revolutionaries had the distinct advantage of having the people out there in the cane fields and countryside on their side.

So the Revolutionary Army could go out and fight and take some food with it or chow down with the locals, and when necessary just vanish into thin air, to little biddy places no one but those who lived there knew about. And then this other fella, Che Guevara, shows up from Argentina to join in the fun. And sooner or later the ruling Batista family is escaping in the dark of night on several airplanes with cash, jewels, and their most precious costly stuff. And the show is over. That quick after such a long time of suffering and oppression. And the Batistas are followed by the rest of the 1% of the rich to Miami, the new Habana.

So, a word to the wise: investors of Superpacs, you ain’t gonna live forever. empires and their builders never do. Take a lesson from Fidel, Chavez, and others, many others. Your salad days are coming to an end, one way or the other. Whatever goes up, sooner or later comes down. The higher the fall, the bigger the crash. Remember that, investors. Once your personage is down like your pants and you have to speak like a human being again to one person, maybe two or three at a time, you’re back in reality. The game, including for the Supreme Court, will be over, too. Your investments worthless. Your king making done. And democracy, or something like it or better, will be back.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer, life-long resident of New York City. An EBook version of his book of poems “State Of Shock,” on 9/11 and its after effects is now available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. He has also written hundreds of articles on politics and government as Associate Editor of Intrepid Report (formerly Online Journal). Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.