The Razzle Dazzle

by Stephen Fleischman

Razzle Dazzle ‘em
Give ‘em an act with lots of flash in it
And the reaction will be passionate
Give ‘em the old hocus pocus…
Bead and feather ‘em
Razzle dazzle ‘em
And they’ll never catch wise!

–Richard Gere
“Chicago”

We’ve been through two weeks of bread and circuses. Nothing new. It’s an old tradition, an ancient Roman metaphor for people choosing food and fun over freedom.

The Democratic and Republican presidential conventions gave us bread and circuses without the bread. They’re history, now. The show is on the road.

Barack Obama may have some razzle left but John McCain’s dazzle has fizzled and his “Straight Talk Express” is something closer to a morgue on wheels. But we have the Alaskan Baracuda, the VP nominated Sarah Palin, to make up for it.

Sarah is a hard Christian right-winger and it’s obvious her selection was made to shore up McCain’s Evangelical base, if not to corral some of Hillary Clinton’s disgruntled supporters.  Sarah has enhanced her anti-abortion, pro-life credentials by bringing a Downs Syndrome child into the world, apparently to advance her political career.

The vice-presidential pick on the Democratic side wasn’t much better. Joe Biden, establishment hack, supporter of war from Serbia to Iraq and congenital plagiarist, knocked Barack Obama off his high road. Not much hope and change in Joe Biden. We’ll see how well he does against the Baracuda in the upcoming vice-presidential debate.

“The Federal Election Commission (FEC) – the body that supposedly enforces campaign finance laws in this country – has been out of business for more than six months,” says Matt Taibbi, in Rolling Stone Magazine (Aug, ’08). In a hard-hitting investigative report, ‘Candidates for Sale’, he provides irrefutable evidence, with facts and numbers, showing that both candidates, McCain and Obama, are in the pockets of the corporate oligarchy – the same big donors who will expect to have their way no matter who wins. “Normally,” says Taibbi, “the FEC tries to root out infractions and loopholes – fining campaigns for incomplete reporting, or for taking short cuts around spending limits – in the early months of a campaign season. But that ship sailed way too long ago to take the stink off the 2008 race.”

The main concern of the oligarchy is to get you, the taxpayer, to clean up the mess left by the loose canon stampeding around this country for the last eight years. You’ve already taken care of Bear Stearns and now you’re kicking in to salvage Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. There’ll be plenty more before the crash. Looks like Lehman Brothers is next.

Corporate America has devised a new gimmick for campaign fund raising called “joint committees”. Donors can dump huge amounts into them. Although only the legal limit of $2,300 per individual can be given to the candidate, the bulk of the moolah can be given to the political party and used in the candidate’s behalf.

Sixty-three million has been laid on John McCain via these joint committees from more than 1000 megadonors. McCain should be their poster boy but Wall Street is putting its money on Barack Obama, the Senator from Goldman Sachs, to do the dirty work. The Obama campaign tries to imply that most of Obama’s funds are coming from contributions of individuals giving $200 or less. But there is another side of the story they aren’t telling you.

Taibbi says, “Obama is flat out kicking McCain’s ass when it comes to Wall Street contributions, raking in nearly $9 million from securities and investment executives, compared to $6.2 million for McCain. Obama has received more contributions from Goldman Sachs than from any other employer, more than $627,000 at this writing not to mention $398,021 from JP Morgan Chase, $353,922 from Lehman Brothers and $291,388 from Morgan Stanley.”

Barack Obama knows he can’t deliver on his promises but his liberal and progressive following are so bedazzled by his charm and rhetoric and the idea of a black man in the White House, they blind themselves to the obvious.

So once again, your choice is limited to the lesser of two evils.

This doesn’t mean there are no other presidential candidates to vote for, but they’ve been blacked out by the mainstream media, as with a grease pencil.

There’s Cynthia McKinney, Congresswoman from Georgia’s 11th District, candidate for president on the Green Party ticket.

There’s Bob Barr, also from Georgia, a former Congressman from the 7th District, the Libertarian Party nominee for president.

There’s Chuck Baldwin, pastor and radio talk show host nominated by the Constitution Party.

And, of course, there’s Ralph Nader, who chose to run, this year, as an Independent.

The two main parties, Democratic and Republican, have successfully maintained a stranglehold on our electoral system in recent years.  They have colluded in creating the Commission on Presidential Debates to establish the way that debates between candidates for President of the United States are run. The Commission is set up to restrict independent and third party candidates from participating in presidential and vice presidential debates. That precludes any dark horse from threatening either of the two major parties.

The last candidate to break through that barrier was Ross Perot and his Reform Party in the 1996 election. He brought some dissent into the discussion by opposing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and he aptly described the “sucking sound” as American jobs flew overseas. Ross Perot addressed vital problems largely ignored by the two major parties. On these strengths, he won two of the three presidential debates and placed second in the other, according to some polls at the time. He ended up receiving about 18.9% of the popular vote, a record level of popularity not seen in an independent candidacy since former President Theodore Roosevelt ran on the “Bull Moose” Progressive ticket in 1912.

Third parties have always been the stimulus for new ideas eventually adopted by the two major parties. Third parties allow for dissent.

Dissent is democracy.