1990 – George HW Bush – Discriminate Against the Disabled!

1979 – Jimmy Carter – Eliminate the Department of Education!

1973 – Richard Nixon – Abolish Abortion!

1973 – Richard Nixon – Drive U.S. Wildlife to Extinction!

1971 – Richard Nixon – Return to the Gold Standard!

1970 – Richard Nixon – Unrestricted Polluting!

1965 – Lyndon Johnson – Ban Birth Control!

1938 – Franklin Roosevelt – Restore Child Labor!

1935 – Franklin Roosevelt – Strip Labor of the Right to Organize!

1935 – Franklin Roosevelt - Screw the Aged!

1918 – Woodrow Wilson - Eliminate Public Schools!

1913 – Woodrow Wilson – Abolish the Income Tax!

1868 – Ulysses Grant - Legally Discriminate Against Women, African Americans and well anybody!

For a demonstration how professionals operate when they want to undermine a democracy, see the Washington Post today:

… new political groups have sprouted like mushrooms in the final weeks of the 2010 campaign, dumping tens of millions of dollars into House and Senate races and, in many cases, avoiding the need to tell voters who is funding their activities.

The frenzy is possible largely because of federal rulings making it easier and more advantageous to set up “super PACs” […] with no limits on fundraising or spending. More than three dozen super PACs and other political groups began spending money for the first time within the past ten days, according to a Washington Post analysis of FEC records.

The surge underscores the outsized role played this year by independent interest groups, which are expected to spend as much $500 million on the midterms. Some political committees are so new they don’t have to reveal details about their backing until after the election; others operating as nonprofits will never have to disclose their donors.

The story by Dan Eggen is accompanied by a broader piece on the radical-right Supreme Court that has enthusiastically facilitated this situation:

Almost from the moment Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the bench five years ago, the court’s conservatives have acted systematically on their deep skepticism of campaign spending restrictions. They repeatedly have questioned the ability of Congress to restrict the role of wealth and special interest involvement in elections without offending the First Amendment guarantee of unfettered political speech. . . .

. . . [Trevor] Potter, now president of the Campaign Legal Center, which supports campaign finance reform [said,]“Citizens United put a Supreme Court good-housekeeping-seal-of-approval on corporations being allowed in elections.”

. . . “While American democracy is imperfect,” [dissenting Justice John Paul] Stevens wrote in his 90-page opinion, “few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.”

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, but colleague Antonin Scalia took up his pen to specifically answer Stevens.

“To exclude or impede corporate speech is to muzzle the principal agents of the modern free economy,” he wrote. “We should celebrate rather than condemn the addition of this speech to the public debate.“

I’ll bet you never knew that the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence to enshrine the dominance of “the principal agents of the modern free economy,” rather than that silly nonsense about all men being created equal.

I’m sure, though, that future history books will correct this oversight.  Just as soon as education is privatized, just like our elections have been.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

We’ve only got Soros (where is my monthly check btw, George?).  They’ve got the Koch Brothers, Satan’s little helper Rupert Murdoch, and another 184 billionaire-donors.  Not to mention all those corporations…

Can you imagine what’s going to happen now when they resume debating climate change legislation?  Bush really fucked us with Alito and Roberts.

(Image via The Phoenix.)

On the same day that $100 million-plus heiress/candidate spouse Cindy McCain says, “How about never? Is never a good time for you?” with regard to when she’ll release her tax returns, the Associated Press profiles the most fearsome financial powerhouse of the 2008 election:

Kriss Riggs isn’t one to spend her money on politicians.

“Even the place you can donate a dollar on your taxes, I refuse to do it,” says the 60-year-old photographer from Blue River, Ore.

Likewise for Kate Schwartz, a 24-year-old marketing expert from Chicago. Past elections, she says, always seemed far removed from young people.

“A lot of people felt like it wasn’t happening in my demographic,” Schwartz said.

Not this time.

Riggs and Schwartz are foot soldiers in Barack Obama’s 1.5-million-strong army of campaign contributors. Dozens of Associated Press interviews with donors, and an AP financial analysis show how contributions that make only a soft ca-ching by themselves, arriving in increments of $10, $15 and $50, have collectively swelled into a financial roar that has helped propel Obama toward the Democratic president nomination.

Altogether, Obama’s campaign has taken in an unprecedented $226 million, most of it contributed online. His donor base is larger than the one the Democratic National Committee had for the 2000 election.

These are hardly political fat cats. Ninety percent of his donors give $100 or less, and 41 percent have given $25 or less, according to the Obama campaign.

I think I like this contrast on the subject of public accountability — or, to put it in less jargonesque language, knowing who you work for — going into the fall campaign. Barack is likely to be the target of whining from the Double-Talk Express if he chooses to opt out of the general-election public financing restrictions, but all he has to do is point out that the purpose of that funding approach was to keep candidates from being compromised by their reliance on who’s giving them money.

Then he can add, “If John McCain wants to accuse me of being beholden to the nearly 2 million Americans of all backgrounds who have donated money to my campaign, mostly in amounts ranging from 10 to 100 dollars, my answer is… yes! I’m indebted to them, and those are the people whose interests I’ll serve as President.”

Go for it, John… I dare you.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)