The problem is "Dark money." Can't track political spending by groups that are not required to disclose their donors. This lack of transparency can allow wealthy individuals and special interests to exert influence on elections without public knowledge. While not all dark money spending is illegal, it raises concerns about corruption and the fairness of the political process.
These organizations include 501(c)(4) nonprofits, social welfare organizations, and super PACs that don't disclose their donors. They can spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections, but their donors remain hidden.
The Brennan Center also publishes extensive research on the effects of dark money in politics, including its effects in state and local elections, risks to judicial independence, and the threat of foreign funds in U.S. elections. The center has proposed reforms to the Federal Elections Committee that would help the agency better enforce the law and improve campaign spending transparency.
You nailed it over many decades of carefully growing legislation & deals behind the scenes to enable the growing handful of politicians to create huge wealth for themselves and clients. I am sure all Congress & Senate members were fully aware of what was happening as it was unfolding, and of course said or did little or nothing at all. The power of money keeps getting larger & larger as we all are witnessing each and everyday. Thanks for your clear and brilliant expose.
All members and all high ranking government officials have to complete an annual financial statement. For those who are active traders, a monthly report is required.
You'd think that orgaizations like the Brennan Center, Common Cause, etc would track every member of Congress vis a vis conflicts of interests. You'd think this information should be public. You'd think all other members would be on the lookout for conflicts of interests.
In a judicial setting, the parties have a right to voir dire (question) the judge about conflicts of interests.
I't expect the same could be done in Congress and state legislatures before a vote, but I've never heard of it. I asked a couple of members about it, and they said that they relied on the internal mechanisms re conduct and dicipline, but I don't think that's the issue.
E.G. You'd think it might be important if a senator disclose a conflict before voting. My senator ,Rick Scott, bears a lifetime charge re his position when he worked in the insurance and healthcare industry, so it might be relevant how proposed legislation involving those matters would affect his personal finances.
From Google AI: Campaign finance
As of late 2024, Senator Rick Scott's campaign committee raised $46,338,811 and spent $47,001,051, with $798,363 cash on hand and debts of $24,138,834.
Self-financing accounted for a significant portion of his campaign funds, comprising 55.32% of his campaign committee's contributions between 2019 and 2024.
When combined with his leadership PAC, his total fundraising amounted to $53,627,869, with expenditures of $52,363,177 and $2,858,279 cash on hand.
Top donors to his Team Rick Scott joint fundraising committee in 2024 included individuals associated with the US Senate, The Villages, GEO Group, and T&D Concrete.
Personal financial disclosures and net worth
Based on Quiver Quantitative's estimates, Senator Rick Scott's estimated net worth was $554.26 million as of July 17, 2025, making him one of the wealthiest members of Congress.
His disclosed holdings for 2023, filed on August 13, 2024, included significant assets in investment funds, real estate, and government securities, with amounts ranging from $1 million to over $50 million.
He also held assets in private equity funds, hedge funds, and various other investments.
Legislative actions related to finances
In June 2024, Senator Scott introduced legislation aimed at safeguarding American investors from potentially supporting activities of the Chinese Communist Party through investments in Chinese companies.
He also joined efforts to roll back the SEC's climate disclosure rule in April 2024, calling it "federal overreach".
Please note: This information is based on publicly available data, primarily from campaign finance summaries and personal financial disclosures filed by Senator Scott. Some figures are estimates or reflect ranges of values rather than exact amounts.
If it does, would he be asked to recuse from voting?
Would every Republican (and way too many Democrats) proudly display Febreze and AirWick patches? Far better they should work toward eliminating the sources of the stink and stop simply masking it.
Phil Graham did a lot more harm. He also undid FDR’s restrictions on commercial banks using depositor money to speculate in the markets for bigger banker paychecks. Deposit money is not held in trust and bankers are entitled to use it as they wish. The bank failures in 1929 were mainly caused by banks investing in businesses for profit (called proprietary trading) and not relying on profits from making loans. Prop trading is the source of the outsized banker paychecks.
While FDR made the banks separate into investment and commercial banks, that was not the key to his reform. He then put severe restrictions on the commercial bank use of depositor money. No need to do that for investment banks because they don’t take savings deposits. See especially s 16 of Glass Steagel https://govtrackus.s3.amazonaws.com/legislink/pdf/stat/48/STATUTE-48-Pg162a.pdf
That restriction provided stability to the banking system from that time until it was revoked as part of Gramm Leach Bliley. In 1999.
The cause of the near financial meltdown in 2008 was banks betting deposit money with the hedge funds on the state of the housing market as featured in the movie The Big Short. When the market tanked, the banks owed the hedge funds about $350 billion. The hedge funds could seize any of the bank assets including deposit money to satisfy the debt. So, the government stepped in quickly to stop a run on the banks before this became known.
Although the Obama administration’s first draft of Dodd Frank included restrictions on bank using deposit money to speculate in the markets, (known as the Volcker rules), according to Tyler Gellash one of the drafters of the original version, the banker lobby was successful in greatly weakening them. Now recent Trump amendments have made them completely ineffective: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/30/trump-bank-regulations-volcker-rule-577718
The bankers are no longer restricted to what they view as plain vanilla banking and are free use deposit money for prop trading maintaining their sky high paychecks Just as they did that caused the two market crashes. It’s only a matter of time, perhaps a generation, where the bankers will forget their caution and take on riskier investments for even higher paychecks. That is inherent in the nature of greed.
Not all. Re Wiki re Wendy, the REAL power in the family: Phil was a Democrat who switched parties when he lost a position House Budget Committee in 1983.
Wendy Lee Gramm held several positions in the Reagan administration: executive director of the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief, head of the White House Office of Management and Budget's regulatory review office, director of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Economics, head of the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) from 1985 to 1988,and head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1988 to 1993.] After a lobbying campaign from Enron and the election of Bill Clinton, Gramm nearly lost her chair seat, but the CFTC exempted Enron from regulation in trading of energy derivatives. Six days later, she resigned from CFTC, took a seat on the Enron board of directors, and served on its audit committee.
Her husband's 1996 presidential bid was cut short by a political scandal arising from his past investments in the porn industry, which led the New York Post to nickname him "Porno Gramm".
While on the board of directors, she received donations from Enron to support the Mercatus Center. According to Public Citizen, Enron paid between $915,000 and $1.85 million in salary from 1993 to 2001 Enron also became the biggest donor to Phil Gramm's political actions. Just under $100,000 went to his campaigns between 1999 and 2001. In 1999, the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act was passed, which repealed part of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933, prohibiting any institution from acting as any combination of an investment bank, a commercial bank, and an insurance company. It allowed over-the-counter trading of derivatives, which had previously been restricted to regulated exchanges.
In 1998, she declared "In my view, there are no systemic problems in the OTC derivatives market”. In 1999, she sold her shares of Enron ($300,000), asserting that being a director and a shareholder of the company constituted a conflict of interest.
Prior to George W. Bush's election, Phil Gramm introduced the Commodity Futures Modernization Act which deregulated the trading of derivatives.
After news of the Enron scandal became public in October 2001, Gramm and the other directors of the energy company were named in several investor lawsuits, many of which have been settled. In particular, Gramm and other Enron directors agreed to a $168 million settlement in a suit from the University of California. As part of it, the directors agreed to collectively pay $13 million to settle claims of insider trading. The remainder of the settlement was to be paid by insurance.
After Enron, she became head of the Regulatory Studies Program of the Mercatus Center. She expressed no regrets regarding the Enron debacle, which she considered a success. On November 1, 2007, she became the chairperson of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. In 2011, she appeared on a television spot with her husband, calling on Texans to shoulder the burden of the economic crisis On October 1, 2019, she resigned as the chairman of the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Wendy also served as a director of the Independent Women's Forum, a conservative women's group. She has sat on the boards of Enron Corporation, Iowa Beef Processors, Invesco Funds, Longitude, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and State Farm Insurance Companies.
Ronald Reagan once described Wendy as "[his] favorite economist.
This is such a great idea, but they won't do it on their own. I don't have the lists for them, but would support a fund to make these "NASCAR jackets" to send each one . What a great newsbit that would inspire!
Thank, you, Captain my Captain, for always laying it out for what it really is. Thank you. I really don’t see an end to this though, because greed has more power than doing the right thing in the first place.
The issue about money in politics was one I encountered when I joined Democratic Party clubs in San Diego. As a member of two different clubs, I watched as candidate after candidate ran for elected office, spoke to our club, and asked for our vote. For example, we chose one of the three candidates running for City Council to endorse. There were expectations of these individuals once in office. They would support the Democrats' agenda and make stuff happen in their districts.
It was well known what voters wanted to see happen; some new items had cropped up, and other items left over from the previous office holder's time. How was money involved? The clubs gave them money for their campaigns. Then, once in office, they worked for their constituents to build a bridge or a set of stairs down to the beach. The contributions they took were bribes, in my opinion. Not dark money, but right out financial contributions with expectations.
After years of not getting ANY response to my complaints of the illicit surveillance, which included stalking, terrorizing me, violating my civil rights, and creating havoc in our family, which persisted even during times of family crisises-relentless never letting up, I spoke to a club member and a candidate whom we sponsored for City Council, Jordan Bean, and gave him a personal contribution with an ask - please help me figure out how this abuse is permitted on the part of the City Council?
I thought a lot of Jordan, and so did our club. At the time, I did not know it as a bribe. I had not done it before for anything. I was desperate because no one was stopping it. Before, as Jen Campbell's (president of the city council) campaign manager, I told him how Jen taunted me with knowledge of the surveillance and even participated in it herself. I still cannot understand how illegal acts like stalking me, slandering me, and terrorizing me were allowed.
I now recognize that as a bribe - despite desperately wanting the psychological and verbal threats to end, I think it is viewed as a bribe. No matter that a person can claim they have never offered a bribe for anything, if you are involved in politics one way or another, you are involved in bribery.
What Enron did to Gray Davis was inexcusable and criminal. I spoke to Gray and his wife in an elevator in Sacramento at a Democrat convention and told him how sorry we were that he was treated that way. He was gracious and so was his wife but she said he will live longer out of the governor’s office.
You are absolutely correct on all counts Thom. The filth of it keeps the system we have in place.
About two decades ago I tried confronting the system in the Democratic Party in a nice persistent manner and all I got back was dark money? What are you talking about? I was asking for transparency in the public political system that involves and influences votes not about their private lives outside of politics.
Here in San Diego it became more dicey when the LBGTQ+ faction of the Democrats grew up from underground - help of surveillance - and that was a good thing IMHO, but dark money funded their efforts.
I hate to think it much less say it, but it took this ungodly administration to show people like me how utterly corrupt so many so called Americans can be and surprise, turns out they are. It’s no longer a story written to warn us. It’s happened in real time.
And, to think, just a very few years ago most of us, were so utterly naive as to how wide spread the greed and corruption was, is, and has been entrenched in our society.
All through history, as societies got richer and richer and appeared to be strong and stable, that’s when they were ripe
for the wolves who circled and salivated.
Some waited and planned as the first wave of predators jump in to rip apart structure, then the others behind syphoned off everything they could suck down leaving dregs while the last wave raped and pillaged anyone and anything that was left.
This is human history, I thought—but now we see It played right in front of our eyes. History in the making. I wonder how long it will take for some school kids in the future to read the truth? Yes, we keep fighting and watching in horror as everything we took for granted begins to at first shake, and then crumble before our collective and astonished faces.
How could it happen to us? How could it happen so fast? But it wasn’t fast, at all.
Turns out It’s been rotten for so long but the majority of us were busy taking care of our families, working, enjoying friends vacations and while paying our taxes and Social Security with every paycheck, they were circling and waiting for the perfect moments to implement the crime spree.
Free speech rights of the rich or corporations or high finance should consist of buying ads under their own names suggesting a vote for a specific politician. Admittedly people would get extremely tired of seeing them over and over and over. But all this behind the scenes money is wrecking the country.
Can we get everyone to write in to the Nobel Committee, to say "Please, please, please, our little president is having a bad day, can he have a Nobel Prize for something -- like best hair or makeup or something?"
We can track donations via Open Secrets. https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying
The problem is "Dark money." Can't track political spending by groups that are not required to disclose their donors. This lack of transparency can allow wealthy individuals and special interests to exert influence on elections without public knowledge. While not all dark money spending is illegal, it raises concerns about corruption and the fairness of the political process.
Dark money groups, nonprofits and shell companies that spend on elections without revealing their donors, plowed more than $1.9 billion into last year’s election cycle, a dramatic increase from the prior record of $1 billion in 2020. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/dark-money-hit-record-high-19-billion-2024-federal-races
These organizations include 501(c)(4) nonprofits, social welfare organizations, and super PACs that don't disclose their donors. They can spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections, but their donors remain hidden.
Although they are difficulet to find, Open Secrets is on the job. https://www.opensecrets.org/dark-money
The Brennan Center also publishes extensive research on the effects of dark money in politics, including its effects in state and local elections, risks to judicial independence, and the threat of foreign funds in U.S. elections. The center has proposed reforms to the Federal Elections Committee that would help the agency better enforce the law and improve campaign spending transparency.
You nailed it over many decades of carefully growing legislation & deals behind the scenes to enable the growing handful of politicians to create huge wealth for themselves and clients. I am sure all Congress & Senate members were fully aware of what was happening as it was unfolding, and of course said or did little or nothing at all. The power of money keeps getting larger & larger as we all are witnessing each and everyday. Thanks for your clear and brilliant expose.
All members and all high ranking government officials have to complete an annual financial statement. For those who are active traders, a monthly report is required.
You'd think that orgaizations like the Brennan Center, Common Cause, etc would track every member of Congress vis a vis conflicts of interests. You'd think this information should be public. You'd think all other members would be on the lookout for conflicts of interests.
In a judicial setting, the parties have a right to voir dire (question) the judge about conflicts of interests.
I't expect the same could be done in Congress and state legislatures before a vote, but I've never heard of it. I asked a couple of members about it, and they said that they relied on the internal mechanisms re conduct and dicipline, but I don't think that's the issue.
E.G. You'd think it might be important if a senator disclose a conflict before voting. My senator ,Rick Scott, bears a lifetime charge re his position when he worked in the insurance and healthcare industry, so it might be relevant how proposed legislation involving those matters would affect his personal finances.
From Google AI: Campaign finance
As of late 2024, Senator Rick Scott's campaign committee raised $46,338,811 and spent $47,001,051, with $798,363 cash on hand and debts of $24,138,834.
Self-financing accounted for a significant portion of his campaign funds, comprising 55.32% of his campaign committee's contributions between 2019 and 2024.
When combined with his leadership PAC, his total fundraising amounted to $53,627,869, with expenditures of $52,363,177 and $2,858,279 cash on hand.
Top donors to his Team Rick Scott joint fundraising committee in 2024 included individuals associated with the US Senate, The Villages, GEO Group, and T&D Concrete.
Personal financial disclosures and net worth
Based on Quiver Quantitative's estimates, Senator Rick Scott's estimated net worth was $554.26 million as of July 17, 2025, making him one of the wealthiest members of Congress.
His disclosed holdings for 2023, filed on August 13, 2024, included significant assets in investment funds, real estate, and government securities, with amounts ranging from $1 million to over $50 million.
He also held assets in private equity funds, hedge funds, and various other investments.
Legislative actions related to finances
In June 2024, Senator Scott introduced legislation aimed at safeguarding American investors from potentially supporting activities of the Chinese Communist Party through investments in Chinese companies.
He also joined efforts to roll back the SEC's climate disclosure rule in April 2024, calling it "federal overreach".
Attached is a link to Scott's recent voting record. https://justfacts.votesmart.org/candidate/key-votes/124204/rick-scott
Please note: This information is based on publicly available data, primarily from campaign finance summaries and personal financial disclosures filed by Senator Scott. Some figures are estimates or reflect ranges of values rather than exact amounts.
If it does, would he be asked to recuse from voting?
OGE Rule of Conflicts of Interests: https://www.oge.gov/web/oge.nsf/Resources/Analyzing+Potential+Conflicts+of+Interest#:~:text=The%20basic%20criminal%20conflict%20of,they%20have%20a%20financial%20interest.
Senate Rules on Conflicts of Interests. https://www.ethics.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/efa7bf74-4a50-46a5-bb6f-b8d26b9755bf/2015---red-book---the-senate-code-of-official-conduct.pdf#page=22
Proposals to limit Congress members' financial matters:
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R47818
Case study: Byron Donalds, R. Fl:
https://campaignlegal.org/update/congressional-stock-trading-continues-raise-conflicts-interest-concerns
Would every Republican (and way too many Democrats) proudly display Febreze and AirWick patches? Far better they should work toward eliminating the sources of the stink and stop simply masking it.
Phil Graham did a lot more harm. He also undid FDR’s restrictions on commercial banks using depositor money to speculate in the markets for bigger banker paychecks. Deposit money is not held in trust and bankers are entitled to use it as they wish. The bank failures in 1929 were mainly caused by banks investing in businesses for profit (called proprietary trading) and not relying on profits from making loans. Prop trading is the source of the outsized banker paychecks.
While FDR made the banks separate into investment and commercial banks, that was not the key to his reform. He then put severe restrictions on the commercial bank use of depositor money. No need to do that for investment banks because they don’t take savings deposits. See especially s 16 of Glass Steagel https://govtrackus.s3.amazonaws.com/legislink/pdf/stat/48/STATUTE-48-Pg162a.pdf
That restriction provided stability to the banking system from that time until it was revoked as part of Gramm Leach Bliley. In 1999.
The cause of the near financial meltdown in 2008 was banks betting deposit money with the hedge funds on the state of the housing market as featured in the movie The Big Short. When the market tanked, the banks owed the hedge funds about $350 billion. The hedge funds could seize any of the bank assets including deposit money to satisfy the debt. So, the government stepped in quickly to stop a run on the banks before this became known.
Although the Obama administration’s first draft of Dodd Frank included restrictions on bank using deposit money to speculate in the markets, (known as the Volcker rules), according to Tyler Gellash one of the drafters of the original version, the banker lobby was successful in greatly weakening them. Now recent Trump amendments have made them completely ineffective: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/30/trump-bank-regulations-volcker-rule-577718
The bankers are no longer restricted to what they view as plain vanilla banking and are free use deposit money for prop trading maintaining their sky high paychecks Just as they did that caused the two market crashes. It’s only a matter of time, perhaps a generation, where the bankers will forget their caution and take on riskier investments for even higher paychecks. That is inherent in the nature of greed.
Not all. Re Wiki re Wendy, the REAL power in the family: Phil was a Democrat who switched parties when he lost a position House Budget Committee in 1983.
Wendy Lee Gramm held several positions in the Reagan administration: executive director of the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief, head of the White House Office of Management and Budget's regulatory review office, director of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Economics, head of the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) from 1985 to 1988,and head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1988 to 1993.] After a lobbying campaign from Enron and the election of Bill Clinton, Gramm nearly lost her chair seat, but the CFTC exempted Enron from regulation in trading of energy derivatives. Six days later, she resigned from CFTC, took a seat on the Enron board of directors, and served on its audit committee.
Her husband's 1996 presidential bid was cut short by a political scandal arising from his past investments in the porn industry, which led the New York Post to nickname him "Porno Gramm".
While on the board of directors, she received donations from Enron to support the Mercatus Center. According to Public Citizen, Enron paid between $915,000 and $1.85 million in salary from 1993 to 2001 Enron also became the biggest donor to Phil Gramm's political actions. Just under $100,000 went to his campaigns between 1999 and 2001. In 1999, the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act was passed, which repealed part of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933, prohibiting any institution from acting as any combination of an investment bank, a commercial bank, and an insurance company. It allowed over-the-counter trading of derivatives, which had previously been restricted to regulated exchanges.
In 1998, she declared "In my view, there are no systemic problems in the OTC derivatives market”. In 1999, she sold her shares of Enron ($300,000), asserting that being a director and a shareholder of the company constituted a conflict of interest.
Prior to George W. Bush's election, Phil Gramm introduced the Commodity Futures Modernization Act which deregulated the trading of derivatives.
After news of the Enron scandal became public in October 2001, Gramm and the other directors of the energy company were named in several investor lawsuits, many of which have been settled. In particular, Gramm and other Enron directors agreed to a $168 million settlement in a suit from the University of California. As part of it, the directors agreed to collectively pay $13 million to settle claims of insider trading. The remainder of the settlement was to be paid by insurance.
After Enron, she became head of the Regulatory Studies Program of the Mercatus Center. She expressed no regrets regarding the Enron debacle, which she considered a success. On November 1, 2007, she became the chairperson of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. In 2011, she appeared on a television spot with her husband, calling on Texans to shoulder the burden of the economic crisis On October 1, 2019, she resigned as the chairman of the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Wendy also served as a director of the Independent Women's Forum, a conservative women's group. She has sat on the boards of Enron Corporation, Iowa Beef Processors, Invesco Funds, Longitude, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and State Farm Insurance Companies.
Ronald Reagan once described Wendy as "[his] favorite economist.
This is such a great idea, but they won't do it on their own. I don't have the lists for them, but would support a fund to make these "NASCAR jackets" to send each one . What a great newsbit that would inspire!
Thank, you, Captain my Captain, for always laying it out for what it really is. Thank you. I really don’t see an end to this though, because greed has more power than doing the right thing in the first place.
Move along, move along. There's nothing to see. There ain't no corruption here.
The issue about money in politics was one I encountered when I joined Democratic Party clubs in San Diego. As a member of two different clubs, I watched as candidate after candidate ran for elected office, spoke to our club, and asked for our vote. For example, we chose one of the three candidates running for City Council to endorse. There were expectations of these individuals once in office. They would support the Democrats' agenda and make stuff happen in their districts.
It was well known what voters wanted to see happen; some new items had cropped up, and other items left over from the previous office holder's time. How was money involved? The clubs gave them money for their campaigns. Then, once in office, they worked for their constituents to build a bridge or a set of stairs down to the beach. The contributions they took were bribes, in my opinion. Not dark money, but right out financial contributions with expectations.
After years of not getting ANY response to my complaints of the illicit surveillance, which included stalking, terrorizing me, violating my civil rights, and creating havoc in our family, which persisted even during times of family crisises-relentless never letting up, I spoke to a club member and a candidate whom we sponsored for City Council, Jordan Bean, and gave him a personal contribution with an ask - please help me figure out how this abuse is permitted on the part of the City Council?
I thought a lot of Jordan, and so did our club. At the time, I did not know it as a bribe. I had not done it before for anything. I was desperate because no one was stopping it. Before, as Jen Campbell's (president of the city council) campaign manager, I told him how Jen taunted me with knowledge of the surveillance and even participated in it herself. I still cannot understand how illegal acts like stalking me, slandering me, and terrorizing me were allowed.
I now recognize that as a bribe - despite desperately wanting the psychological and verbal threats to end, I think it is viewed as a bribe. No matter that a person can claim they have never offered a bribe for anything, if you are involved in politics one way or another, you are involved in bribery.
What Enron did to Gray Davis was inexcusable and criminal. I spoke to Gray and his wife in an elevator in Sacramento at a Democrat convention and told him how sorry we were that he was treated that way. He was gracious and so was his wife but she said he will live longer out of the governor’s office.
You are absolutely correct on all counts Thom. The filth of it keeps the system we have in place.
About two decades ago I tried confronting the system in the Democratic Party in a nice persistent manner and all I got back was dark money? What are you talking about? I was asking for transparency in the public political system that involves and influences votes not about their private lives outside of politics.
Here in San Diego it became more dicey when the LBGTQ+ faction of the Democrats grew up from underground - help of surveillance - and that was a good thing IMHO, but dark money funded their efforts.
I hate to think it much less say it, but it took this ungodly administration to show people like me how utterly corrupt so many so called Americans can be and surprise, turns out they are. It’s no longer a story written to warn us. It’s happened in real time.
And, to think, just a very few years ago most of us, were so utterly naive as to how wide spread the greed and corruption was, is, and has been entrenched in our society.
All through history, as societies got richer and richer and appeared to be strong and stable, that’s when they were ripe
for the wolves who circled and salivated.
Some waited and planned as the first wave of predators jump in to rip apart structure, then the others behind syphoned off everything they could suck down leaving dregs while the last wave raped and pillaged anyone and anything that was left.
This is human history, I thought—but now we see It played right in front of our eyes. History in the making. I wonder how long it will take for some school kids in the future to read the truth? Yes, we keep fighting and watching in horror as everything we took for granted begins to at first shake, and then crumble before our collective and astonished faces.
How could it happen to us? How could it happen so fast? But it wasn’t fast, at all.
Turns out It’s been rotten for so long but the majority of us were busy taking care of our families, working, enjoying friends vacations and while paying our taxes and Social Security with every paycheck, they were circling and waiting for the perfect moments to implement the crime spree.
Free speech rights of the rich or corporations or high finance should consist of buying ads under their own names suggesting a vote for a specific politician. Admittedly people would get extremely tired of seeing them over and over and over. But all this behind the scenes money is wrecking the country.
Can we get everyone to write in to the Nobel Committee, to say "Please, please, please, our little president is having a bad day, can he have a Nobel Prize for something -- like best hair or makeup or something?"
Charlie, this comment is hilariously satirical, and if it worked, I would write a letter.