No Big Surprise Here

If you thought that the behemoths who were saved through bailouts of taxpayer dollars would change the way they conduct business, then you need to step back from the bar and quit drinking too much of the Kool-Aid. It should not come as shock to anyone paying half-attention that business as usual continues unabated.

Following a $57 billion tax-payer bailout in 2009, the American people (and, to a lesser extent, the Canadians) essentially owned General Motors. That includes Republicans and Democrats, as well as independents, Greens, Libertarians and everyone else.

Yet the company’s Political Action Committee wrote a $5,000 check to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in September, a small piece of the $190,000 the firm has showered on federal candidates this year.

As the Washington Post reported this week, McConnell had been a staunch opponent of the auto-makers’ rescue, saying he could not "ask the American taxpayer to subsidize failure." But, the Post added, “GM doesn't seem to hold a grudge.”

According to the report, GM is not alone among firms that received tax-payer assistance, and are now spending huge campaign dollars to elect politicians (in both parties) who won’t vote to for new regulations, or, in the case of financial firms accused of foreclosure fraud, even to hold them accountable for violating the law...

That's right! You and I bailed out these miscreants and, to show their undying gratitude, they are using their renewed economic clout to grease the system so they can screw us again and again into perpetuity.

How can a person not love this system!!

As E. J. Dionne points out on NPR, we love this system because it's American as apple pie.

Imagine an election in a Third World nation where a small number of millionaires and billionaires spent massive sums to push the outcome in their preferred direction. Wouldn't many people here condescendingly tut-tut such a country's "poorly developed" sense of democracy and the inadequacy of its political system?"

That, of course, is what is going on in our country as you read this. If you travel any place where there is a contested race for the House or Senate, you are bombarded with attack ads, almost all against Democrats, paid for by groups that do not have to reveal where their money comes from.

What we do know from enterprising journalism and the limited disclosure the law requires is that much of this money is donated in large sums from a rather small number of wealthy individuals...

While it's certainly true that most of this mammoth money is favoring candidates for the GOP, the toothless Democrats have not done much of anything to try to stop it.