THURSDAY 26 MAY 2022

@cjjohns1951

GUNS

As long as we allow politicians to sell themselves to the highest bidder, politicians will sell themselves to the highest bidder.  We must expand the Supreme Court and decrease the influence of money on the political system.  Look at the figures showing how much congresspeople make while in office.  Politics in this country is a racket.  Politics attracts not the dedicated, but the scam artist looking for the main chance.  The dedicated, the change makers, are systematically eliminated from public life.  The Democratic Party invests in destroying progressive candidates and in Texas, is now supporting a man who has had his premises raided by the FBI.

The grief orgy now being orchestrated by the corporate media over the murder of children in Texas is a distraction, ghoulish, and an empty exercise.  Grief by itself changes nothing.  The corporate media will spend the next few days showing photographs of dead children and talking about how precious they were.  The anchors will compete to make the most eloquent emotional statements.  They will cry on camera.  But, this changes nothing.

Senator Chris Murphy went on the floor of the Senate and begged, begged, Republicans to join him in doing something about reform of gun laws.  Begging (especially Republicans) is useless.  Chuck Schumer backed off on introducing a background check piece of legislation in the Senate because, he said, it could not win.  So he refused to make the Republicans vote against the bill in the face of the deaths in Texas.  Schumer and the rest of them will moan and lament and wring their hands.  Moaning, lamenting, wringing hands, does nothing, accomplishes nothing.

Mitt Romney lamented and moaned about the deaths in Texas.  But Mitt Romney is one of the legislators who has taken the most money from the NRA, over $13 million during his career.  Others big recipients of NRA money are Richard Burr, Roy Blunt, Thom Tillis and Cory Gardner. 

This is a country in which public policy is determined by the people who have enough money to buy it.  Over 90% of the population supports background checks for gun purchases.  But the NRA has money.  No amount of hand-wringing is going to change that fact.

And, we should not forget that the international crime syndicate of authoritarians (including the Republican Party) thrives in political systems that are for sale.  Russian plant Maria Butina along with her recruited boyfriend infiltrated the NRA with money favors to push a Russian agenda.  They actively worked to use the NRA to make contacts and influence policy decisions of congress and the future president.  Butina was backed by Russian banker Alexander Torshin.  Sentenced to 18 months, Butina was allowed to return to Russia where she was welcomed as a hero.

The NRA is, as Richard Painter has recently described it, a “protection racket for politicians.”  The NRA funnels money to these politicians like Romney in exchange for their support on gun-control legislation. 

Until we change the political system, nothing will change.  Until we stop moaning and lamenting and grieving and wringing our collective hands and crying nothing will change.  Until we stop sitting politely and behaving ourselves while scam artists like Greg Abbott orchestrate a coverup, nothing will change.  It’s time to start misbehaving.