[NYTr] The Big Fix: Mike Whitney on the Broken Electoral System

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Counterpunch - Dec 24, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney12242007.html

The Big Fix

The Voting System is Broken--and So are the Political Parties

By MIKE WHITNEY

Last Friday Ohio's top election official, Secretary of State Jennifer
Brunner issued a report concluding that the voting systems that decided
the 2004 election in Ohio were rife with "critical security failures".
The perpetrators were so cocksure they could pull it off that the
servers for the computation of the Ohio vote count were in the same
basement in Chattanooga, Tennessee that houses servers for the
Republican National Committee. The programmers who (worked) for Ken
Blackwell, the Republican Secretary of State, were Republicans who did
websites for the Bush administration.

So why do we keep throwing billions of dollars down a black hole just
to maintain this pathetic charade that fools no one? This year every
one of the leading candidates is a member of the Council on Foreign
Relations. Every one of them is a "dual loyalist" with a globalist
agenda. Every one of them accepts the new regime of curtailed civil
liberties, endless war, and free trade. They're all part of the same
corporate effluent that washed into Washington on a wave of special
interest payola. They're all lacquer-hair phonies who've never had an
original thought in their lives. Everything they think or say comes off
a cue-card or teleprompter that flashes poll-tested, focus-group
mumbo-jumbo. If a prospective candidate hasn't sworn his undying
allegiance to the cabal of transnational corporations, or taken a
blood-oath to defend the doctrine of unfettered self-aggrandizement, or
pledged to carry out a bloodthirsty "economy-busting" global crusade;
he is quickly banished to the wilderness. Just look at Ron Paul, who
collected $6 million in donations in a matter of hours but still can't
even get his picture in the papers. Why is that? It's because he hasn't
sold his soul to the carpetbagging freebooters who run the system.

The whole campaign extravaganza is a pointless farce. Why continue the
deception? We all watched in 2000 while the majority five on the
Supreme Court suspended the hand counting of ballots, overturned the
ruling of the Florida Supreme Court, and awarded the election to their
own Party's candidate. How is that any different than Blackwell's
manipulations in Ohio? It's all the same. In fact, the 5 justices had
so little regard for the intelligence of the American people they
invoked the 14th amendment, the "equal protection" clause, which had
never been used other than in cases of racial discrimination. They
didn't care. Who was going to stop them? Can you imagine the peals of
laughter that must have rung-out from the right-wing think tanks after
that ruling?

What part of the body-politic has been spared the cancerous ravages of
corporate corruption. The entire system is marinated in a culture of
violence and dishonesty. The real difference between the parties is
minuscule but significant. The Democrats have become the party of
traditional imperialism spearheaded by Brzezinski, Holbrooke, Albright
and the other guardians of Empire. These are the master-puppeteers who
operate behind the scenes for the real powerbrokers. Their focus is
mainly on Central Asia; controlling resources from the Caspian Basin,
"pacifying" Afghanistan, rallying the EU to a greater role in NATO, and
continuing the apocryphal "war on terror" into infinity. The Republican
Party has become the party of neoconservatives. Their operational plan
is "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm". It aligns
the US with the foreign policy objectives of Israel's Likud Party. The
focus is balkanizing the Middle East, undermining Arab nationalism,
installing US-Israeli client regimes, and controlling the regions
prodigious natural resources. It is a straightforward strategy for
regional hegemony. This is the real split between the parties, not the
meaningless Democrat-Republican labels. Presently, the traditional
imperialists have regained the upper-hand because the Bush bandwagon
has swerved off the road and into the ditch.

What's important for voters is that neither party has any intention of
restoring the Bill of Rights, slowing the outsourcing of jobs, or
abandoning the war on terror.


[Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at:
fergiewhitney at msn.com ]