Vote for Change? Atrocity-Linked U.S. Officials Advising Democratic Frontrunners.

Independent journalist Allan Nairn and American Conservative correspondent Kelley Beaucar Vlahos discuss a little-addressed facet of the 2008 campaign: many of the top advisers to leading presidential candidates are ex-U.S. officials involved in atrocities around the world.

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And I think a lot of that is linked to money, where, you know, the candidates have big names, big lobbyists; that in turn brings them in more funders, more bundlers. And it’s sort of like this hand-in-glove symbiotic relationship, where the bigger names you have, the more familiar names, the more entrenched you have in these cliques I spoke to previously, the more money you’re bringing into your campaign. So there’s no incentive to go beyond that, unless you’re ready for some amount of rebuke and some of the spigot being turned off.
Campaign contributions is just one of many tools that rich people have to get their way. There are basically two parallel factors in any democracy. One is one person, one vote. The other is one dollar, one vote. And those two are mixed together. So, although the people do have some say, there are usually a lot more dollars out there than people, and they find ways of prevailing in the end, unless the people become aggressive and disruptive and demanding and threaten to shake the system so that big concessions are made.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/3/vote_for_change_atrocity_linked_us

When people sober up, maybe they will see that their "candidate for change" spent more money for television advertisements than any other democratic candidate.

Looks like business as usual to me.

was: "Well, Edwards is a little different. The list of his foreign advisers is not as complete, so it’s not as clear exactly where they may be coming from, but it’s interesting. Last night on TV, one of the top Edwards advisers, “Mudcat” Saunders, was complaining about the fact that there are 35,000 lobbyists in Washington. And it appears, from the Edwards list, that many of the military lobbyists are working on the Edwards foreign policy team, because the names that—the Edwards names that are out there mainly come from the Army and the Air Force and the Navy Material Command. Those are the portions of the Pentagon that do the Defense contracts, that do the deals with the big companies like Raytheon and Boeing, etc. One of those listed on the Edwards team is the lobbyist for the big military contractor EADS. So, although Edwards talks about going after lobbyists, if he tries to go after the military lobbyists, he may get a little blowback from his own advisers."

Not all military contract officers are corrupt. But I don't care for the lobbyists. But considering the atrocities committed by the people on the Clinton and the big O campaigns, Edwards' is squeaky clean by comparison.

In Nairn's view, not quite squeaky clean.
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AMY GOODMAN: And is Edwards and Clinton any different on those issues?


ALLAN NAIRN: Not as far as I can tell. None of them have come out for single payer. The only one who came out for single payer was Kucinich. Campaign contributions is just one of many tools that rich people have to get their way. There are basically two parallel factors in any democracy. One is one person, one vote. The other is one dollar, one vote. And those two are mixed together. So, although the people do have some say, there are usually a lot more dollars out there than people, and they find ways of prevailing in the end, unless the people become aggressive and disruptive and demanding and threaten to shake the system so that big concessions are made.



http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/3/vote_for_change_atrocity_linked_us

It's that simple.