Photo: Muffett

A lot of liberals and progressives were outraged by the Democrats' wealthcare bill that takes care and money from poor, middle class, and elderly Americans and gives a ton of money to HMOs, health insurers, and the rich people who speculate in their stocks. The vast majority of liberals and progressives were outraged by the US Supreme Court's Citizens United decision which absurdly claims that corporations have constitutional rights and that campaign contributions are "speech."

Yet, very few people have made the connection between the two.

The US Supreme Court's attack on democracy took place on January 21, 2010 and the wealthcare bill passed that March. This is really important. Efforts to include a public option and to roll back some of the wealthcare bill's many attacks on the non rich were being fought up to the end. Nearly all of those efforts collapsed at the end, in a political landscape reshaped by the Court's decision to disenfranchise ordinary Americans.

It's become obvious to me that the Democrats decided that corporations now have absolute power in our country and that Democratic voters and grassroots activists don't matter anymore. They made a calculate decision to side with the corporations against us.

This follows a pattern of refusing to take actions (if necessary by budget reconciliation) that would improve the lives of middle class and poor Americans such jobs bills and the Employee Free Choice act. In fact, the Democrats were so leery of even allowing for the possibility of using budget reconciliation that they didn't even pass a budget this year.

The problem with the Democrats' gambit is that midterms are decided by turnout, and the GOP style policies of the Democratic Party leadership has given liberals and progressives little reason to vote at all, unless it is to vote Green.

The saddest irony is that none of the "justices" that voted for corporate meddling in elections has any legitimate right to be serving on the court at this time. Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy were involved in the theft of the 2000 election, and they should have been impeached and removed from office for it. The nominations of Roberts and Alito to the Supreme Court were invalid because George W. Bush never was legally the President of the US and therefore had no legal right to make any appointments to any government body.

Corruption leads to more corruption, which leads, in turn, to more corruption. It's no wonder our country is in so much trouble.