I keep reading these pleas from Thom and others to "change things", but little action results. Because of Citizen's United, the corporatists will have a lock on our political system, but much of the money they get comes from those people who refuse to vote with their money. American's transfer over a trillion dollars every year from their collective bank accounts to the oil, coal and NG industries to provide dirty energy for their cars, homes and businesses.

It's now quite easy, and affordable, to switch your energy to renewable electricity and your cars to electric. When you do both of those things, you eliminate over 90% of the pollution for which you are responsible, and you stop giving them your money. The money you save by using clean, renewable energy is yours to spend on local goods and services generating thousands of good jobs in your community instead of sending it out of state to those corporatists.

You can then donate a portion of your savings to politicians who support your positions. When enough people do this, things will change. We will not succeed if our side continues to fund our enemies.

WARNING!! The Presidents plan is going to cripple the middle class. The tax loophole that he wants to abolish concerning living Trusts will only save $320 Billion over 10 years. That is less than 1/3 of our military budget for one year. Yet it will cost the recipients of Trusts in this country an average of 25% of their inheritance. Since the inheritance of Billionaires usually take the form of real estate, businesses, or Swiss bank accounts this law will have no effect on them whatsoever. It will only affect law abiding US middle class citizens. Shame on the Democratic party for entertaining this abomination!

http://www.npr.org/2015/01/19/378289335/white-house-rolls-out-tax-proposals-before-state-of-the-union-address

Hate to be a broken record, but as I posted a while back, nothing much will change until we push hard for a constitutional amendment making it the law of the land that ONLY public funds can be used for the public vote? NO outside money allowed. With all funding coming from a small obligatory yearly tax chipped in by all citizens, each candidate would receive the same amount of money and time on public radio and television, effectively leveling the playing field. In one fell swoop, that would take care of the problem of corrupting big money flowing into our election system.

Until that happens, as Thom commented, we'll keep getting "the best leaders money can buy"----who of course won't represent us regular citizens.

Alvord Al

delster, good point. Conservatives "conserve" , maintain what is there so it works, understand there is a cost to keeping what you have in working order, not to be wasteful, to know what you have now has to be preserved, to ensure what you have now will be there for the next generations.

That costs money, often tax money, and thems that profit from the results are obliged to pay for it. It "makes sense" that the people that benefit the most ought to pay more. Yeah, the owner of the concern that earns a bigger income ought to bear the burden for the road, or the school, or post office, or the utility that enables them to live at a higher standard of living. As well, if something is needed in the community that isn't directly covered by "taxes", thems that have more, ought to contribute more. It is said that in some nations, the better off understand that and call it noblesse oblige, or the obligation of the nobility. There is no nobility in the States, but the idea is the same.

interesting, too, how the most otherwise "egregious" captains of industry at the turn of the twentieth century, Rockefeller, "tithed" his income, and and then some. Rockefeller's alter ego, lived on ten percent of his income leaving the rest to philanthropy. Henry Ford I, as well as his grandson, "the deuce", Henry Ford II, also weren't so bad. A cursive reading of the bio of Herbert Hoover, one of the most unappreciated presidents, tells that he was the beneficiary of one of the first scholarships offered by Stanford Univesity, founded by another philantropist, Leland Stanford. Hoover believied in Voluntarism, that people would understand the needs, and each one gave according to their ability to "give" for the sake of the Welfare of society.

Yeah, conservatives in those days supported public education, public roads, public libraries, anything that promoted the Commons. Somehow today that ethic has been replaces with "Greed". We see the results--when is the next bridge going to fall, and who is going to get the blame, the neo-Conservatives that called for lower taxes, or big government that wasted dwindling tax dollars on subsidies to neo-Conservatives to help them get through their day.

All we can do most of the time is pray. Then again, if we speak up . . . something might be done.

Prof Richard Wolff often touts the obvious successes of Franklin Roosevelt but he does hold out some criticism for his failure to take steps to make permanent changes to our system of government that would prevent a future replay of the economic disaster that we came to label as the Great Depression ! Roosevelt's death in 1945 opened the flood gates for those economic interests who had great wealth and the motivation to retain control of that great wealth by buying unrestricted access to the levers of power in Washington. Post WWII America held all the cards as our manufacturing base and infrastructure were the only ones completely untouched by the ravages of war. Yet, political forces were rallied that began a vicious attack on growing Communist and Socialist organizations whose right to free speech was protected by the Constitution. Labor Unions who had risen to power in the 1930s to represent a growing chorus of oppressed workers in this country were immediately assailed by the Taft Hartley Act of 1947 that severely limited the rights of working class Americans and that act remains in place today. The 91% tax levied on the wealthy to pay for the New Deal, the restoration of America from the effects of the Great Depression, and the funding required to fight WWII came back to the wealthy Capitalist manufacturers and bankers ten times over in the early fifties when America was the only fully functioning economy on the planet ! What did we do with that enormous advantage, we started a forty year long Cold War against Russia, one of our allies in WWII. The Capitalist paranoia over the potential loss of their total control over the economy of the entire planet has kept us at war ever since, and this has continued at the risk of our potential economic peril even though Communist Russia ceased to exist twenty three years ago. It appears that even the rich have bogey men that they cannot deal !