Organized Money Is Dangerous To Democracy

The question that is constantly being asked, particularly on the talking heads on television, is "what do the Democrats have to do to regain political power?" What does it take?

What it takes is something very, very simple. Donald Trump showed this during the Republican primary and during the election. When Trump came out and called banksters killers and said they're robbing you blind. He said he was going to do away with carried interest.

Of course he didn't. He didn't do anything about the banksters, in fact wants to further deregulate the banksters. But he talked about it, he said the things that got him elected.

Now, the difference is, Democrats actually believe this stuff and actually will legislate based on this.

So, you want to know, Democrats, what to do to get elected, to get and hold power? Listen to the guy who was elected president of the United States four times - the only person in history to be elected president of the United States four times in a row - Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

One week before the election of 1936 when he was running for re-election, FDR said this about how he took on the rich:

"We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace--business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob."

And then Franklin Roosevelt talks about what he did about this:

"Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me--and I welcome their hatred."

The applause for Franklin Roosevelt just goes on and on and on. And then he says I took on the rich people on your behalf in my first administration, and my next administration I'm really going to do it. Here he is:

"I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master."

And they did. He had passed Social Security, he had passed the the National Labor Relations Act, just massive changes to the American economy and the American landscape that made a functional modern democracy possible. It's remarkable.

So, Democrats, if you want to know how to win an election, talk like this. Here's FDR again:

"Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing."

How is that not our banksters today? And then his gentle warning to Americans, this is so brilliant...

"Let me warn you and let me warn the Nation against the smooth evasion which says, 'Of course we believe all these things; we believe in social security; we believe in work for the unemployed; we believe in saving homes. Cross our hearts and hope to die, we believe in all these things; but we do not like the way the present Administration is doing them. Just turn them over to us. We will do all of them- we will do more of them we will do them better; and, most important of all, the doing of them will not cost anybody anything.'"

Tell me that today the Republicans aren't playing the same scam they were in the 1920s and the 1930s. It's amazing.

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