In a recent survey of the big Wall Street political donors who usually back the GOP, most of the big money people responded to the prospect of a Jeb Bush vs. Hillary Clinton contest by saying “Meh. Either way’s fine.” But if Jeb decides not to run and Chris Christie doesn’t recover from Bridgegate, the financial industry will probably back Clinton in preference to the loose cannons of the Tea Party. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who held Clinton fundraisers in 2008, would reportedly be “very happy” with either Bush or Clinton.

And frankly, it’s hard to see why Wall Street would object to an establishment Democrat at all. Clinton, in a closed speech to Goldman Sachs executives last year, told them exactly what they wanted to hear. Democratic administrations are just as prone as Republicans — at least! — to packing cabinets with Goldman Sachs and Citigroup alumni. And while they talk a good game, in practice the “progressive” wing of the party is about the same. Senator Elizabeth Warren, leader of the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” recently expressed grave concern over the number of Obama administration appointees from Citigroup — right before voting to confirm Goldman Sachs veteran Stanley Fischer’s appointment to the Federal Reserve. See, Warren may rubber-stamp Wall Street control of government policy just like a DFC Democrat — but she feels really, really guilty about it.

Meanwhile, Bill Scher at The Week (“Ralph Nader wants liberals to back Rand Paul. Don’t do it,” May 1, 2014) sees corporate CEOs as much more congenial allies for liberals than libertarian civil liberties activists (he warns against Nader’s call to “side with government-hating libertarians over government-accepting corporations”). In contrast to Nader’s stated goal of “dismantling the Corporate State,” Scher argues that liberalism achieved its quiet victories through the 20th century with “some degree of corporate support,” and that the “coalition to nurture” for liberals in the future is “the CEOs.”

See, business loves the stability and certainty that comes with a state-regulated economy, along with the reassurance “that they will remain profitable.” One item in particular that makes both liberals’ and corporate CEOs’ hearts go pitty-pat is “investment in infrastructure”: the Interstate Highway System and the giant Army Corps of Engineers dams that Rachel Maddow talks about in her “great things” TV spots. Of course big business likes to “fund infrastructure.” Heavily subsidized, high-volume transportation infrastructure was what centralized the American economy in the 20th century under the control of a few dozen oligopoly corporations, and enabled big box retailers to destroy Main Street.

So if you’re looking for an “anti-corporate” party in American politics, there isn’t one.

This photo came from “Being Liberal” on Facebook. My friend posted it with some comments about how problematic it is for liberals to denigrate the rural poor who are then scooped up by the republican party. But I am going to be waaaay more harsh.

I am so tired of liberal/democratic/progressive classism.

What is your evidence that the democratic party is so great for poor people? You know who are in prison right now? Poor people. You know who put a whole lot of them there? Democrats like Bill Clinton, “the incarceration president.” When one of the political parties suggests dismantling the prison industrial complex and the military industrial complex, you let me know.

All this voting “against your economic interest” is a load of crap.

Poor people vote in far fewer numbers than rich people. And it so happens that Kentucky, the state being bashed here, has some of the lowest voter turnout in the nation. Sometimes people don’t vote because they have been permanently disenfranchised due to their incarceration. (Kentucky has the 6th highest rate of disenfranchisement in the country.) Sometimes they don’t vote because they cannot get to the poll. Sometimes they don’t vote because they don’t have ID. Sometimes they don’t vote because they know it won’t make a damn bit of difference in their everyday lives.

Anyone who wants to point out that the poorest states are republican should be slapped in the face with a list of the states that have the largest income inequality. My home, the resolutely democratic DC, is at the top of the inequality list. It is followed by New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. And the inequality is only getting worse. Where’s that voting against your economic interest nonsense now? Or are you proud that the rich people in your state/city earn so much that average income figures hide the hideous poverty of the people who clean the houses and mow the lawns of the elite?

If the only thing that you are considering when you vote is your own economic interest then you are a complete asshole. When I make decisions in my life, I make them based on my values and conscience. I don’t make them based on how much money will be in my bank account. (If you need proof, look no farther than my bank balance.) For a whole lot of you, voting your “economic interest” really means protecting your privilege.

In my experience, the people who post pictures like this have almost never been to the “fly over” states or bothered to speak to the people who live there. Their ideas of the rural, white poor come from media coverage – which is apparently oh so accurate when it comes to this one group of society. Or maybe they are just watching bad television that uses “hicks” as the villains because it is a socially acceptable meme.

If you haven’t seen or experienced something for yourself, you should really hold your judgement. Reading a study about a community does not make you knowledgeable. It is not o.k. to dismiss people as ignorant because they don’t have a degree or because they go to church. It is not o.k. if we are talking about poor, indigenous people in Bolivia. It is not o.k if we are talking about poor, white people in Kentucky.

The truth is that liberal, “educated” people need the low-class, ignorant hick meme. So long as they exist to denigrate, nobody has to acknowledge that racism, classism, and sexism are systemic and will require a complete upheaval of the systems that give so many liberals the privileges they currently enjoy. As was pointed out so well in the comments of this post, when a lot of white liberals say “racist,” what they usually mean is low-class.

Our problems are not going to be resolved through party politics. They sure as hell aren’t going to be resolved by shitting all over people you have never met. In fact, I would think a prerequisite to democracy would be actually speaking to the other people involved.

Perhaps, if people stopped being such ignorant snobs, they would find out that there is a whole lot of knowledge, mutual aid, and radical thinking that they are totally missing out on. Maybe the people who want to save themselves from mountaintop removal use Christian langauge in West Virginia. Maybe some of the biggest cooperatives serve the needs of (oh my gosh) republicans in the south. Does that make those efforts worthless?

Maybe we all have a lot to learn.

/end rant

Among the most interesting features of the debate on health care in the United States is the relationship it assumes between the major corporate players and the federal government. The mainstreams of both right and left perpetuate the accepted orthodoxy — that the two are locked in a permanent clash, with the state as a bulwark preventing the free market from leaving the poor and elderly without medical care.

The foregoing account breaks down, however, when we observe that, as a practical matter, the relationship between powerhouse business interests and the central state is far from adversarial. Health insurance, pharmaceutical and medical supply companies spend millions lobbying policymakers for just the kinds of legal privileges that have cut competitive pressure off at its knees.

Following the money, it isn’t hard to understand why consumers and especially vulnerable groups are an afterthought in the corporate quest for higher profits; the most entrenched commercial groups have the state bought and paid for, outlawing meaningful competition that could actually rescue us from the crisis we’re witnessing in health care. In fact, among all of the billions that American corporations spend on lobbying each year,  Big Pharma leads the pack, spending about $2.6 billion from 1998 to 2012.

If you wonder what that kind of money buys from the country’s “public servants,” the United States has some of the strictest, most stifling intellectual property laws in the world, granting rich companies exclusive rights that translate to monopoly mark-ups for consumers. And if you think that the coming implementation of the Affordable Care Act — better known as Obamacare — will allay the pain of those in need, guess again.

The centerpieces of the new law are a powerful inducement for pressing the states to expand a decaying Medicaid system and a rule forcing everyone to buy health insurance. Rather than hanging the poor out to dry by funneling them into Medicaid, where they’ll receive notoriously low quality treatment, market anarchists suggest simply eliminating the special, anti-competitive rules that now fill our supposed “free market” system.

End the subsidies, regulatory and licensing barriers to market entry, and extreme intellectual property rules (just to name a few broad categories of privilege), and we’ll start to see a very different health care system and level of quality coverage. With legitimately free and open competition, consumers will no longer be fed directly to a handful of oligopoly firms in each state, and the poor won’t be relegated to a rickety Medicaid system with such low reimbursement rates that many providers won’t even accept it. Instead, the real welfare queens (to redeem an ugly phrase), the privileged corporate elite, would see their profit margins dwindle in the face of experimentation by free individuals and communities.

Market anarchists understand that a real change, one that would actually benefit ordinary, working people, requires an end to the state’s protectorship of big money interest — which indeed is the state’s ultimate purpose. Anything short of that, and we’re leaving the problem and all attending future crises in place.

While Marquardt is praised by establishment liberal organizations like Human Rights Campaign and Equality Utah for supporting LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) rights, her company profits from the disproportionate caging and abuse of LGBT people, especially transgender women.

As I’ve written previously, LGBT youth are disproportionately likely to be homeless, putting them at increased risk of criminalization. Furthermore, the poverty inflicted on members of the LGBT community through employment and housing discrimination increases their risk of incarceration. Transgender people have their risk of incarceration further exacerbated by being profiled for “prostitution” charges and sometimes even locked up for using public restrooms. There is also homophobic and transphobic discrimination in America’s immigration system, leading LGBT immigrants to be disproportionately sent to immigration detention centers, which MTC profits from.

Once locked in prison or an immigration detention center, LGBT inmates face horrific abuses. A 2007 study found that “[s]exual assault is 13 times more prevalent among transgender inmates, with 59 percent reporting being sexually assaulted.” The same study found that 67% of LGBT inmates reported being sexually assaulted. That’s 15 times the rate for their straight and cisgender counterparts.

Transgender inmates are also often placed in solitary confinement due to their gender identity. Voices across the political spectrum recognize solitary confinement as a form of torture. Yes, Jane Marquardt, a leading Democrat and “LGBT rights activist,” profits from the torture of transgender people.

There have also been abuses unique to facilities Marquardt’s company operated. An investigative report by PBS’s FRONTLINE found that MTC’s Willacy Detention Center was a site of rampant sexual abuse, and that guards were covering it up. When activists from the Prison Divestment Campaign told Jane Marquardt in a cordial meeting that this had happened in her facilities, she looked shocked and said “That would be terrible if that were happening in our facilities!” When we told her it was and handed her a copy of FRONTLINE’s report, she changed the subject.

MTC has not just been corrupt in their operation of prisons, but in their political donations. They donate money to politicians whom they expect will open new for-profit prisons. Furthermore, they donated to supporters of Arizona’s infamous anti-immigrant bill SB 1070, which would send new unwilling immigrant customers to their cages.

When activists called out Marquardt for profiting from human rights abuses, Democrats were appalled not at Jane’s profiteering, but that anyone would be so rude as to shout about it. Yet the Democratic Party claims to stand for immigrants, the poor, people of color, and the LGBT community, all of which are groups that Jane Marquardt’s company cages and abuses for profit.

People who care about equality and human rights should see this as a wake up call. They should abandon the Democratic Party, and instead resist the corrupt system that enables Jane Marquardt to profit by caging human beings.