Undoing the Imperial Presidency: An Interview with David Swanson [1]
By John W. Whitehead | Old Speak [1]
David took a few minutes to sit down with OldSpeak to discuss his views on the emerging imperial presidency.
John W. Whitehead: As I look around America today, I see a government that doesn't listen to us anymore. It ignores us. On the other side of that coin, I see an apathetic populace that just lets things happen. You, on the other hand, attempt to irritate government officials and force them to respond to the citizenry. And you try to get people involved, as well.
David Swanson: Absolutely. I want to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. We all think—and we are led to think by various organizations we get involved with for noble purposes—that we have a government that more or less represents us and it is split into two teams. That's wrong. The teams are us and the government. Just recently, the White House instructed Congress to strip out of its financial regulations bill a measure that might have allowed shareholders to put some restraints on CEO salaries. That was just not permissible. In response to the Citizen's United ruling by the Supreme Court for unlimited corporate money in politics, the Democrats in Congress came back with this very, very limited tame measure, the main point of which was to allow us to know who was funding the propaganda. This is the Disclose Act. Nancy Pelosi just took that out of consideration, at least for the moment, basically at the instructions of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce. So the teams are you, me and the rest of us versus elected officials. Those are the two teams. It is not Republicans versus Democrats because there is just no difference between them. Read more [1].