From the mouth of Rove

To the Telegram:

It was especially surreal to hear an icon of morality like Karl Rove; self-righteously chastise Democrats for actually wanting the Chamber of Commerce, in the interest of fairness, to reveal the sources of large donations. Apparently it is alright for any corporation or large donors to make any covert donation they want but knowing where such donations come from is taboo.

Gee, those poor people at Exxon Mobile, for example, would be so inconvenienced by revealing what they do with their 60 billion in profits each year. What if people actually are allowed to know which corporations are effectively buying the elections? How can the public be allowed to know anything? After all, this is a democracy, not North Korea. Those poor babies on Wall Street would have to increase their bonus packages and golden parachutes just to forget the terrible humility of being asked to be honest. If we allowed the KKK, hypothetically, to buy an election, what right would the public have to embarrass Klansmen by revealing that they financed it? Why should we care about people who promote hate crimes? It’s a free country isn’t it?

Yes, the first two paragraphs were intended as satire and sarcasm.

We can count on masters of spin like Karl Rove to make us believe right is wrong and wrong is right. Any kind of lie or fabrication is fair to him if Republicans are victorious, as they were this November – because the little guy will never know how.

I am personally glad to live in a country like America, and I believe the Supreme Court has always attempted to hand down its rulings in an unbiased way, but its’ recent ruling involving the rights of Corporate entities to act as a single person and donate unlimited funds to any candidate of choice, or any party of choice, has got to be the most misguided use of power in the court’s history. It has allowed, in my opinion, people like Karl Rove to wail about the unfairness of merely providing the public disclosure of funds, as if being required to be truthful, is an unforgivable transgression. Should we try to rationalize all of this shady dealing with the latest conspiracy theory?

How about this one – since banks know their practices will be tolerated more by Republicans, they are refusing to loosen sufficient financial resources, no matter how Obama pleads for them to. Once conservative forces regain control, we’ll suddenly see a large influx of support from the private sector.

Whatever happened to the American ideal of promoting equality and fairness? Why has campaign fairness been canceled by a bizarre court ruling? Karl Rove raising millions just by tilting a level playing field with the weight of special interest money. As the humorous commercial about insurance involves a little girl who is treated unfairly illustrates, even a child can see that something isn’t right.

Peter W. Johnson,

Superior

Tags: opinion, letters