Richest U.S. Senator, John Kerry, Rails Against 'Corrupting' Money in Politics in Farewell Address

Richest U.S. Senator, John Kerry, Rails Against 'Corrupting' Money in Politics in Farewell Address

John Kerry, the richest U.S. senator, railed against the "corrupting" power of money in politics in his farewell address today on the floor of the United States Senate:

"There's another challenge that we must address and it is the corrupting force of the vast sums of money necessary to run for office," said Kerry. "The unending chase for money I believe threatens to steal our democracy itself. I've used the word 'corrupting' and I want to be very clear about it: I mean by it not the corruption of individuals but a corruption of a system itself that all of us are forced to participate in against our will."

The next secretary of state added, "We should not resign ourselves, Mr. President, to a distorted system that corrodes our democracy, and this is what is contributing to the justifiable anger of the American people. They know it. They know we know it. And yet nothing happens. The truth requires that we call the corrosion of money in politics what it is -- it is a form of corruption and it muzzles more Americans than it empowers, and it is an imbalance that the world has taught us can only sow the seeds of unrest. Like the question of comity in the Senate, the influence of money in our politics also influences our credibility around the world. And so, too, does the difficulty -- the unacceptable and extraordinary difficulty we have in 2013 operating the machinery of our own democracy here at home."

Kerry is leaving the Senate to be the next secretary of state, a position that will have him flying around the world and speaking on behalf of the American people.(Heaven Help Us)

Politics corrupted money, especially after the Annis Horribilis of 1913. There were genuine problems with plutocracy going back to the origin of the Republic. But we opted for aegresct medendo (or a cure worse than the disease) by sending gubmint in to regulate wealth, lest wealth own gubmint. Now wealth owns gubmint more than other, when the seething masses aren’t using it to steal their money. Everyone uses it against everyone, you see, which doesn’t sound like the best of all regimes to me.

It’ll attract contributions to buy politicians to get at the money because the money is there. That’s what government is for, according to people like Kerry: taking money from here and sticking it over there, among other things. Whattya expect, people not to try and get at it, especially considering some of it is, in fact, theirs.

Takes money to make money. I prefer capital formation and such. But this is the system preferred by statists the world over. If they didn’t want moneyed corruption they wouldn’t mess with the economy. Then the rich would use government to invade other people and take their money the oldfashioned way. Ar least I’d be left alone.

People like Kerry... You have to wonder. Could you sleep well, at night? Could you pick up a Bible, for example, if you were Kerry, and not be afraid that it would burst into flames at your touch?

It's difficult to conceive of a greater "apology" to Hanoi, for that big "misunderstanding" we once had with them forty years ago than to appoint this wretched individual to the seat once held by Dean Acheson, Dean Rusk and Henry Kissinger.

Obama's game of the ceaseless hustle, the seemingly endless stream of outrages, faints and thrusts, boasting and threats, and self-aggrandizement, designed to distract, divide his opponents, works (with the slavish help of his groupie newsreaders).

There is no other way to explain how his nomination sailed through, and few better examples of how low the Democrat Party has sunk than for him to have received their nomination for president in 2004.

I was an activist liberal Democrat, up to the middle 1980's, right up to the point Walter Mondale became the Democrat presidential nominee in 1984, largely by suggesting the "doctrine of separation of Church and State" meant Christians should butt out of American politics, plus the fact that he was so obviously a true-believing socialist.

Then Ronald Reagan came to Texas and gave that prayer breakfast address at the opening of the GOP Convention, that year. I was already alienated and unwelcome among Democrats, so their nominee insisted. But in that speech President Reagan merely said "politics and religion are, by necessity, related," and I knew I was not the problem. The Democrats of the New Left were, and I eventually came to believe, after years of study, I was not just in the wrong Party, but that Party presented a clear and present danger to the safety of the Republic.

Six years later I finally registered as a Republican... first and foremost to oppose the Democrats, not to compete in another "league."

Now there are so many professional Republicans who insist their future success depends on surrendering the culture war, the language, etc., to the Democrats.

I still say it's spinach, and I still say to hell with it.

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