Money Speak
Here we go again. The circumstances reported by your recent story (LEO Weekly, Dec. 7) about the firing of the commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Natural Resources indicate that action was motivated by the political contributions Gov. Steve Beshear’s re-election campaign received from coal operators. Just follow the money. This is legal because the U.S. Supreme Court says money is a form of First Amendment free speech.
As far I can tell, money as a form of communication says the same thing over and over again. “I own property worth the amount printed on this currency.” That’s why currency and bank checks are called “notes.” Money doesn’t express any thoughts, ideas, opinions, knowledge or wisdom. It only expresses the power to control property.
That kind of speech is already protected by our property rights under the Fifth Amendment. Give money additional protection under the First Amendment and it becomes a kind of super-speech that trumps public participation. Ask those with the money what they want us to do. That becomes the standard answer to our most important public issues. We need a new constitutional amendment.
Tom Louderback, Highlands
Bitch McConnell
Mitch McConnell loves to use two words when he is mentally ejaculating on the floor of the Senate: “transparency” and “accountability.” In his most recent political diatribe, he convulses apoplectically when the confirmation of Richard Cordray to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau comes, demanding transparency and accountability for a vote that he promptly filibusters. The transparency he seeks can only be had if he robs Harry Potter of his invisibility cloak to conceal his scaly hide. The “accountability” he is interested in is the brand that brought us Shermageddon, the financial collapse of 2008, and the BP oil spill where none of those “job creators” were regulated and no jobs were created. Not one has been made to answer for their crimes, but the taxpayers duly paid hundreds of billions for the lack of regulation.
McConnell is the head of a systemic fraternity of pathological liars who suggest that tax cuts for the wealthy pay for themselves, but then — with the grossest hypocrisy — demands that the payroll tax be paid for. Then they force the common folk to pay the grizzly butcher’s bill for wars he and his comrades lied to start so their chums in the defense industry could profit from the bloodshed of valiant young Americans. These putrid intellectual eunuchs then indentured our great-grandchildren to pay the Chinese credit card bill because Koch-whore Grover Norquist made them pledge allegiance to him, and the U.S. government be damned! He wants the people to believe in a diabolical philosophy that only Vince McMahon could dupe people into believing, “Let them not lick the sweet, that is their poison.” Let the 99 percent taste blood and pepper spray, right Mitch? I have seen many swinish, cold-blooded, sap-sucking cretins feasting at the Koch brothers’ trough, but you, sir, are the most contemptible corporate whore to set foot in the Senate.
Thomas Clay Jr., Jeffersonville
Rich and Poor
We already know most Republicans don’t see any problem with the growing income gap between haves and have-nots. But it is pretty pathetic when a current Gallup report indicates most Americans now say the fact that some people are rich and others are poor is not a problem, but rather is an acceptable part of our economic system. With that mindset, no wonder the middle class is shrinking and poverty is increasing.
In the 2012 presidential election, the political party that proposes economic policies to strengthen and grow the middle class is the right party to lead us out of the economic doldrums we are in. There is something dreadfully wrong with an economic system that finds wide income inequality acceptable. Like the poor, the rich we will have with us always, the difference being the rich will always have much more than enough. If the majority middle class were getting a fair shake and the rich were paying their fair share in taxes, the Occupy Wall Street movement might not be necessary.
Paul L. Whiteley Sr., St. Matthews
