TWO PARTY DECEPTION, NOT SYSTEM
By Peter Moss,

Mike Quaid opposes Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) because he says that it would create additional parties endangering the two party system. Mike's tirade against IRV has one minuscule flaw: America's brutal might-is-right world dictatorship is ruled by one party, not two. That party has two names, two insider cliques, and has successfully deceived itself and mankind that it is a democracy. The two names, unofficial but true, are the Elephant Conservative Party and the Donkey Conservative Party. True, the DCP talks a populist line of bull, but it is just as conservative in its actions. The reason is not hard to find: both cliques are unabashed Suttonists.

The legendary Willy Sutton was asked why he robbed banks. He said "Because that's where the money is." Impeccable logic, and incidentally, it is also the guiding philosophy of the ECP/DCP. Our two party pretense is a deception, not a system. Of course, this simple truth is still known to but a few, and is not originally my discovery. In 1973, Walter Karp published "Indispensable Enemies: The Politics of Misrule in America." The book jacket summarizes American reality, then as now, 30 years later: "Collusion, not competition, characterizes the relation between Republican and Democratic parties. In fact, America has been ruled throughout this [20th] century by a bipartisan oligarchy, argues Walter Karp in this timely and important book. "Most people think that winning elections is the prime purpose and goal of our two major political parties. But Democratic leaders have been known to campaign openly for Republican senators; Republicans to ensure their own defeat by purposely putting unappealing candidates; city politicians to deliver a sizeable vote to the opposition by repudiating their party's gubernatorial choice. Indispensable Enemies shows that winning and losing are equally effective means by which both Republican and Democratic party leaders gain power to control the elected representatives of the citizenry.

"This well documented analysis of power in America tells which men have the power, how they gained it, and what they do to keep it. Bypassing political rhetoric to investigate the actions of politicians and party leaders, the author shows how political phenomena as minute as a primary election in east Tennessee, as large in scope as the Cold War, as perennial as the power structure in Congress, as puzzling to historians as Roosevelt's disastrous "blunder" in attempting to pack the Supreme Court are the direct result of the exercise of oligarchic power -- power usurped from the people and used by those who possess it to maintain their own positions."

Of course, Karp's book was not completely novel. Former Senator William E. Borah of Idaho said: "Money has come to be the moving power in American politics ... Some years ago, politicians got into the habit of seeking contributions from men of great wealth ... it was inevitable, if large sums were to be given, that large sums would have to be returned in some way. Hence, money and politicians joined forces, and money has its say in shaping legislation and in administering the laws of the country ... It is a fearful national evil and will in the end, if not controlled, destroy the government of the people and substitute therefor, a government of the few -- the few who have sufficient money to buy the government." [p.71 in "If the Gods Had Meant Us to Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates" by Jim Hightower, © 2000]. Senator Borah's forecast was made in 1926 and is two years older than I.

Not in Vermont you say? Have you forgotten Fred Tuttle? According to an Associated Press item titled "Just Like Movie: Retired Farmer Wins Vermont GOP Senate Primary" dated Sept. 9, 1998, Fred Tuttle, a retired dairy farmer said he would spend only $16 on his tongue-in-cheek campaign but defeated a millionaire corporate consultant Tuesday for the Republican nomination to challenge Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy. Millionaire Jack McMullen, age 56, who recently moved to Vermont from Massachusetts, lost to Tuttle, age 79, who became a celebrity when he starred in a neighbor's low-budget movie starring Tuttle in his blue bib overalls, playing a down-on-his-luck retired dairy farmer who runs for Congress because he needs the money. The item does not name the neighbor movie maker, nor who put him up to it. I believe the Vermont DEM and REP party elders staged the Tuttle job because Leahy is an obedient conservative party member while McMullen was a wild card.

For those who would like some more current examples: if Democrats were a true opposition party, they would have successfully demanded a binding national referendum on the war of blood for Iraqi-oil-of-mass-pollution, enjoying bi-partisan and media mis-representation under guise of weapons of mass destruction. A true opposition party would have successfully demanded that Bush and his clique who do not believe the UN inspectors, should be parachuted into Iraq and be left there until they find the weapons they claim are there. And no opposition party could possibly acquiesce in tax cuts for the rich and no estate tax and no dividend tax. DCP are in collusion with RCP and both take money from billionaires and their lobbies, because Elephant or Donkey, they are all Suttonists and that's where the money is.

So much for Mike Quaid's two party system. There is and can be only one valid criticism of my argument: it's true and you know it's true. Where money rules, plutocracy reigns. I am determined to speak truth to power, because I believe that eventually the voters will listen and vote for a better future through proservative or public interest legislation.