“If voting made a difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.”
—Mark Twain
That’s a great quote. But is it really true?
Well… if voting DIDN’T make a difference, political interests wouldn’t pay so much trying to acquire them. “Your vote doesn’t count” is the big stripey lie told by political gamesters to keep opposing voters at home on election night.
Corporations spend billions of dollars trying to influence votes.
If their agenda was always served identically no matter who got into office— why would they bother? To the corporate mentality, every single penny spent is a direct affront to the bottom line. No one spends that kind of money trying to pay for something that doesn’t matter. The answer is, of course, that different corporations have different agendas, and want to install the people who will support them. Hence why the Koch Brothers will fund a certain party, whereas Apple will fund a different set of candidates.
Votes matter because they are required to elect opposing corporate-sponsored politicians and agenda platforms. They therefore have a measurable value. If there was suddenly a 100% voter turn out rate at every election in this country, there would be massive political tidal shifts. Meanwhile, actions are being taken in this country right now both to selectively suppress voter involvement and to re-enfranchise potential voters. Legislation is being debated to redraw district lines and gerrymander whole states.
What is the key element of every part of the above activity?
The vote. And the process whereby American citizens do so.
For the record: I think any corporation that blackmails the taxpayers of its own municipality into paying that corporation money under threat of purposely refusing to employ the people of that municipality— in order to increase the profit margin of that corporation’s owners so it can export more American money into overseas tax shelters, removing it from the system so it can no longer benefit American tax payers and citizens in any way at all— does NOT have the best interests of its country, or its employees, or anyone except the shareholders, at heart.
Systematized tax rebates allow corporations to funnel OUR AMERICAN TAX MONEY directly out of this country into overseas banks where it can never again be taxed to build roads, pay for hospitals, or do any of the other things that tax money is intended to do. We pay the corporations four separate times: first, when we buy their goods and services, secondly when the government takes our tax money and pays it directly back to them in corporate subsidies, thirdly when we are forced to pay higher taxes to cover the shortfall created when they don’t pay their proper share of taxes due to tax relief incentives, and fourth when the money they extract from the American economy vanishes from the system where it can never again be taxed or replaced in the system to support and encourage the economy through investment and interchange.
There used to be regulations that prevented all this. The corporations paid the politicians to remove them so the great money drain could occur. And it still is, now to the point where it’s shoving the formerly middle class down into near-poverty and brutally squeezing the small middle class we have left, who are forced to pay the majority of the taxes.
It’s a great money suck. But the media keeps the masses distracted so nobody really sees it, when it’s seriously the most obvious fucking thing on the planet. They cry “protect the job creators!” and everybody clams up about it, as American wages wane and the un-American multinationals send jobs out of the country, while milking American consumers but putting nothing BACK IN.
Votes matter. But do they make a difference? They obviously CAN. And have been historically proven to do so, in the past. Corporate interests and big money still subvert and manipulate our government every single day— but there isn’t one big single corporation running everything behind the scenes yet. Maybe one day, even one day soon— but not yet. Despite the loud partisan rhetoric, the actual differences between political parties are practically illusory nowadays— but the power of the vote still makes a difference, if enough people bother to use it.