^ It's not necessarily the elite that cause that spiral.  In many cases, it's the little people that are co-enablers of the elite's ability to cause such damage, i.e. the US Political System.

But the sheeple for the most part vote along party lines as they are told, instead of voting for the best person for the office.

And the Feds have spoken their word...

At least *I* don't think it was coincidence.

I think this nails it:

http://boingboing.net/2012/01/19/lawrence-lessigs-salt-talk.html

"Lessig said the type of corruption rampant in the US Congress is not the old type of bribery, where congressional representatives had safes in their offices to hold the cash they received for voting in certain directions. That is now illegal and eliminated. This new type of corruption is more subtle, indirect and harder to outlaw…. the real money to be made in Congress is the relative fortune to be made as a lobbyist after leaving office. The differential in wages between a staff member and a lobbyist has escalated a hundred fold in the past 40 years. Now 43% of staff go on to become lobbyists. The promise of a well-paying job working for corporate interests later is enough to warp voting now."

I did a double-take when I read this: MPAA Directly & Publicly Threatens Politicians Who Aren't Corrupt Enough To Stay Bought

Hard to believe - this seems quite brazen.

I like this response from publicknowledge, in the link provided here: Public Knowledge Advises Movie Lobby To Stop Threatening Politicians

This certainly follows what many people assumed was happening, and fits with the anonymous comments from studio execs that they will stop contributing to Obama, but to be so blatant about this kind of corruption and money-for-laws politics in the face of an extremely angry public is a really, really, really tone deaf response from Dodd.

It shows, yet again, that he just doesn't get it. People were protesting not just because of the content of these bills, but because of the corrupt process of big industries like Dodd's "buying" politicians and "buying" laws. To then come out and make that threat explicit isn't a way to fix things or win back the public. It's just going to get them more upset, and to recognize just how corrupt this process is.

I know that this thread is about Censorship of the Internet in general, but I read something curious today - Health department raids community picnic and destroys all food with bleach - that makes me wonder if that Internet censorship is not just a single narrow aspect of a much larger overall strategy of state censorship in the US, driven presumably by commercial interests rather than by genuine state security interests.

I am at a loss otherwise as to how to explain how this seemingly sort of Stazi invasion can be condoned, let alone authorised in law as an act by a government agency against a perfectly law-abiding "feast of friends" (I think this is what it is called).
What sort of thing is this action? Is it true? Was it necessary because a crime had been or was about to be committed? Was it  a "Monsanto" Stazi? Who knows?
Maybe I am missing something that would help me to to understand that it all makes perfectly good sense, but at this point it seems to be a perverse and frightening form of censorship. I can't imagine such a thing happening in New Zealand, though after the recent terrifyingly excessive and exemplary Dotcom raid/arrest, the NZ police have demonstrated that anything is possible.

Did you see this update IainB?

Quote from: Renegade on March 02, 2012, 06:31 AM

There is another agenda there...forced malnutrition.

Well, that might explain it, but I'm not so sure, though there does seem to be something very odd about it.
It's an organic vegetable farm for goodness' sake!

I didn't realise it until I read this that organic farmers are under attack in this state to the extent that they need a legal defence fund (Is that right?), and the health department official concerned may have become unhinged or possibly been exacting some kind of vicarious revenge for this.

Looks like your "Health Department" (Southern Nevada Health Department) over there might actually be potentially injurious to public health and - using this farm raid an example - definitely injurious to public legal and/or Constitutional rights.
Hopefully, it could only happen in America. Sheesh.