"Calling all jammers, hackers, ne'er do wells, travellers,
detourners, street urchins, lumpen, comedians, poets,
singers, dancers, autonomists, anarchists, reformists, and
insurrectionists! Billionaires for Bush (or Gore) is a
mass, participatory media stunt designed to focus national
attention on the big-money, corporate takeover of electoral
politics, and the ramifications of this takeover for the
poor and middle classes of America."
... or so goes the text of the e-mail spam currently circling the globe trying
to whip up a frenzy of class-consciousness and grass-roots activism.
It just might work. The Republican and Democratic Party conventions are coming
up this summer, and there are a lot of people out there who are not only mildly
disgruntled, but they've also made enough money from the new economy boom that
they can afford to take time off and protest the new economy.
Take feelings of envy, mix with a hatred of corporate welfare and a dose of
class-consciousness, bake at 350 for 30 minutes and you get the "Billionaires
for Bush (or Gore)."
From the SPAM: "Money dominates politics, this is nothing new. But the recent
massive infusion of big corporate money into electoral politics has created a
climate in which the only interests being represented are those of the economic
elite. The policy agenda of this class - characterized by deregulation,
privatization and incarceration - adds up to nothing less than a kind of
low-intensity-conflict being waged on the poor and the middle classes of this
country. It's a kind of class war, and the losers are the vast majority of the
people of America, who work more hours for less pay, have seen their parks and
schools lose funding as corporations recieve ever-larger subsidies and
tax-breaks, who can't get decent health-care for themselves or their kids, who
have seen more and more privatized prisons built as money is drained out of
social programs, and whose information is provided by fewer and fewer sources,
all corporate managed and owned. The winners are the rich, who sit in their
taxpayer-subsidized luxury boxes drinking martinis while enjoying the longest
peacetime expansion of the economy in history. New millionaires are popping up
like weeds. The gap between rich and poor has become a chasm. The final demise
of the democratic party as an alternative to the interests of the wealthiest was
signalled by Clinton's signing of the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, an act of
savagery which has resulted in thousands of poor single mothers and their
children being put out on the street. We deserve better, and will demand better.
One way to get these issues on the national agenda is to highlight the pointless
absurdity of the months-long game of political charades we are about to witness.
We can think of no better way to do this than 'BILLIONAIRES FOR BUSH (OR GORE).'
So join up today, 'because inequality isn't growing fast enough!'"
