FUCK THE VOTE

From CounterPunch:

The Real Reason Rock the Vote is Falling Apart

Duhigg attributes the crisis to overspending in non-election years and to the opportunism of the music industry executives who dominate the group's board and use Rock the Vote primarily to promote their own artists.

Rock the Vote has a more fundamental problem: It has hitched its star to politicians who are completely hostile to the needs and desires of the American people. For example, check out the political hacks it has chosen to bestow its Rock the Nation Award upon.

There's Bill Clinton, who presided over the 1996 Democratic Party convention which removed universal health care from the party platform even though more than 70 per cent of Americans are in favor of it.

There's Hilary Rosen, who was head of the RIAA at the time she was honored. Rosen rocked the nation by launching the war against file-sharing. Sharing music on-line is, to say the least, wildly popular.

There's Hillary Clinton, who, despite the unpopularity of the war in Iraq, has called for sending 80,000 more of our sons and daughters to the slaughter.

Click here for the rest.

It's not just that these politicians "are completely hostile to the needs and desires of the American people," which, of course, they are; it's that these guys support corporations over average Americans. Obviously, this makes complete sense because Rock the Vote is a corporate organization. Of course, they're going to support politicians who favor their goals. Really that's the same problem facing the Democratic Party itself, corporations over people. Taking it one step further, that's the problem facing America overall. Our entire federal government now seems to be run of, by, and for the corporations. The idea behind or justification for that is that it somehow makes America more prosperous, which trickles down to average people. But then, that's not at all true. Corporations, by definition, exist to maximize profits for their shareholders: there's nothing in that mission about helping people out; indeed, allowing that profit to trickle down is a disservice to shareholders, and corporations have been very clever these last couple of decades about making sure that they, and not the people, keep the lion's share of earnings. Anyway, the point to this little rant is that corporations and democracy don't mix. There is no such thing as a corporate sponsored group advocating democracy, and Rock the Vote was always a fraud.

Nice to see that it's falling apart finally.

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