Income inequality and the need for campaign finance reform are
directly linked, of course. Despite the clear robbery of neoliberal policies
that cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations – with US productivity increasing
73.4% as opposed to wages increasing only 11.1% since 1973 – “tax reform”
(read: “tax cuts for the wealthy”) is expected to be the only legislation that
Trump’s administration and Republicans in Congress will be able to agree on. Jane
Mayer’s book Dark Money is a great
intro. into the relation of these two things, but one need only look to the sad
hypocrisy apparent in Ted Cruz’s backing Donald Trump after meeting with their mutual
donor, Robert Mercer. Shortly after Cruz’s refusal to endorse Trump at the RNC,
video of Cruz phone-banking for Trump surfaced. Mercer ultimately provided
Trump’s campaign with Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway, assets almost as
valuable as the millions in campaign donations and outside expenditure. The
military-industrial complex is of course another enormous branch of corruption
in our political system, benefiting from a ballooning defense budget for at least 25 years.
I decided to create my image based around appropriation of
an iconic image that most would recognize and that, in its way, has some interesting
function of its own. I am drawing most from Crimp’s ideas of appropriation and
how stamps function in our national discourse, especially hoping for it to
resonate with the idea of food stamps. But primarily, I was looking for the dissonance
of seeing a familiar image changed enough to catch the viewer’s eye. I doctored
the original “Forever” stamp that read “Equality - FOREVER” to be more
realistic given the disproportionate influence that corporations and the
wealthy can have in elections – especially at the state level. In 2012, for
example, candidates for House representatives who outspent their opponents won
95% of the time. So I changed the stamp’s year from “2012” to “2010,” the year
of the Citizens United supreme court decision, which allowed undisclosed and
unlimited outside expenditure in political races. The flag features corporate
logos hearkens to the Citizens United decision, which allows corporations to be seen
as legal Persons and sanctifies campaign spending as exercising their right to
free “speech.” Also, as they are in place of the stars, I hope the broader
feeling of the rich representing the people comes across. Now, for example, the
public relies on swaying big business and the rich to advocate on our behalves,
such as opposition to the Paris Climate accords and the work of billionaire Tom
Steyer in bringing spending on lobbying climate change to a level comparable to
wealthy interests such as the casino lobby. My only regret, looking back, is
finding a way to fit “99% OFF” on the price tag in MS Paint!
Resources for fighting for campaign finance reform and info:
- Teddy Lance
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