Could You Imagine A U.S. President Saying "We Have To Run People Who Love Money Too Much Out Of Politics?"

To be one of the 50 richest Members of Congress last year, you would have had to have a net worth north of $7.47 million. Everyone knows longtime criminal and former car thief Darrell Issa is the richest Member of Congress- worth between $300 and $400 million dollars. Less well-known is that at least a third of Congress are millionaires (including half the senators). The minimum net worth of a Member of Congress is close to half a million dollars, considerably above the net worth of the people whose interests they are supposedly looking out for. Americans' median wealth is a mere $44,900 per adult-- half have more, half have less. As Bernie Sanders keeps reminding us, Americans are having trouble building wealth because wages have stagnated for more than a decade-- due, in great part, to a successful conservative war against unions and to pernicious corporate trade policies embraced by both party Establishments. Median household income was $51,017 in 2012, compared to $56,080 in 1999. The political system is rigged-- at every step along the way-- in favor of the wealthy. Both the DCCC and the NRCC go out of their way to discourage working class and middle class candidates while recruiting wealthy candidates, more often than not, with fiscally conservative world views.

José Mujica, once an urban guerrilla fighter with the Tupamaros, was elected president of Uruguay in 2010, beating his conservative opponent, former President, Luis Lacalle, 52-43%. In his first speech as president-elect, he said "it is a mistake to think that power comes from above, when it comes from within the hearts of the masses."

He has declined to live in the opulent presidential palace or use its staff and instead lives in modest farm house on the outskirts of Montevideo where he and his wife raise and sell chrysanthemums. He drives an old VW bug and he donates 90% of his $12,000 annual presidential salary to charities benefiting poor people. In October the Huffington Post ran a story by Roque Planas about why Mujica believes the rich should be kicked out of politics.

People who like money too much ought to be kicked out of politics, Uruguayan President José Mujica told CNN en Español in an interview posted online Wednesday.

“We invented this thing called representative democracy, where we say the majority is who decides,” Mujica said in the interview. “So it seems to me that we [heads of state] should live like the majority and not like the minority.”

Dubbed the “World’s Poorest President” in a widely circulated BBC piece from 2012, Mujica reportedly donates 90 percent of his salary to charity. Mujica’s example offers a strong contrast to the United States, where in politics the median member of Congress is worth more than $1 million and corporations have many of the same rights as individuals when it comes to donating to political campaigns.

“The red carpet, people who play-- those things,” Mujica said, mimicking a person playing a cornet. “All those things are feudal leftovers. And the staff that surrounds the president are like the old court.”

Mujica explained that he didn’t have anything against rich people, per se, but he doesn’t think they do a good job representing the interests of the majority of people who aren’t rich.

“I’m not against people who have money, who like money, who go crazy for money,” Mujica said. “But in politics we have to separate them. We have to run people who love money too much out of politics, they’re a danger in politics… People who love money should dedicate themselves to industry, to commerce, to multiply wealth. But politics is the struggle for the happiness of all.”

Asked why rich people make bad representatives of poor people, Mujica said: “They tend to view the world through their perspective, which is the perspective of money. Even when operating with good intentions, the perspective they have of the world, of life, of their decisions, is informed by wealth. If we live in a world where the majority is supposed to govern, we have to try to root our perspective in that of the majority, not the minority.”

Mujica has become well known for rejecting the symbols of wealth. In an interview in May, he lashed out against neckties in comments on Spanish television that went viral.

“The tie is a useless rag that constrains your neck,” Mujica said during the interview. “I’m an enemy of consumerism. Because of this hyperconsumerism, we’re forgetting about fundamental things and wasting human strength on frivolities that have little to do with human happiness.”

WILL HENRY KISSINGER'S CRIMINAL & PREDATORY FOREIGN AFFAIRS FINALLY CATCH UP WITH HIM?

I'm not an expert on Uruguay-- after my 2 day visit a few months ago-- but I did notice that it's a very moderate country in all ways. The weather is. So are the politics. And you don't see these huge discrepancies in wealth. I'm sure there must be some very rich people-- what country doesn't have those kinds of dangerous parasites-- but you don't notice the disparities between rich and poor in Uruguay the way you do in Argentina and Brazil, the two giant countries little Uruguay is sandwiched between. I recall that they used to call themselves "the Switzerland of South America," and there are no mountains.

It's a pretty homogeneous country-- like 95% European, mostly Spanish and Italian. (The early Portuguese and Spanish settlers killed all the native inhabitants.) In the mid-60s the U.S. started training the Uruguayan military and police in the fine arts of suppression and torture. See, and you thought it was all Bush, Cheney and Gonzales who got that going! By 1968 there was a state of emergency followed in 1972 with a suspension of civil liberties. In 1973 there was a U.S.-backed military coup. Under U.S. tutelage the Switzerland of South America soon had the highest per capita percentage of political prisoners in the world. In 1984 massive protests broke out against the U.S.-backed dictatorship and democracy resumed that year.

Why the little history lesson today about a small far away country with no oil that you'll probably never visit? It's another in a growing list of country's Henry Kissinger will never be able to sit his fat ass down in again. Kissinger is wanted for questioning in France, Argentina and Chile. You see... the right wing military dictatorships/U.S. proxies in Latin America were worried that popular resentment against the feudal system and grinding poverty would lead to democratic reforms, especially in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile and Bolivia. The U.S. helped them start a state terror system called Operation Condor which was used to assassinate and terrorize anyone who opposed the fascists.

One of my friends, Amelia Lafferriere, who has done some writing on my political blog, was imprisoned by the Argentine junta as part of this operation. (George Bush I, then CIA director, warned Congressman Ed Koch that he was an assassination target of Uruguayan fascists in the mid-70s. He was sponsoring legislation to cut off US military assistance to Uruguay because of egregious human rights abuses. By the early 1970's Henry Kissinger seemed to be directing the whole program, ordering hits on politicians, journalists, labor leaders, even the Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army, Rene Schneider. (Schneider's family is suing Kissinger now.)


Now, as for Uruguay, which currently has a dedicated democratic government, a request to extradite Kissinger was filed with the Supreme Court last month on behalf of Bernardo Arnone, a political activist who was kidnapped, tortured and murdered ("disappeared") by the right wing militarists in 1976. The government is studying the request and trying to come up with a solution since it is unlikely the Bush Regime is about to hand over any Americans to a foreign justice system, no matter how heinous the crimes he committed. Bad precedent for quite a few figures in the current Regime, don't you think?