Interesting articles I’ve been reading today on Obama’s refusal to disclose the names of his millions of small donors. The Slate article sums up my thoughts:

Obama has campaigned (effectively) on a platform of making government more transparent, citing his efforts to do so in Chicago and Washington as signature achievements.

And yet…. they are avoiding disclosing the names of these small donors. Call me a crazy conspiracy theorist, but with such massively high stakes as are involved in an American Presidential election, I think it pays to be suspicious and naive to start with the assumption that ANY candidate is pure and holy. I think it was Eleanor Roosevelt who first said “The war for freedom will never really be won because the price of our freedom is constant vigilance over ourselves and over our Government.”

I’ve been reading Howard Zinn’s excellent work “A People’s History Of The United States” where he makes the argument that the American Revolution was orchestrated by the American wealthy elite (George Washington was the richest man in America) to preserve and extend their own wealth and power. During a time of increasing class struggles in the American colony, the elite found a way to focus the anger of the populace on a foreign enemy, a tactic which successive US administrations have perfected ever since.

Slate – Yes, He Can

Judicial Watch – Obama Should Disclose