We, the people, have to take back our institutions

Does anyone not think that it seems our institutions are broken?

Badly broken, at that?

I've written some about this before.

Our government, certainly the corporations, some of our churches (especially the Catholic Church, what with their recurring sex abuse scandals).

And it does seem that on some fronts, with some of these organizations, people are starting to stand up, be heard and say "Enough!"

The Tea Party, I think is an outgrowth of that.

Prior to their creation, I think Libertarians, too, are an outgrowth of people feeling that no one was representing them.

The Occupy movement is another such outgrowth, surely.

Today comes news that some Citigroup stockholders have voted down a pay package for the CEO, Vikram Pandit, if even just symbolically. It seems they felt offering to give Mr.Pandit a salary of $14.9 million was a bit much.

We couldn't agree more, could we?

So good for them, these stockholders. Their actions, too, are now having an effect, thank goodness.

And all this standing up and being counted is great, of course, and it's too bad we've had to come to this but here we are, eh?

The thing is, though, until we, the American people, demand that we kill campaign contributions of all forms, to our government representatives at both the state and federal levels, nothing will change.

Until we get the big, ugly, corrupting money of campaign contributions out of our election process and so, out of our government, the wealthy and corporations will continue to own those representatives--our representatives. They will continue to own them, their legislation, our laws and finally, our government.

We have to get the big money out of our election system and government totally and once and for all.

The only way that's going to happen is if we, the people, demand it.

Links: http://nocera.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/is-citi-just-the-beginning/;