People power can beat too much money power

The Coffee Party posted on Facebook a cartoon of a politician at a podium on a plank out over a cliff.  The only thing preventing him from falling into the abyss is the number of people standing on the other end of the plank.  Except one person who is walking away.  The words on the cartoon are “The people don’t know their true power.”

I posted the following comment on Facebook.  If you have a Facebook account you can find it in context here.

“The problem with too much money in politics is too few votes to counter misinformation.  The cartoon is clever, but the person leaving should be walking to a politician's plank on solid ground.

“Let's show up each and every election day and get off-year turn-outs better than the Afghan turnout.  Too many of us don't bother because it's too inconvenient; the Afghani's stood in long lines at the risk of being attacked!”

If you don’t have a Facebook account or just want to see how often this has been published, search for “The people don’t know their true power”.  You’ll find hundreds of postings of this cartoon going back at least two years.  You’ll find many comments on it, but you will be hard pressed to find who created the original.

As I was adding “money in politics” to the keywords for this entry it occurred to me to have a keyword “people in politics” because the only way to get money out of politics is to get people into politics, even if it only to get more people to show up on election day.

Cartoon of the day: elections and ID

See "Clarifying Recent Changes to Our Electoral System", Matt Wuerker, Politico, May 2012, reposted by The Coffee Party on Facebook, 2013-03-16.  Wuerker points out the inconsistencies for photo ID on voting in an election and buying an election.