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Governor Jesse Ventura Explains Why Governments Are Like Gangs

Written By Liberty Bell Press Online on Saturday, June 16, 2012 | 1:14 PM

 

Jesse Ventura, former Minn. governor , compares Democrats and Republicans to LA street gangs in his latest book. Photo courtesy of TruTV's "Conspiracy Theory" hosted by Ventura.
It’s a Monday afternoon in Minnesota and Jesse “The Mind” Ventura, as he was known when he ran the state as governor, is surprisingly more content than he is angry. The 60 year old star of the former World Wrestling Federation, though, has not lost his fire in the belly. He’s just as fed up with the government as Ron Paul (one of his favorite politicians) and the Occupy Wall Street crowd (which he prefers over the Tea Party).
He’s currently starting his fourth book tour. This one’s based on his latest, titled “Democrips and Rebloodicans”. That’s right. The Crips and the Bloods, the famously 80s West Coast naughty homies that taught white kids how to throw a gang sign and made wearing certain colors illegal in public schools. As dangerous as those brothers are, and were, says Ventura, the Democrats and Republicans are much, much worse.
“If you vote for a Democrat or a Republican, you get what you deserve,” he says in that signature Ventura vocal delivery, the one fitting of a pro-wrestler. Lights up. Cameras flashing. Little boys and their dads cheering in the stands.
“We’ve got an entire political system based on bribery. It’s obscene,” he says.
It’s something Ventura, an independent, has been talking about for more than a decade now. Today, that view is mainstream. What’s congress’s approval rating? Ten percent? Fifteen? Whatever it is, it is at historically low levels. And the most popular Democratic president
since Bill Clinton has struggled to top a 50% approval rating for most of his four years in office.
We all believe the system is somewhat rigged, bought and paid for by a handful of important corporations — ExxonMobil for energy policy — and lobby groups — the American Bankers Association for economic and fiscal policies. With the creation of political SuperPACs, the non-profits that donate tens of millions to politicians, a handful of wealthy individuals also are given more sway in national, and state level politics.
Everyone knows it. Including Wall Street.
On Wednesday, in fact, CNBC blogger John Carney was live blogging and Tweeting the Jaime Dimon testimony. Dimon, as every Forbes reader knows, is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, which lost over $2 billion in a credit default swaps trade gone bad. Carney described the scene in the Senate this way: “The people sitting behind the Senators are the staffers, also known as future lobbyists for JP Morgan.”
That’s right. That Washington insiders eventually work for lobby firms daily promoting powerful interests is now a given. We the People that once ran government, maybe a hundred years ago, has become “Them” the People.
The legislators grilling Dimon on Wednesday all received thousands of dollars in campaign donations from the bulge bracket banks like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, as the New York Post reported on its cover page today. It’s a plutocracy.
No. Worse. It’s a bloody gang.
“When you vote, you’re essentially choosing gang members — do you want the Crips to lead or the Bloods?” Ventura says, noting that the Bloods’ colors are red, like the Republicans, and the Crips’ color is blue, like the Democrats.
Wo… That’s got to be on his “Conspiracy Theory” show on TruTV, if it ever gets out of post-production hell.
“The thing is, and Americans are starting to realize this now, that while street gangs are violent, the Democrats and Republicans are worse. They are worse because their decisions affect your life. The LA street gangs don’t affect my life, but what the Democrats and Republicans do sure in hell does,” he says.
Ventura’s 304 page book is not merely a rant against Washington, using Founding Father quotes against the current leaders. It’s foot noted. It’s factual. Ventura, a multi-millionaire, mentions how Americans lost their net worth and saw their incomes decline since the financial crisis in 2008, but the rich “one percent” — as the Occupy Wall Streeters defined them — actually saw their net worth rise.
That’s a fact. Earlier this year, Citi Private Bank and Knight Frank released their 2012 Wealth Report. Guess what? They said the exact same thing as Jesse “The Mind” Ventura. High net worth individuals around the world saw their net worth on average go up while the rest of the riff-raff saw their net worth go down.

When Ventura was running Minnesota as their first ever independent pro-wrestler governor, he balanced the state budget. He returned sales tax receipts to the locals. In his last year in office, Democrats and Republicans colluded to veto his budget proposals, assuming he would run for re-election, and that this veto would make his chances more difficult. He didn’t run for re-election, citing family matters, and now Minnesota’s budget deficit is one of the worst of the northern states. In 2011, it was $5 billion, worse than the $3.5 billion deficit in Scott Walker’s Wisconsin at the time.
Not that Ventura is a Walker fan. He thinks that the governor beat his challenger, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, in a recall vote this month because he simply outspent him. He had more SuperPACs in his corner, thanks to uber-one-percenters like the Koch brothers who fund the Americans for Prosperity political action committee that gave Walker around $6 million.
“The SuperPACs and the Citizens United ruling that gives corporations a voice in the political process are all bad news. They made it so you can now lie and the politician being promoted on that lie will not be held responsible for it,” he says.
“I think that when Americans go to vote, states should not list what party the candidates are affiliated with. That would require voters to actually think and get to know a candidate instead of voting for their favorite gang. Oh, this guy is a Republican, so he must be good,” he says.
“You know what I think you should do? Get every candidate to wear a NASCAR racing suit when they go debate, this way we can see who their sponsors really are,” he says.
But Ventura’s not joking. At least not necessarily. What’s a joke, he says, is American politics. Nearly everyone in the country would agree, judging by congressional approval ratings in national polls.
“It’s laughable what they’ve turned elections into today where bribery is okay. If we lie to the government, we go to jail. If they lie to us, and they do it all the time, it’s not a problem. People used to believe that our better days were ahead of us as a nation, but I think that our better days are behind us. That’s sad, and that’s all the fault of these gangs. They’re the ones that are responsible,” he says.
Excerpts from “DemoCRIPS and ReBLOODicans: No More Gangs In Government”.
No More Flashing Gang Signs
My proposal is a NO PARTY system. Allow me to quote George Washington once again for a little back up: ‘However, political parties may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reigns of government.’ Parties could still exist. The founders acknowledged that, but only to the point of being no different than any other entity or endorser. If a certain candidate gets backed by the Democratic Party, fine — but you don’t put the affiliation next to the name on the ballot. Make all our elections non-partisan. Let candidates inform voters based on their positions, not these ridiculous stereotypes like ‘I’m a Republican therefore I stand for family values,’ or ‘I’m a Democrat therefore I stand for the working man’.”

Reforming the Electoral College
This is part of the National Popular Vote movement, whereby the Electoral College would continue to exist but could be superseded without going through trying to amend the Constitution. Through an interstate compact, participating states agree ahead of time to automatically give their electoral votes to whomever takes the national popular vote, not who gains the majority in their own state….Isn’t the crux of the matter whether every person’s vote should count for something?”
All About the SuperPACs
There’s also a whole bumper crop of nonprofit 501 (c) (4) ‘social welfare groups’, as they prefer to call themselves, set up to donate freely to SuperPACs. They’ve got names like Freedom’s Watch. Supposedly they’re planning to pour about $240 million into the political arena in 2012. For example, Crossroads GPS is the non-profit part of the American Crossroads SuperPAC started by Karl Rove, and it’s the non-profit that raised $32.6 million in 2011, which was more than American Crossroads’ $18.4 million. Rove’s goal is to raise $300 million this year. The Democrips have Priorities USA and American Bridge 21st Century Foundation as the nonprofits in their apparatus, which raised $5.1 million. …Last February, the Obama campaign staff sent out an email announcing that they were going to actively solicit as much as they could get for Priorities USA. Obama let his campaign manager, Jim Messina, and even members of his cabinet speak at SuperPAC events. ‘With so much at stake,’ Messina wrote on the campaign’s blog, Obama couldn’t afford to ‘unilaterally disarm.’ So much for principles, eh? What we’ve got today is a gang of super-rich Democrips fighting another gang of super rich Rebloodicans. Would you still call this a democracy? Shouldn’t we come right out and admit we’re a plutocracy? And shouldn’t we call out the two gangs for showing their colors once and for all. And those colors aren’t the blue and the red of the Crips and the Bloods, but rather the green of all our money they are stealing.”
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