Sing Along With Mitch

 I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say that "we need to get the money out of politics." 

Go ahead and laugh now, because it's not going to get a lot funnier than that. Last week, Mitch McConnel who is still very much in politics, grumbled about how Atlanta-based companies were "dabbling in behaving like a woke parallel government." This was in response to the new Georgia law that, among other things, makes it illegal to bring food or water to those waiting in line to vote. That new legislation is part of a wave of new suggestions from the right wing of life that is looking for ways to keep people of color from voting. I imagine the meeting in Georgia Governor's office, where someone came up with the brilliant suggestion: "Hey, I know. Them people all drink water, don't they? If they can't get water they won't vote, I'll bet!" Airtight logic like that could only be found in the office of Georgia's Governor. And as ridiculous as that sounds, when you start adding all manner of other restrictions from closing polls earlier, limiting the number of drop off ballot boxes and reducing the amount of time for absentee voting, it seems like this new law is there to do just what everyone says it will do: limit access to voting for just about everyone. 

Which is why Major League Baseball chose to move their All-Star Game out of Atlanta, and companies such as Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola have made their displeasure with the new law known. Senator Mitch insisted that such action by businesses will "invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order." As a point of clarification, when the Constitution was being written, there were no airlines or soft drink companies around to meddle inside or outside the order they were establishing. The folks at Coca-Cola have this thing they call The Coca-Cola Foundation, and they put their money into things like empowering women, protecting the environment, and enhancing communities. They also give some of those soda pop dollars to a Political Action Committee called Center Forward. And we all know that the Center isn't where we make friends, right? Left? Middle? It's all so confusing. Then there's No Labels, a PAC co-chaired by that famous middle man Joe Lieberman. And somewhere in this mix of middle is The Ripon Society, which promotes many of the old-school Republican ideals of low taxes and smaller government. Nothing in there about restricting access to voting. Which is probably why Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey said,  "Our focus is now on supporting federal legislation that protects voting access and addresses voter suppression across the country. We all have a duty to protect everyone's right to vote, and we will continue to stand up for what is right in Georgia and across the U.S." 

And maybe why, just a few days after Senator Mitch got off his soapbox about corporations hijacking our country, he popped back up to let everyone know that he didn't mean that corporations should stop contributing to political campaigns. In an incredible show of his ability to speak from both sides of his mouth simultaneously, he issued forth with this whopper: “My warning to corporate America is to stay out of politics. I’m not talking about political contributions.” Like the ones he received from UPS, FedEx, Goldman Sachs, and AT&T to name just a few. Some of the biggest contributors in the Senate run-off election in Georgia this past January were run by former McConnell aides. Give us your money. We'll figure out what to do with it. 

And for heaven's sake, don't bring them any water.