I'm Ready for Oligarchy Hillary Parody T-Shirt

I'm ready for Oligarchy. In the Spring of 2014 the speculation was hardening into expectation that Hillary Clinton would again be running for President of the United States of America. In every town and city "I'm Ready for Hillary" bumper stickers began popping up, created by a particularly obnoxious species of political organisation called a "Super PAC" that can legally raise unlimited funds from corporations and anyone with a pulse for a candidate. In this case, "I'm Ready for Hillary PAC" had created the marketing for these ubiquitous stickers, hats, and shirts as swag while raising millions of dollars from rich business interests and powerful industry barons> One day while looking at one of these "I'm Ready for Hillary" bumper stickers on a car in front of me taking my kids to the store, above the chatter of the children the radio transitioned from the day's weather report to a story about the likelihood of George W. Bush's younger brother Jeb running for president, creating the possibility of another Clinton versus Bush presidential race in the 2016 elections. As instinctively repulsive as that possibility was to me, this was all happening just as a very rigourous study by political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page was making the rounds in the press outlining how America’s political system has indisputably has become an oligarchy, which means government by a small group that exercises power for corrupt or selfish purposes. Gilens and Page were everywhere, from John Stewart to the New York Times, and while most of us had assumed this was largely the case, figuring that well-funded powerful elites largely ran the show in America, while the rest of us watched on the sidelines of power without any real influence; their study actually proved it after 10 years of research. Now if ever in the modern age there were poster children for corporate oligarchical government, Hillary Clinton with here six-figure speaking fees and Jeb of the dynastic Bush family were it. If they were NASCAR drivers you couldn't fit all their corporate endorsements on their suits. So I hatched the silly idea of doing a parody of the ubiquitous “I’m Ready for Hillary” design. To be honest, I really just wanted to put it on my own car as a sticker, so I first made bumper stickers of the design, which basically just swaps out “Hillary” for the word “oligarchy." Then I put them on shirts and mugs and things in the store for others if they liked them. Well, evidently people got them this time - but not exactly the people I had in mind. Within days of my posting the "I’m Ready for Oligarchy” bits, I was notified by the content review people manufacturing my products that they had been contacted by lawyers from Ready for Hillary PAC, and that they weren’t willing to produce my parodies - even in my own shops. At the same time I had just ended my lawsuit with the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security in a highly publicised federal court case over my 1st Amendment right to parody the agencies and actually sell those parodies on this very website. Disappointed, I turned once again to my lawyer, Paul Alan Levy, who not only represented me recently in the case against the NSA and DHS, but actually had in the past successfully represented one of these very manufacturers in a case where the Republican National Committee attempted a very similar tactics to take down parodies of the Republican elephant in 2008. After a very short explanation of the circumstances - we’d sort of been there done that, after all - Paul took the case and gave his advice on what the best course of action should be. What we decided to do was confront their willingness to challenge free speech in their candidate’s name. Levy sent a letter today demanding a retraction of these takedowns within 3 days, or we will file an action for a declaratory judgment of non-infringement. With minutes to spare before the federal court filed the case, I'm Ready for Hillary PAC issued a retraction of their cease and desist, effectively acknowledging they were full of it and had no chance in court. In other words, they were wrong and were trampling my free speech rights.