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Top Priority For 2010: Get Corporate Money Out Of Politics
By Dave Johnson
Health care: huge majorities of the public want something – anything – along the lines of a “public option” or Medicare buy-in. In the last election people turned out and overwhelmingly voted in Obama, 60 senators and a huge majority in the Congress.
But after “the system” plays itself out we instead end up with government power ordering all of us to buy insurance from giant insurance corporations. It remains illegal for us to buy into Medicare because this would interfere with the stream of money flowing from all of us to a few already-wealthy executives and owners.
It is so clear now what our system has become. The wealthy have a lock on our politics, and we can’t help but see it. It is in the way of getting anything done. It is blocking our ability to do anything about our urgent problems like health care, climate change, financial reform, and of course the low-wage, everything-to-the-top structure of our jobs.
The other day I wrote, Concentration Of Wealth = An Influence Lock On Our Politics,
We have now reached the point where wealth is at least as concentrated as it was in 1929. With similar consequences.
Just how concentrated is the wealth and income? The L-Curve website graphically illustrates the disparity. Here’s how it works. … [click through to read this part] . . .
The societal consequences are dramatic. This happened as a result of wealth’s ability to influence our country’s decision-making. And that influence was used to increase the wealth of the influencers, which increased their influence. But this has come at the expense of regular people, whose incomes have stagnated, forcing them into increasing debt.
We have reached a breaking point where a consumer-based economy can no longer be sustained. But this has not led to any loosening of the grip that money has on our political system. If we don’t force the political system out of that grip and restore democracy we will not be able to fix our economic system.
The question is, with the mask pulled aside – with everyone seeing how the wealthy are controlling the system – will we find ways of fixing it? Will we be able to take back democracy from the malefactors of great wealth? The obvious steps include getting all corporate money and influence out of our politics – and our lives. But even if we manage to vote in 100 Senators and 100% of the Congress, will we be able to accomplish this?
We all have to start talking about this, and making it the #1 priority of our political efforts. Nothing else can be accomplished until we take this on, but if we take this on then we can finally get on with the business of governing for the people.
Original Article: Getting Corporate Money Out Of Politics Must Become Our #1 Priority
NEVER HAPPEN SHORT OF REVOLUTION TO GET THESE POLITICIANS OFF THE CORPORATE TEAT.
Their efforts clearly succeeded. With the 1975 SUN-PAC decision, corporations persuaded government to legalize corporate Political Action Committees (the lobbyist organizations that bribe our government). By 1992, corporations formed 67 percent of all PACs, and they donated 79 percent of all campaign contributions to political parties. (20) In two landmark elections — 1980 and 1994 — corporations gave heavily and one-sidedly to Republicans, turning one or both houses of Congress over to the GOP. Democratic incumbents were shocked by the threat of being rolled completely out of power, so they quietly shifted to the right on economic issues, even though they continued a public façade of liberalism. Corporations went ahead and donated to Democratic incumbents in all other elections, but only as long as they abandoned the interests of workers, consumers, minorities and the poor. As expected, the new pro-corporate Congress passed laws favoring the rich: between 1975 and 1992, the amount of national household wealth owned by the richest 1 percent soared from 22 to 42 percent. (21)
The Origins of the Overclass http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-overclass.html
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@ Hazzard: Sorry, but I have yet to see any large corporations ballyhoo about there not being enough regulations to “protect them”? Are you referring to the legal system which is completely separate and different from the legislation process? By shrinking government, or pulling its teeth, which is what most Libertarians want, you weaken the only entity in this country that can stand up to corporations.
As for the few mentions that labor unions be restricted in the same way, that is laughable in that most that would suggest such a thing are shooting themselves in the foot. First of all, labor unions only represent about 8% of the workforce as opposed to around 20% in the 70′s when they were at their height of power. So while labor unions and their influence has shrunk, we have seen manufacturing jobs head overseas, wages stagnate, and corporations garner more power in which they have hoisted CEO pay 300%. So while those big bad unions have suffered, corporations have flourished and the middle class has shrunk and the already wealthy have managed to gather 90% of the wealth to the top 5%. Anybody see a correlation here? Labor unions aren’t perfect, but they are democratic in nature and their negotiations for better contracts usually help wage earners in non union shops enjoy better wages and perks as well. Unions aren’t writing their own legislation and lobbying it through congress. Corporations are.
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Hazzard Reply:
December 28th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Jbaker,
Of course corporations don’t brag about having their lobbyists help pass legislation that “protects” them, as it might lead to consumers getting outraged and not buy their product/service. For those who are already in a certain line of business, they may not want regulations in a perfect world, but they’re more than willing to “play the game” to keep future competitors out. Many times when a government licenses certain occupations, it’s the practitioners of that occupation that lobbied for them to license that occupations in order to restrain competition (notably real estate agents).
Government can stand up to corporations, but so can consumers – there are many examples of boycotts changing the way a company does business. The situation we have now, where government is relatively large and has become a tool of big business is hardly ideal. I’d much rather see a situation where that incentive (to make government a tool of business) is removed, and I think the only way to do it is to make it less attractive for those lobbying by shrinking the government.
Watchdog groups should get more prominence exposing bad business practices, which includes business using government as a tool to harm consumers. Unfortunately, many of these groups see the government doing “something” as a solution, regardless of the merits of the government’s action.
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Jbaker,
How does weakening the government give corporations more power? What about the corporations who are protected by government’s regulation? Without the regulations that lobbyists get passed on behalf of their corporate sponsors, what would happen? Consumers would be able to choose, not have their choices forced upon them by successful corporate lobbyists. I dislike big corporations and lobbyists as much as the next guy – I’d rather have the choice in my hands rather than a huge government controlled by corporate interests tell me what to do.
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Dave,
I agree with you – I don’t think the average American understands how the government works, and all the ways they’re getting screwed by the government on behalf of special interests.
On your individual points:
a. The legal system should take care of that – one would have a solid case in any jurisdiction should a company, for example, pollute your water supply. That is assuming the government isn’t corrupted and the company doesn’t care whether it gets hammered in the press or not.
b. Isn’t private ownership the commonly accepted solution to the tragedy of the commons problem? I’m not saying that’s the solutions for highways, but who knows, it may be, I don’t know, it’s never really been tried on a large scale. Say you own a major highway that collects tolls, for example interstate 80, traveled on my millions of vehicles per year – sure you could try charging extortionate rates, but it may not last long, competitors might spring up, or people could start traveling using alternate routes. I would think you’d have to charge a rate that was “just right” to maximize profits – too much and competitors arise, so that keeps a cap on rates.
c. Agreed, our food and drug supply should be safe. Although, I would think that doctors wouldn’t prescribe drugs they knew didn’t work, so long as the govt prevented them from getting bribed by drug companies. Also, in the case of drugs, for whatever reason some work better on some people than others – I don’t like the situation we have now – the FDA may reject a drug that is safe but isn’t “effective”, because statistically it doesn’t seem that way, but it actually works very well for X% of patients. I’d much rather have a situation where the FDA decides a drug is safe and leave it in the hands of doctors to decide whether it might be effective for a certain subset of their patients or not.
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It has to be both labor and management – only individual (capped) contributions.
You’ll get a lot of traction behind this idea, as both of the arbitrary political divisions in the US are flagrantly guilty of this nonsense.
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Simple.
You want to get money out of Washington? Get Washington out of money.
As long as Washington has the ability to pick winners and losers in business with bailouts and regulations that tip the playing field, big money will always want to buy in to get the best playing field possible.
We’ve learned our lesson with separation of Church and State, and now we need separation of Business and State.
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We have the best laws money can buy.
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Ian Reply:
January 5th, 2010 at 12:50 am
Repeal or amend the Corporate Personhood clause or of the 14th Amendment… that is our only way out of this disaster.
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With all due respect, maybe instead we should figure out a way to get organized labor money out of politics. After all, the international union dues make up what in effect is a massive slush fund to be used to influence political elections. Case in point is SEIU.
It is completely unfair to tie to hands of corporations any further without restricting to the same extent the power and influence of organized labor. The lobbies of unions are just as powerful as any industry, and when you have the head of the SEIU getting significant face time with the President of the United States, I think that circumstance speaks for itself when it comes to certain organizations having too much power.
Corporations are restricted in their influence just as much as unions and are bound to the same FEC regulations on campaign finance. To single out corporations alone as being a primary source for American problems is quite silly when there is just as much evidence to the contrary.
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Joe "UncaJoe" Cook Reply:
December 28th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
@Alex: With all due respect, where would ANY corporation be without labor? I’m so tired of people blaming the workers for wanting $50K a year from a corporation whose upper echelon executives make $50M+ a year on the blood and sweat of those same workers.
I also hate the “Big Business Built America” argument. The industrial revolution and the expansion of transportation resources, both of which were extremely labor intensive endeavors, were what made American entrepreneurs so rich.
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None of you idiots have any idea what the solution is. None of you. Look at yourselves. You’re pathetic. Do you like having these problems? Do you like being that cool guy that rants about big business? Or would you rather actually eliminate the problem? Because if you would, there’s actually a way to do that. Only, I wonder if you’re too conservative for it. See below link for details:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/12/24/818824/-Manuever-Warfare-as-a-Metaphor-for-the-De-Centalization-of-Private-Feudalism
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Mike & JBaker I respect (and would fully support) your proposals. The part that is missing for me is a realistic plan to get there. Solutions are actually the easy part of this equation, it is the perceived impossibility of implementation that has me on the ropes.
Anyone have a plan that could work despite:
a. a large segment of the populace that is poorly educated and/or irrational
b. a media system that is controlled by the very corporate influences we are worried about
c. a “computerized” voting system that may or may not actually count the votes
d. a government that is clearly staffed essentially by corporate clerks
Believe it or not, I am not generally a negative person. I am an engineer and business owner and I have accomplished some things many said were not possible. But I don’t see a path for this one. A popular uprising sounds great. How do we get there?
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If you watched health care reform closely, you probably noticed that the corporations who saw the legislation as a threat to their profits, did a very good job in preparation and execution. Single payer never even got on the table and the public option was squashed before it could even get voted on. They fabricated a “populist” movement that fought against reform and sold all kinds of fear to the public with the help of Dick Army and a number of other professional lobbyists and their PR firms. They also purchased air time on friendly news organizations, just enough Democrats, and almost all of the Republicans in the Senate to effectively block any legislation that would cut into profits. More Corporations vs the People is to come when environmental legislation is attempted.
Teach, inform, make people aware…its all we have at this point. We need transparency. I want to know how much the corporations have paid for our representation. We should know who the shills are and vote accordingly.
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How about getting George Soros and other lefties’ money out of politics also? How about getting all money out of politics?
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I’m from Poland. The same things hold here. I recently stumbled upon a blog of one of my city’s (Poznan) council members (Piotr Kolodziejczyk). This guy talks about similar problems (corporate influence) and refers to John Naisbitt and is talking about a switch from “democracy through representation” to “participating democracy” (these terms are translated by me, so bare with them, please) as necessary means for us, the people, to even start having power of influence.
I know that’s not a solution (Pat S) but maybe this is something we need to have before. Increase in power of influece.
There’s hope :-)
Cheers!
Maciej Soltysiak
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The first thing they need to do is get rid of corporate personhood. This was never decided on by the Supreme Court. Instead, on a court case that was not about corporate personhood, a court reporter incorrectly claimed in the title of the decision, that corporate personhood was decided upon. Since then, it has been used as precedent, incorrectly. After corporate personhood has been removed, and they lose all the rights and privileges of citizens, all the chips will fall into place as they will no longer enjoy the right to free speech, which is what is cited to give them the right to buy politicians legally. This idea that nothing can be done is defeatist and is also incorrect. The founding fathers FEARED corporations and the power they wield, which directly led to the revolution when the East India Company was allowed special privileges to undercut small, colonial businessmen. This is precisely why there is no mention of corporations in the Constitution and they inherently gave states the right to govern and CONTROL them. Weakening the government only gives corporations more power because quite simply, if the government can’t control them, who can?
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Mokey Reply:
December 31st, 2009 at 3:53 pm
JBaker you are a fool. COMMUNISM is central control. Go live in China for a while and see how great it is when the Government Controls every aspect of your life.
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So how do you decided who get’s a say in government? If you ban corporations, which are collections of people who can use their collective power and wealth to influence, then shouldn’t you push to ban all organizations? Either it is individual voice only, with no large scale political organizing to give some unfairly louder voices over politics than others, or EVERYONE should have a right to made their voice heard, including people who have organized themselves into a corporation. Anything less is not true freedom and still has some with a louder voice than others. But that is normally what this is about, one group trying to get more power over a group that it does not agree with.
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If you want a step in the write direction, the government should stop preventing insurance companies from operating across state borders. This will help with competition. When one insurance company provides more than 80% of the coverage in some states, it can do whatever it pleases to its consumers and to health care providers.
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Hazzard, you bring up an interesting idea, but how would we for example:
a. keep our $100B budgeted gov’t from passing laws making it easier for these giant corporations to behave in ways contrary to the public good. e.g. gov’t doesn’t need a big budget to allow a giant, well connected company to dump chemical waste on the public lands (maybe near your house).
b. avoid the tragedy of the commons. e.g. maintaining and building public roadways (rather than allow some to be privatized- can you imagine your local cable company owning a crucial road AND giving you a fair price to use it?- and others to fall into disrepair)
c. policing the food and drug supply to make sure what we consume is safe (and in the case of drugs, effective)
I counter that big gov’t, or small gov’t, the issue is that the American people do not understand the way it works and FORCE it to behave in the public interest. I couldn’t imagine what would get millions of WalMart shoppers off their butts and into the street (at least as anything other than a lynch mob).
I don’t have a solution for this, we as a people don’t even have a grasp of simple civics and further a huge percentage of folks are irrational thinkers and have minimal capacity to get over their non-critical-thinking programming.
My inclination is to bet against America (e.g. move one’s money into markets overseas and hedge against a rapidly declining dollar). That way, if the idiot masses take us over a cliff, you have a glider. If not, well, good for us.
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I am a conservative, and this idea is one of three things that must be done to make the People’s government work again: 1. Eliminate PACs and lobbying. 2. Term limits 3. Balanced budget.
we, the People, need to avoid falling prey to the social-hot button-issues that only serve to have the parties divide and conquer us over and over again.
in order to do this will take a constitutional convention, as the system is broken, captured, stolen from the People.
In order to have a convention to modify in these ways, we need to destroy the power of both parties. To destroy both parties will take a populist upraising. In order to gain a populist uprising, we need to set aside the BS rhetoric and work together and dump these liars from CONgress en masse. We have incentive, we have the internet, so let’s roll.
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Could not agree more.
Harmful lobbies are slowly but efficiently killing progress & democracy to maximize private profit.
Action + transparency, now.
eleaone.com
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I have two potential solutions, and completely agree with the problem.
1. Grassroots effort to vote out EVERY sitting person in the House and Senate. System is corrupt, and the people who make the laws are benefited by the corruption.
2. Single terms for Congress. If their job isn’t to get reelected, the lobbyists’ power would decrease substantially. It could then be POSSIBLE, to have a real discussion over the issues, rather than simply, “what will get me reelected next year”. As long as it is their job to get reelected, that will be their number one priority.
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We need to drastically reduce the cost of running for office. One approach would be to reduce congressional district size by increasing the number of Representatives. I know, I know. But, there are several reasons to do this. First, the current set up of 435 is unconstitutional because it does not represent one voter, one vote. Representatives in smaller states, like Wyoming, actually work for fewer voters than one in California or Texas, whose district sizes represent larger populations. Therefore, the size of districts should be again pegged to population. At a minimum, the size of the population of the least populace state. A better system would have one per 70k or 100k. Secondly, this would have the effect of returning a level of popular representation to the House (The Senate would then represent the Corporations). With a smaller district, a normal person could actually run for office by canvassing the neighborhood and going to businesses and front doors. My town (Burbank) would, itself, have 3-4 representatives. This should increase diversity and moderation as a whole, and make politics truly local. House committees in a world of 3000 reps would have to increase in size, or rotate. This would dramatically alter the true power base of corporations. Imagine having to “contribute” to the re-election campaigns (bribe) 70 – 100 rotating committee members instead of 13 -20. Not enough office space and drastically reduced staff size, will necessitate offices outside of Washington and, in fact, within the represented district. If it takes 20 staffers to represent a million people, 2 should do if it’s 100k. In an internet world, your rep should be down the block, working for you and voting and conferencing online. Imagine trying to lobby 3000 separate districts. Third, it could help in the gerrymandering of districts that today favor incumbants and discourage moderate or alternative candidates from running. Finally, and most important, running in smaller districts should be much cheaper. Representing fewer people, locally, in a district that makes geographic sense, could cost the same amount as running for a local office like mayor. It should allow for less time spent with hands out looking for reelection money.
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While you’re at it you should get labor union money out too.
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This is something that Professor Lessig is working on – http://www.change-congress.org
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you may be interested to kinow that there is a grassroots movement that totlally agrees with you. check it out: http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com
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The only way to get money, corporate or otherwise, out of politics is to shrink the size of government drastically. So long as government is huge and has its hands in so much of the economy, businessmen and others will find ways to exploit it, because that’s where the money is. There will always be bank robbers, just as sure as there will be corporations robbing the American people using the government as their tool so long as there’s money to be plundered from either. If banks only had $10 in their vaults at any one time, it wouldn’t make sense to rob them, same with the government – if the federal budget was $100 billion corporations would have less to gain through lobbying.
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Ok. I agree.
My question to you is “HOW”.
What options do I have, as a citizen, available to me?
If you say my vote, I say the incumbents always win because
voters subscribe to the theory, “It’s the devil you know, not the
devil you don’t.”
We, the people, have very little power to change anything and the people with the power know it and take advantage of it.
So, what’s your solution?
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