By William Pfaff
September 11, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- Paris, September 7, 2009. The United States has for practical purposes been a plutocracy for some years now. American national elections usually function more or less correctly, except that they have become all but completely dominated by money.
The contributors of money to Senate and Congressional campaigns are dominated by the source of that money, and the source of the money is the United States government, which directs it to them as a result of the contracts awarded to them by the congressmen and the senators whose election they support. The process is circular.
It would be cheaper for all concerned if business were directly to pay senators and congressmen and eliminate the middlemen, the parasites that live on the surplus money in this system, paid for their ability to persuade both sellers and buyers (so to speak) that they are providing a service by facilitating the bargain. Elections now cannot take place without them.
There would seem to be two steps by which this rot has taken hold. The first is change in the legislation originally concerned with the use by broadcasters of the airwaves, a public resource. In 1934 the Federal Communications Commission was established with authority over broadcasts. Being a politically balanced body, it decreed that the public service obligation of the broadcaster included the responsibility to provide balanced information. (The Fox News claim to be “fair and balanced” is a sneering reference to this, no doubt unintentional.)
This rule applied to commentary on the news and to coverage of elections and acceptance of political advertising. There had to be substantial balance.
This arrangement was destroyed by the Reagan administration, which removed the FCC’s responsibility to enforce political “fairness” in radio and television network commentary and election coverage. The Republican-controlled Congress defeated efforts to reinstate it.
The change was challenged in 1976 by a congressional candidate who contended that he had been defeated by a candidate who spent on his campaign a sum enormously more than the plaintiff could spend. He contended that the Congress had imposed an unconstitutional money qualification upon election to federal office.
In one of the more notorious and deplorable decisions in the history of the Supreme Court, it ruled that all money spent on advertising in a political campaign is constitutionally protected free speech (Buckley v. Valeo, 1976).
Since then, the United States has been in a dizzying downward spin in the effective purchase of public office by candidates with the most wealthy supporters, usually business corporations. A perverse effect of the ruling, possibly unrecognized by the court, is that this indirectly required all candidates to adopt pro-business positions, or at least positions sufficiently inoffensive to business that they did not become the object of targeted campaigns to silence them.
On Wednesday September 9, the Supreme Court began hearing arguments on the legitimacy of any restriction on direct electoral spending by business corporations.
Since 1908, business corporations have been prohibited from spending on federal elections. Unions have been banned from doing so since 1947. States have banned corporate campaign spending since the late 19th century. Today corporations and unions contribute indirectly through political action committees, limited in what can be contributed.
If corporations now were licensed to make direct payment from corporate funds to influence elections, the country would become a wholly-owned subsidiary of American business. (Editor's emphasis throughout) The government would no longer be able to act disinterestedly. In the circumstances, there would appear to be no possibility that legislation to reverse the effects of such a ruling could succeed.
I do not know whether this is something the majority of citizens wish to see happen. Probably, in these difficult times, the majority do not even know that it is happening. They will discover it later.
Showing posts with label Campaign Finance Reform. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Campaign Finance Reform. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Monday, July 13, 2009
The More Things "Change"...
By Tim Gatto
July 12, 2009 -- -Information Clearing House--Every one of us has their own “take” on what is happening in this brave new world. I am no different than most, I also have an opinion on what’s going on. When I write an article I usually have no problem giving my opinion as to what is really happening. This time however, I’m going to try not to give my opinion. I only want to present the facts as I understand them. The truth is much more damning than any opinion I could offer, as Sgt Joe Friday once said in Dragnet, an old TV police show; “Just the facts Ma’am, just the facts”.
Let’s start with the two political parties that supposedly “run” this country. The truth is that political parties don’t run this country, money does. Our entire political system is based on wealth. This has been true in some degree since the day we gained our independence, but it has never been as apparent as it is now. Money drives political campaigns. All the politicos know this and so do most people. Senators Russ Feingold and John McCain tried to reform the way that political campaigns were financed, but by the time the reforms were passed by Congress, the politicians and lobbyists had gutted the bill, making it so weak that it was too little, too late.
We, the people, are supposedly equal under the law, and we are, except that some are more equal than others depending on their net worth and how their money is used. During the last presidential election, money coming from “ordinary folks” in a “populist surge of donations” put Barack Obama over the top and they supposedly carried the day.
It never happened.
What really happened is that the people who controlled the financial sector of the economy saw a massive train wreck about to happen and they needed someone malleable and ambitious enough to work with them to clean up the mess that would follow. At that time, A junior Senator from Illinois with his golden tongue a good understanding of quid pro quid, stepped into the batter’s box. The financial sector then showered him with campaign funds in order to minimize the catastrophe that was, beyond a shadow of doubt, going to happen. The truth was that everyone in government, and those working in the financial sector, knew that the only recourse available to prevent a financial meltdown, was for the Federal Government to bail out the bankers, the stock exchange, the real estate market and the hedge fund people, mortgage lenders and the manufacturing base (Automobile manufacturers and the defense industry).
Let’s take a look at campaign financing. Obama raised $745 million, McCain raised $368 million.
Finance, Insurance & Real Estate: $130,634,154 Total. Democrats $69,987,307 GOP: $60,525,764
Total Individuals PAC’S To Democrats To Republicans
2008 $468,809,924 $396,331,007 $72,478,917 $238,597, 503 $229,267,201
Securities and Investments
Total Individuals PAC’S To Dems To Republicans
2008 $154,918,793 $143,495,995 $11,422,798 $87,965,961 $66,736,485
When it comes to influence, the average American has very little. It’s amazing when you consider how the political parties package their candidates. They use the oldest trick in the book to win elections. Divide and conquer. Left, right, rich poor, black, white, legal, illegal, it’s all a ruse.
The hot-button issues still resonate; abortion, gay and lesbian, health care, education and taxes and the all-important “national security” as if Venezuela were to suddenly invade the Gulf of Mexico with help from Bolivia.
Our lawmakers have broken the backs of the Unions. They pass agricultural laws that drive independent farmers out of business because the costs of doing business have become astronomical. Meanwhile fear-mongers and ideologues such as Rush Limbaugh claim that Obama is practicing some new variation of “socialism” that has allowed corporations to return to the era of monopolies. Standard Oil, AT&T and big Pharmaceutical companies merged with their competitors and drove smaller operations out of business.
Our nation is continuously at war. The War on Drugs, the War on Crime, the War on Terrorism and the War on Climate Change challenge our resources so that we now fight wars for these resources. We celebrate our freedom while our phones are being tapped, our e-mails read and collected, our computer keystrokes are recorded and plans for an RFID chip in a National ID card are being planned.
These are not right or left issues or liberal/conservative issues. Until 2008 the Republicans spent money like drunken sailors on liberty, now the Democrats find themselves buying American auto manufacturers and controlling interests in banks and insurance companies. We buy American dollars from the Rothschild’s and the Mellon’s and the Rockefellers at interest through private banker that have the audacity to call themselves “The Federal Reserve” We cannot print our own national currency; this was a primary reason we fought to free ourselves from Great Britain. Our money comes pre-packaged with debt attached.
Congress denies legislation for Americans so that they may stay in their homes while authorizing 80 million in additional funds so that we can continue to send unmanned drones into Pakistan to bring death from the sky blasting suspected Taliban forces that turn out to be wedding parties and picnics.
Our “Shining City on a Hill” has caused more than one million dead Iraqi’s and over four million refugees. Our thousand points of light are actually depleted uranium projectiles that emit alpha radiation that bring death in the form of fission and birth defects to Iraqi children Along ken strands of DNA in our soldiers that bring deformities to American children. A thousand points of light in the form of white phosphorus that when burning, doesn’t stop until it has burned through flesh and bone until it lands on dirt.
We watch as American and NATO troops take the Helmand Provence in Southern Afghanistan that will be used for the all important oil pipeline that was planned by UnoCal years ago when President Karzai, the Afghan leader worked for the American oil company. Now we have permission the fly over Russia to resupply Afghanistan with soldiers and instruments of war while the Russians sit back and watch our people die.
The American people are slowly realizing that we have traded one war-monger for another. Once we were in Afghanistan to fight al Qaeda, now we are trying to kill the Taliban. In reality we are killing anyone that stops us from building that oil pipeline.
Almost a decade ago we saw a candidate tout “compassionate conservatism”. Nothing was further from the truth. Now we have a President that speaks of “change”. The only change I see is a different battlefield for people to die.
July 12, 2009 -- -Information Clearing House--Every one of us has their own “take” on what is happening in this brave new world. I am no different than most, I also have an opinion on what’s going on. When I write an article I usually have no problem giving my opinion as to what is really happening. This time however, I’m going to try not to give my opinion. I only want to present the facts as I understand them. The truth is much more damning than any opinion I could offer, as Sgt Joe Friday once said in Dragnet, an old TV police show; “Just the facts Ma’am, just the facts”.
Let’s start with the two political parties that supposedly “run” this country. The truth is that political parties don’t run this country, money does. Our entire political system is based on wealth. This has been true in some degree since the day we gained our independence, but it has never been as apparent as it is now. Money drives political campaigns. All the politicos know this and so do most people. Senators Russ Feingold and John McCain tried to reform the way that political campaigns were financed, but by the time the reforms were passed by Congress, the politicians and lobbyists had gutted the bill, making it so weak that it was too little, too late.
We, the people, are supposedly equal under the law, and we are, except that some are more equal than others depending on their net worth and how their money is used. During the last presidential election, money coming from “ordinary folks” in a “populist surge of donations” put Barack Obama over the top and they supposedly carried the day.
It never happened.
What really happened is that the people who controlled the financial sector of the economy saw a massive train wreck about to happen and they needed someone malleable and ambitious enough to work with them to clean up the mess that would follow. At that time, A junior Senator from Illinois with his golden tongue a good understanding of quid pro quid, stepped into the batter’s box. The financial sector then showered him with campaign funds in order to minimize the catastrophe that was, beyond a shadow of doubt, going to happen. The truth was that everyone in government, and those working in the financial sector, knew that the only recourse available to prevent a financial meltdown, was for the Federal Government to bail out the bankers, the stock exchange, the real estate market and the hedge fund people, mortgage lenders and the manufacturing base (Automobile manufacturers and the defense industry).
Let’s take a look at campaign financing. Obama raised $745 million, McCain raised $368 million.
Finance, Insurance & Real Estate: $130,634,154 Total. Democrats $69,987,307 GOP: $60,525,764
Total Individuals PAC’S To Democrats To Republicans
2008 $468,809,924 $396,331,007 $72,478,917 $238,597, 503 $229,267,201
Securities and Investments
Total Individuals PAC’S To Dems To Republicans
2008 $154,918,793 $143,495,995 $11,422,798 $87,965,961 $66,736,485
When it comes to influence, the average American has very little. It’s amazing when you consider how the political parties package their candidates. They use the oldest trick in the book to win elections. Divide and conquer. Left, right, rich poor, black, white, legal, illegal, it’s all a ruse.
The hot-button issues still resonate; abortion, gay and lesbian, health care, education and taxes and the all-important “national security” as if Venezuela were to suddenly invade the Gulf of Mexico with help from Bolivia.
Our lawmakers have broken the backs of the Unions. They pass agricultural laws that drive independent farmers out of business because the costs of doing business have become astronomical. Meanwhile fear-mongers and ideologues such as Rush Limbaugh claim that Obama is practicing some new variation of “socialism” that has allowed corporations to return to the era of monopolies. Standard Oil, AT&T and big Pharmaceutical companies merged with their competitors and drove smaller operations out of business.
Our nation is continuously at war. The War on Drugs, the War on Crime, the War on Terrorism and the War on Climate Change challenge our resources so that we now fight wars for these resources. We celebrate our freedom while our phones are being tapped, our e-mails read and collected, our computer keystrokes are recorded and plans for an RFID chip in a National ID card are being planned.
These are not right or left issues or liberal/conservative issues. Until 2008 the Republicans spent money like drunken sailors on liberty, now the Democrats find themselves buying American auto manufacturers and controlling interests in banks and insurance companies. We buy American dollars from the Rothschild’s and the Mellon’s and the Rockefellers at interest through private banker that have the audacity to call themselves “The Federal Reserve” We cannot print our own national currency; this was a primary reason we fought to free ourselves from Great Britain. Our money comes pre-packaged with debt attached.
Congress denies legislation for Americans so that they may stay in their homes while authorizing 80 million in additional funds so that we can continue to send unmanned drones into Pakistan to bring death from the sky blasting suspected Taliban forces that turn out to be wedding parties and picnics.
Our “Shining City on a Hill” has caused more than one million dead Iraqi’s and over four million refugees. Our thousand points of light are actually depleted uranium projectiles that emit alpha radiation that bring death in the form of fission and birth defects to Iraqi children Along ken strands of DNA in our soldiers that bring deformities to American children. A thousand points of light in the form of white phosphorus that when burning, doesn’t stop until it has burned through flesh and bone until it lands on dirt.
We watch as American and NATO troops take the Helmand Provence in Southern Afghanistan that will be used for the all important oil pipeline that was planned by UnoCal years ago when President Karzai, the Afghan leader worked for the American oil company. Now we have permission the fly over Russia to resupply Afghanistan with soldiers and instruments of war while the Russians sit back and watch our people die.
The American people are slowly realizing that we have traded one war-monger for another. Once we were in Afghanistan to fight al Qaeda, now we are trying to kill the Taliban. In reality we are killing anyone that stops us from building that oil pipeline.
Almost a decade ago we saw a candidate tout “compassionate conservatism”. Nothing was further from the truth. Now we have a President that speaks of “change”. The only change I see is a different battlefield for people to die.
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