Big Oil and Campaign Finance Reform in the U.S.
Those hoping for campaign finance reform that would reduce the corruptive influence of money on politics took a drubbing in November. Witness the election postmortem of the ambitious MayDay SuperPAC, an attempt to use contributions from grass roots sources to elect candidates who refuse to accept contributions from the huge special interests. MayDay lost every one of the congressional races in which it participated.
So if MayDay is a failure, is there hope for those of us who honestly care about this stuff?
Indeed, when one “follows the money,” it’s easy to get despondent. The horrific “Citizens United” decision (U.S. Supreme Court, 2010) protects the “rights” of corporations to spend as much as they wish to influence our elections. As frequent commenter Cameron Atwood wrote the other day: In 2012, all the elections for president, house and senate cost about $6.2 billion ($21 per American), and ExxonMobil, by itself, profited $44.8 billion that year alone. That means ExxonMobil, all by itself, could have bought all the federal elections in the country with just 14% of its 2012 earnings.
I’m afraid this shows the folly of the MayDay concept. Suppose you could name a candidate, say, that beacon of truth and justice Craig Shields, whom you (rightfully) trust to work diligently on issues like repealing subsidies for the oil companies, creating an energy policy that would phase out fossil fuels, and using master limited partnerships to provide a level playing field by which renewables can compete fairly in the energy market.
Suppose this is a senate race, where the average campaign expenditure is $10.5 million, but somehow you’re able to arrange for the “Shields Never Yields” campaign to receive twice that, or $21 million.
One of two things will happen: a) Exxon, Koch Industries etc. will do some quick math and determine that my presence in Washington won’t mean anything vis-à-vis their plans, in which case they won’t spend a dime, or b) their math will suggest that a Shields victory actually would somehow represent a real threat to something that they deem important—or that might spell trouble in the future. In this case my $21 million war chest will be dwarfed by whatever they need to spend to convince the local voters that I’m a child-molester, a wife-beater, or worst of all, a liberal.
But no one around here seems to be giving up, if only because the U.S. is actually fairly close to achieving a measure that will put a spear through Citizens United. Cameron also notes: “In Massachusetts, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Montana and Florida, citizens voted overwhelmingly yesterday for their legislators to pass a constitutional amendment to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling.”
It’s true, and it’s equally so in both “red” and “blue” states. As I quoted last year, Montana voters also supported Initiative I-166, which endorsed a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, by a 74.8 percent margin. In Colorado, voters endorsed a similar ballot initiative, Proposition 65, with 73.8 percent of the vote. Voters in more than 120 cities and towns in Oregon, Colorado, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, Massachusetts and California passed similar measures. Public opinion polls show that Americans overwhelmingly oppose Citizens United and believe that corporations, and corporate money, have too much influence in politics.
There is always reason for hope, not because good is bound to prevail over evil, but simply because there will always be people who never give up fighting for what’s right. If you’re looking for a pithy way to express that, here’s journalist Chris Hedges (pictured above): “I don’t fight fascists because I think I will win. I fight fascists because they are fascists.” He’s not going away anytime soon, and trust me, if you’re on the wrong side of a humanitarian issue, he’s somebody you really don’t want to mess with.
Revenue is sufficient driver for this trend. Political patronage is always governed by what is possible. When the revenue needs arise, tax favors fall away, however temporarily.
“The horrific “Citizens United” decision (U.S. Supreme Court, 2010) protects the “rights” of corporations to spend as much as they wish to influence our elections.”
From an outsider’s viewpoint – I see the “hand of $” being used to put “pupets” into government offices. For me this is descrimination towards the voters!
Another point – I seem to recall that a “massive” 32% of voters “installed” the current President in office. What happened to the 68% that did NOT VOTE?
Craig,
Thanks so much for posting on this issue. It gets to the heart of why energy sustainability policy is the way it is.
The controlling interests in our society have not yet decided it is to their private advantage to shift from filthy ancient sunlight to the clean modern stuff. The immensely profitable fossil energy industry is subsidized – according to a recent presidential speech – to the tune of $4 billion annually… that’s pretty rich music.
However beneficial renewables will be to our United States and health and well-being for ourselves and our progeny, there is a substantial transition cost for fossil firms. They continue to regard these more healthful and wise resources as competition. Their formidable lobbying power will continue to ensure that renewables subsidies are sporadic, unpredictable and anemic. We may also expect the campaign of misinformation, concealment, and discredit to endure long past the ecological tipping point. One potential counter to this status quo is the rising awareness of insurance, asset management and investment firms where the leadership realizes that human climate disruption poses a severe threat to their success. Going forward, such ‘at-risk’ firms may more strongly voice the needs for sustainability and emissions reduction.
Incidentally, it’s not merely the direct quid pro quo effects of the many forms of bribery now in play. The effects of the threat of contribution to a political opponent might also operate powerfully in the cesspool of corruption in which our leadership swims. A statement such as, “Perhaps your opponent will be persuaded to support our position if you will not,” could prove quite effective in a close race.
Exxon-Mobil and its ilk are quite well organized, and not for altruistic public benefit. If we logical, critically thinking and imaginative humans want to see our national security and political sovereignty preserved, and if we want to defend ourselves and our posterity against the lethal ravages that fossil fuels inflict upon the biosphere and the economy, we had best get organized.
Nuke tech is not currently an option. There are promising nuclear technologies in development, but they’re not ready for prime time in the way that wind and solar are. All the currently operating and genuinely planned commercial nuclear fission energy technology is prohibitively expensive when all the costs are accounted for – mining, refining, construction, insuring, weaponization potential, waste containment, facility lifespan, decommissioning – and, given the prospects for natural disasters, human error and sabotage/terrorism, it’s clearly proven to be inherently dangerous to the biosphere just to operate.
Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) is safe, clean, proven technology, and modern energy storage systems make it viable. Harvesting modern sunshine is much cleaner and safer (and cheaper in the long run) than sucking and digging up filthy prehistoric sunshine, dragging it dangerously all over the planet, burning it up, and pouring 32 billion metric tons of CO2 yearly into the modern sky. Only bribery keeps that toxic filth marketable.
However, sustainability is by far from the only issue at stake. The barriers to progress on every major issue of our time have the political power of money at their core. The greatest threat to our national security is therefore here at home – it’s the very flood of bribery capital that drowns our state and national capitols.
We must organize against the fixated and methodical army of corporate lobbyists – 11,000 strong and pouring out bribery at an average of $6 million per congressperson in 2012 alone. The words of Abraham Lincoln apply well to illuminate the danger of inaction…
“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
If we want to escape indentured servitude and act with true liberty, we will find instruction in the words of a man who accomplished those feats in great measure, Frederick Douglass:
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to, and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
Franklin,
Likewise, the recent GOP “victory” in the US House and Senate was the product of 3% of the eligible electorate. Many people in this country see the woeful condition of our “democratic republic” and they are not inspired by the reliably false promises made by politicians and candidates across the political spectrum. A number of others were disenfranchised by a number of voter suppression tactics employed to reduce and discourage the vote of the common citizen.
Contrast our voting system with that of Australia, where the entire citizenry is automatically registered, election day is a national holiday, mail-in ballots are universally available and polling places are plentiful, well-known and accessible – oh, and voting is compulsory.
Good stuff, Cameron. Australia has the right idea, to be sure.
…the right idea on voting that is. On energy, for some reason, they’re a train wreck: http://2greenenergy.com/2014/11/15/environmental-issues-2/.
Having encountered a lot of rabid conservatives I immediately realized that your two above quotes would energize and encourage them at least as much as you or I. In both cases, I’m afraid that “we” think that we can get our way if only everyone else joined us in getting those “liberals” or “conservatives” or “wealthy” out of Washington.
Maybe it would help if you could find some quotes that are more specific regarding just who must be overwhelmed by us, the “oppressed” or “common citizens.”
Wise words are often spoken in a broadly applicable manner, in which their intent seems malleable. They’re often twisted to advantage by one element or another, and often not far out of the mouth of the speaker. There are many such quotes, and many others that seem plain in their meaning and are nonetheless manipulated.
I myself am an independent – one who recommends adherence to George Washington’s admonition, “Let me now warn you, in the most solemn manner, against the baneful effects of the spirit of party.”
Since I attained voting age, I’ve cast my ballot for every GOP candidate who ever won the Oval Office – with the proud and notable exception of George W. Bush.
I’ve also voted for every Democrat who won our highest office. Every last “winner” on both sides, red and blue, has been a bitter disappointment to me.
I’ve voted for numerous third party candidates in local, state, congressional and presidential elections as well, for whom victories have been predictably rare.
For all of his lofty rhetoric and storied reputation to the contrary, President Barack Obama has varied his foreign policy path precious little from the previous occupant of our White House. Even what’s so widely regarded as his most celebrated (and most reviled) domestic policy achievement, “Obamacare,” is a set of bad ideas straight out of right wing think tanks that was road tested by Willard “Mitt” Romney.
Obama’s budget priorities are also shown to be within a narrow sliver of the prior “administration,” and he has merely expanded the worst of those very encroachments against our Constitution and against International Law that were so rashly swollen across the turn of the century, by the congress and the administrations of Bill Clinton and (most especially) George W. Bush.
Something to keep in mind about true independents… The Left see the rich, plundering. The Right see government’s waste. The Greens see that Nature will always make most of the rules. Independents can see all three of these things at once.
As far as quotes go, here are a few further morsels to muse on…
“Whenever there are – in any country – uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1785
“We hold that the moral obligation of providing for old age, helpless infancy, and poverty, is far superior to that of supplying the invented wants of courtly extravagance, ambition and intrigue.” — Thomas Paine, 1791
“He mocks the people who proposes that the government shall protect the rich, and that they in turn will care for the laboring poor.” — Grover Cleveland, 1888
“The people of this country are not jealous of fortunes, however great, which have been built up by the honest development of great enterprises – which have been actually earned by business energy and sagacity. They are jealous only of speculative wealth – of the wealth which has been piled up by no effort at all but only shrewd wits playing on the credulity of others, taking advantage of the weakness of others, trading in the necessities of others. This is ‘predatory wealth’.” — Woodrow Wilson, 1908
“It is essential that there must be organization of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes and therefore labor must organize.” — Theodore Roosevelt, 1912
“I am not for a return of that definition of liberty under which for many years a free people were being gradually regimented into the service of the privileged few.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1934
“This concentration of wealth and power has been built upon other people’s money, other people’s business, other people’s labor. Under this concentration, independent business was allowed to exist only by sufferance. It has been a menace to the social system, as well as to the economic system, which we call American democracy.”
“The economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1936
“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.” — John F. Kennedy, 1961
“My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed it until now.” — John F. Kennedy, 1962
“Unless drastic reforms are made we must accept the fact that every four years the United States will be up for sale, and the richest man or family will buy it.” — Gore Vidal, noted author, 1969
I really like those quotes! Thanks!
Indeed. Cameron is a walking encyclopedia on this stuff.
Craig, fully agreed – moreover, their current PM is a rabid denialist (himself having replaced a progressive PM under highly questionable quasi-legal circumstances). We can only hope their system soon facilitates the better angels of their nature.
I’m with you. I was shocked when I realized that this guy was in power. Yikes.
You’re welcome, Ben. Thanks, Craig.
Incidentally, it strikes me that the extractive wealth to which Woodrow Wilson referred has come to predominate across our economy and the world economy as well – “…shrewd wits playing on the credulity of others, taking advantage of the weakness of others, trading in the necessities of others.”
Curious if anyone has ideas for reversing this trend.