Say Adios to Campaign Finance Reform
I have to laugh. Yesterday I happened to mention campaign finance reform, hoping, in my boyish naivete, for a miracle that would somehow enable our leaders to push for legislature that favors people, rather than corporate interests. But what happened today? We received news of the precise opposite.
The US Supreme Court announced this morning that it has found major provisions of campaign finance reform to be unconstitutional, paving the way for corporate and union money to mute the voices of individual citizens like you and me.
Corporations, defined under law as “fictitious persons,” are given enormous power to achieve their only goal: making profit. Human beings on the other hand, i.e., voters, are given no special powers outside of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and have a multitude of interests and duties. We’ve now granted corporations, on which the law has conferred these unnatural profit-making powers, the right to exert extreme pressure on the political process — at the expense of human voters.
ExxonMobil made $85 billion last year. I wonder if they’ll be able to use some of that money to influence legislation in a way that further tilts the playing field in the direction of fossil fuels. Hmmm. Let me think about that one….
Where’s the Real Danger?
There are 11,000 corporate and special interest lobbyists for our 535 congress members – a ratio of over 20 lobbyists per member. That total number is equivalent to a military division – a body of men currently considered sufficient to establish security in a 24,000 square mile area of Iraq just south of Baghdad. These lobbyists spent $3.47 billion in 2009 alone – divided evenly, that would be about $6½ million per member.
That was before “fictitious persons” were said to possess the Right of Free Speech. Now, with the SCOTUS decision (“Citizens United” vs. Federal Elections Commission) granting the status of human beings to corporations, CEO’s are now free to spend rampantly from the treasuries of the companies they head in any political race across the country – without any assenting vote by the shareholders that actually own the company. A public relations firm in Maryland called Murray Hill has even satirically announced that it will run for public office – what’s next, President ExxonMobil?
For the financial reform bills now inching their way forward against fierce GOP opposition, the number of lobbyists (mostly from the interested Wall Street, banking and insurance corporations) is 1500 – that’s nearly a ratio of 3 to 1. That 1500-strong band of bankster banditos is equivalent to three military battalions. That’s equal to a force that is now judged adequate to secure the approximately 70 miles of ruggedly mountainous tropical border between the murderously hostile populations on either side in East and West Timor.
Data from the Center for Responsive Politics:
At nearly $266.8 million, the pharmaceutical and health products industry’s federal lobbying expenditures not only outpaced all other business industries and special interest areas in 2009, but stand as the greatest amount ever spent on lobbying efforts by a single industry for one year.
The pharmaceutical and health products industry was followed last year [2009] in overall lobbying expenditures by business associations ($183 million), oil and gas ($168.4 million) and insurance ($164.2 million).
In each case, the 2009 totals are greater than that of 2008.
Sector rankings are as follows:
Miscellaneous business $558,230,086
Health $543,992,861
Finance, insurance and real estate $465,018,131
Energy and natural resources $408,966,962
Communications/electronics $360,048,798
Other (education, non-profits, religious) $247,684,383
Transportation $243,941,558
Ideological/single-issue $153,357,071
Agribusiness $141,834,541
Defense $135,879,762
Construction $56,759,414
Labor $43,391,295
(end data)
Notice that all the lobbying done on behalf of regular folks (Labor) was at the bottom of that list, equal to less than 8% of the amount that was spent by ‘health industry’ lobbyists alone.
In another example of cruelly regressive wealth transfer and force projection, $1.05 trillion has been allocated to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 – averaging more than $116 billion per year. This sum is being spent on a global war said to be waged against a tactic – terrorism – rather than against an actual nation or body of men.
Several of our generals have openly confessed – often shortly before being replaced – that our strategy is continually producing more terrorist recruits than we’re killing. This strategy thus increases the probability that we will be attacked more often and more vigorously long into the future here at home.
Based on approved amounts through the end of Fiscal Year 2010, the taxpayers in Los Angeles County will have paid $33.1 billion for the two wars since 2001.
For the same amount of money, we could have provided Head Start funding for 439, 825 children for each and every year since 2001. By the way, according to figures from the State of California, Department of Finance, that’s about equal to the entire population of children aged three, four and five, in any year from 2004 through 2007 in the whole of L.A. county – and that’s the most populous county in the United States.
Then we can also consider the Bush/Cheney/Paulson bankster bailout that opened our treasury to the tune of $12.3 trillion (see Bloomberg’s news reporting) – that’s a tidy sum of $41,000.00 for every American man woman and child, paid as ransom to the “too big to jail” on Wall Street.
Oh, but there’s no money to spend on a national program for universal health, or energy efficiency, or infrastructure maintenance.
Of course, each family would have likely used such a distributed sum to pay back mortgages and credit card debt, and maybe buy a new car – and the banks and automakers would be sitting pretty – but we wouldn’t still all be indentured servants.
Back in 2009 our nation reached another fearful landmark – the financial division between the poor and the wealthy in America reached its widest point in recorded history.
As columnist William Astore recently remarked, the current state of the Union reminds him of Abe Lincoln’s remark about a nation half slave and half free, “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” which itself is a notion taken from Matthew 12:25 in the New Testament – “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.”
The current state of things in America to me is more reminiscent of an older observation – that of the 1st Century Greek historian and essayist Plutarch, “An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.”
What’s the bigger threat to our democratic republic?
The tactics attributed to 19 terrorist hijackers with box-cutters?
…Or existence of 11,000 lobbyist troops surrounding our capitol with the cold and unswerving intent of permanently undermining the authority that our people once rightly possessed over our leadership?
Folks, we’re all being stood up against the wrong enemy.