“Who Says Money In Politics Doesn’t Buy Influence?”: The Distorting Impact Of Money, Enabled By Supreme Court Rulings
One recent day, my newspaper had two front-page stories related to money and politics. One was about financial contributions made from the political action committees of prospective presidential candidates to Iowa office-seekers of the same party. Another reported that former Texas Governor Rick Perry has been appointed to the board of the corporation planning the controversial Bakken pipeline.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled money in politics is free “speech,” and doesn’t buy influence. But both of those stories offered small examples of how it might. In the first, potential presidential candidate Rand Paul wants Iowa operatives in his camp, so he donates some of his PAC funds — a thousand here or there — to their campaigns. They in turn may feel grateful enough to repay the favor by talking Paul up to their supporters.
In the second case, prospective presidential candidate Perry gets a direct financial stake in a controversial oil-pipeline proposal. The Bakken pipeline, which would stretch from North Dakota to Illinois, is widely opposed by environmental and other groups. But by investing in Perry and his campaign, the company could bank on having a friend in the White House to create a climate favorable for such projects. In 2012, the head of Energy Transfer Partners gave a quarter million dollars to a SuperPAC for Perry. And now Perry has a seat on its board.
A Perry spokesman said Perry won’t be publicly promoting the pipeline, but he doesn’t have to. His board presence is endorsement enough.
Traditional PACs are chicken feed compared with the filet mignon influence SuperPACs can buy. The first allow a group of people with a common goal — say, reducing environmental regulations — to donate up to $5,000 to a candidate in each round of an election campaign, and $15,000 a year to a national political party. But SuperPACs — authorized by the 2010 Supreme Court ruling, Speechnow vs. FEC — can raise and spend unlimited amounts of corporate, union or private dollars to promote or discredit a candidate in a federal election. They just can’t donate directly to the candidate or party.
The Center for Responsive Politics reports that in 2014 elections, 1,300 SuperPACs had raised more than $695 million. They ranged from the liberal Senate Majority PAC, which raised $67 million, to the conservative American Crossroads PAC, which raised $23 million. Ten billion dollars were spent in the 2012 election cycle — combining the presidential, local, state and regional races — according to national journalist/author John Nichols. But for all that spending, Nichols told a Des Moines audience, 2014 had the lowest turnout in midterm elections since 1942.
Nichols, the Washington correspondent for the progressive Nation magazine and co-author of Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America
In a rousing speech in the basement of a United Methodist Church, Nichols said most Americans feel too overwhelmed to know what to do. Rather than motivate voters, the excess negativity of political ads causes many not to vote. But Nichols maintains that Iowans get more one-on-one time with presidential candidates than anyone else and should use that to grill them. “Iowans should be saying, ‘How much money have you taken from this interest?’” and how do they stay independent of it, he said. He suggested everyone ask the candidates if they agree with the Supreme Court that corporations are people, and if unlimited spending to influence elections is protected free speech.
Ultimately, those rulings can only be overridden by a constitutional amendment. But history, notes Nichols, was filled with people organizing in response to an injustice and getting the constitution changed — like the 19th amendment, ratified in 1920, granting women the right to vote, the 13th amendment (1865), abolishing slavery and the 15th amendment (1870) giving black people voting rights.
It takes either a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress or in two-thirds of state legislatures to amend the constitution. That must be ratified by three-quarters of the states. But some states have begun the process. Montana and Colorado voted differently for president in 2012, but both voted to amend the constitution to curb money in elections.
It’s a long and laborious process. The 27th amendment, on congressional pay, was submitted in 1789, but not ratified until 1992. On the other hand, the 26th amendment, giving 18-year-olds voting rights, took only three months to be ratified in 1971. Most Americans understood the absurdity of drafting young people who couldn’t even vote. I hope most Americans also understand the absurdity of politicians using their office to return a debt to the deep pockets that helped get them elected.
By: Rekha Basu, Columnist for the Des Moines Register; The National Memo, February 18, 2015
“GOP Response; The Breadbags Of Empathy”: From Tiny Booties Made From Hostess Twinkie Wrappers To Bidding For Plutocrats
Imagine going to the doctor and saying, “My back is killing me. I can barely move. What can you do to help me? Should we do an X-ray? Physical therapy? Medication?” And the doctor responds, “Yeah, I hurt my back once. It was awful. So I know exactly what you’re feeling. Anyway, thanks for coming in—just see the receptionist on the way out to pay your bill.”
That’s not too far off from what we heard from Senator Joni Ernst in the GOP response to the State of the Union address last night. I’m particularly interested in this part:
As a young girl, I plowed the fields of our family farm. I worked construction with my dad. To save for college, I worked the morning biscuit line at Hardees.
We were raised to live simply, not to waste. It was a lesson my mother taught me every rainy morning.
You see, growing up, I had only one good pair of shoes. So on rainy school days, my mom would slip plastic bread bags over them to keep them dry.
But I was never embarrassed. Because the school bus would be filled with rows and rows of young Iowans with bread bags slipped over their feet.
Our parents may not have had much, but they worked hard for what they did have.
These days though, many families feel like they’re working harder and harder, with less and less to show for it.
Because America is still the home of the world’s most creative and inspiring strivers, within minutes people were not only posting pictures of themselves with bread bags on their feet to Twitter, some even crafted shoes out of bread to photograph. But what, precisely, is the point of the bread bag story supposed to be?
The point is affinity, saying to ordinary people, in Christine O’Donnell’s immortal words, “I’m you.” I understand your struggles and fears, because I’ve experienced them. I don’t need to walk a mile in your shoes to feel your pain, because I’ve already done it, though mine were covered in bread bags. At a time like this, Ernst’s ability to tell stories about her hardscrabble roots is no doubt one of the big reasons Republican leaders chose her to deliver their response.
There’s a second part of this message that no Republican is going to lay out too explicitly, and Ernst certainly doesn’t, which is that because I’m just like you, when it comes time to make decisions about the policies that will affect you, I will have your interests at heart.
But there’s a problem with that, because despite the years she spent trudging through the snow in her bread bag feet, Joni Ernst’s beliefs about economics are no different from Mitt Romney’s, Jeb Bush’s, or those of any other Republican whose childhood feet were shod in loafers hand crafted from the finest Siberian tiger leather. There’s almost perfect unanimity within the GOP on economic issues, an agreement that the minimum wage should not be raised, that taxes on the wealthy are onerous and oppressive and should be reduced, that regulations on corporations should be loosened, and that government programs designed to help those of modest means only serve to make them indolent and slothful, their hands so atrophied that bootstrap-pulling becomes all but impossible.
But now that both parties agree that they must address economic inequality and stagnant wages, you really need to follow up the tale of long-ago hard times with some specifics about what you want to do now. And this is where things break down. When Ernst got to laying out the GOP economic agenda, here’s what she offered: First, the Keystone XL pipeline, which as an economic stimulus is a joke. For whatever combination of reasons—the fact that environmentalists hate it is the most important—Republicans have locked themselves into arguing that a project that will create at most a few thousand temporary jobs is the most important thing we can do to boost the American economy. Second, Ernst said, “Let’s tear down trade barriers in places like Europe and the Pacific.” Kind of vague there, but nobody likes trade barriers. She didn’t elaborate, however. And finally, “Let’s simplify America’s outdated and loophole-ridden tax code.” Which, again, nobody disagrees with in the abstract, but I doubt there are too many struggling families saying that their biggest problem is that the tax code is riddled with loopholes.
So that isn’t much of a program. But she did close by saying that America is “the greatest nation the world has ever known.” And it’s inspiring that someone like Joni Ernst can start life in the most modest of circumstances, fitted as a baby with tiny booties made from Hostess Twinkie wrappers, then graduate to bread bags as she learned to castrate hogs (they do help keep the blood off your one good pair of shoes), and eventually grow up to do the bidding of the nation’s noblest plutocrats. It shows what’s possible in this great country of ours.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect, January 21, 2015
“An Enormously Difficult Task”: Why Republicans Will Lose The Coming Argument Over The Economy
There may be 21 months remaining between now and the 2016 presidential election, but both Republicans and Democrats have come to an agreement on what the election should be about. They may use different terms to describe it — Democrats will talk about “inequality,” while Republicans will tout “opportunity” — but they’re both going to focus on the ways the economy isn’t doing right by Americans who aren’t rich.
In the name of pundit courage, I offer a prediction: Republicans are going to lose the argument. They’ve practically lost it already.
Let’s take a look at what we’ve learned just in the past couple of days. We all know that both sides are looking for new policy ideas they can present that will demonstrate their commitment to lifting up middle class and poorer Americans, so what’s on offer? Chris Van Hollen, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, has released a plan that includes giving every working American who makes less than six figures a $1,000 tax credit, gives people further tax credits if they save money, limits corporate tax deductions for CEO compensation, and pays for it with a financial transactions tax (presented as a Wall Street “high roller” fee). Meanwhile, Republicans are trying to cut Social Security disability payments.
OK, so that’s not entirely fair — Republicans are, in fact, talking about what they can do for less affluent Americans. For instance, Politico reports today that even Mitt Romney has decided that the three pillars of his 2016 campaign will be a “muscular” foreign policy, helping the poor, and supporting the middle class. Which sounds interesting, but at this point it constitutes nothing more than talking about how this is an issue he’s going to be talking about. You have to look pretty hard to find an actual idea Republicans have.
And while they’re figuring that out, it looks like Democrats are going to keep rolling out one policy proposal after another, whether it’s Van Hollen’s tax credit (which other Democrats are also going to be advocating), President Obama’s plan to make community college free, or upcoming pushes on issues like paid family leave and more inclusive overtime rules.
Republicans start out at a significant disadvantage in this debate for a number of reasons. First, they tend to talk about the economy from a level far removed from that of ordinary people. Enact policies like low taxes and light regulation on corporations, they say, and the result will be growth that ends up benefiting everyone. But now they’re acknowledging that they have to talk about middle class and even poor people, and offer them something more specific. That runs into their second problem, that because they believe in small government, unlike Democrats they aren’t likely to support policies that offer direct, immediate benefits.
The policies they do support, furthermore, will immediately be characterized by their opponents as being one of two types: attacks on the poor being deceptively offered as efforts to help them (like devolving responsibility for safety net programs to the states) or moves to help rich people being deceptively offered as a boon to the middle class (like most Republican tax cuts).
Republicans will, of course, say that these criticisms are unfair. But the default assumption voters have is that the GOP is the party of the rich. That means that in order to persuade them, Republicans can’t just come up with some reasonable policy ideas, they have to offer something twice as compelling as what Democrats are proposing. And when Democrats are saying something straightforward, like “Our plan is to give you a thousand bucks and pay for it by taxing Wall Street,” while Republicans are trying to explain how block grants would bring a more efficient allocation of benefits, it isn’t hard to see who’s going to win the argument. Just try to imagine how much work someone like Mitt Romney — he of Bain Capital and the “47 percent” — is going to have to do to convince voters that he’s really the one who’s on the side of the middle class.
If we look back at the recent history of presidential campaigns, we see that Republicans win the argument on the economy under three conditions. The first is when there’s a Democrat in the White House and the economy is terrible, as it was in 1980. The second is when there’s a Republican in the White House and the economy is doing well, as it was in 1984 or 1988. And the third is when the economy is doing so-so, but the election turns on an entirely different set of issues, as in 2004 — in other words, when there really isn’t much of a discussion on the economy.
The 2016 election doesn’t look (at the moment anyway) like any of those three. Unless there’s a dramatic change, the economy will be doing well in broad terms like growth and job creation, but voters will want to hear what the parties are going to propose to improve wages, working conditions, and the fortunes of the middle class and those struggling to join it. Winning that argument will be an enormously difficult task for the GOP, and they aren’t off to a promising start.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, January 13, 2015
“The 100 Rich People Who Run America”: The Ultra-Wealthy Have Taken Over The Political System
We are well past the point that anyone will be shocked or even surprised by how distorted our system of funding campaigns has become, but thanks to some excellent reporting by Ken Vogel at Politico, we now have some interesting new perspective.
We have reached a tipping point where mega donors completely dominate the landscape. The 100 largest donors in the 2014 cycle gave almost as much money to candidates as the 4.75 million people who gave $200 or less (and certainly that number goes from “almost” to “more” if we could include contributions that are not required by law to be disclosed).
Think about this for a minute. This is consequential. It means that candidates running for office are genuflecting before an audience of 100 wealthy individuals to fuel their campaigns. So, whose bidding do we think these candidates are going to do? Is it any wonder that the interests of large corporations and unions get to the front of the line?
Liberal Democrats like to blow their bugles about how all the big money in politics comes from rich Republicans. Actually, as Vogel points out, 52 of the 100 top donors are Democrats, and the No. 1 donor by far is Democrat Tom Steyer, who chipped in $74 million.
At least we’ve achieved some bipartisanship somewhere in our political ecosphere. Both parties are now equal opportunity offenders when it comes to gaming the system.
But I don’t fault Steyer or the Koch brothers for trying to exert their influence on politics and public policy. They have strongly held beliefs and issues they care about deeply, and they are simply spending a lot of their money to try and change things in a direction they believe would be better. Nothing illegal or unethical about that.
But let’s call the system that Citizens United and other rulings and laws have created what it is: an oligarchy. The system is controlled by a handful of ultra-wealthy people, most of whom got rich from the system and who will get richer from the system.
Supporters of the system believe that the $3.67 billion we spent on elections last cycle isn’t really all that much money. An Arkansas poultry company owner and big time political donor, Ronnie Cameron, reflected to Vogel that it’s not so different today than it’s been in the past when, “Our country was founded by the wealthy landowners having the authority and representing all the people.”
He said that out loud. To a reporter. Knowing other people might read those words. Without any apparent irony. Imagine all the poor Americans who will sleep better knowing that a rich Southern chicken farmer is happy to represent their interests.
Vogel gets to the heart of the problem though, reporting that, “When all the donations are tallied and analyzed, 2014 is likely to be noteworthy for two other milestones on the opposite end of the spectrum from the growth of mega-donations: It’s on pace to be the first mid-term election since 1990—the earliest cycle for which the Center for Responsive Politics performed such an analysis—in which the overall number of traceable donations declined. It’s also likely to be the first midterm since 1990 when the candidates’ campaigns spent less than the preceding midterm election.
The decline in candidate spending, though, is more than offset by the increase in spending by super PACs and other groups that can accept huge contributions from the ultra-rich.
That means that fewer and fewer everyday Americans are choosing to contribute to campaigns. In fact, less than 1 percent of Americans donate today. And who can blame them for feeling disenfranchised when they see their efforts dwarfed by the mega donors.
At the same time, campaigns are spending less while the special-interest groups are spending more. So we now have a system that discourages voters from participating and engaging, while rewarding and encouraging special interests to participate even more.
“[O]ur nation is facing a crisis of liberty if we do not control campaign expenditures. We must prove that elective office is not for sale. We must convince the public that elected officials are what James Madison intended us to be, agents of the sovereign people, not the hired hands of rich givers, or what Madison called factions.”
Those are the words not of some liberal Democrat. That’s the prescient echo of Barry Goldwater from 30 years ago.
By: Mark McKinnon, The Daily Beast, January 5, 2015
“Minimum-Wage Increases; The Justice Of Redistribution”: To Not Be Victims, Workers Must Be Compensated For Value Of Their Work
As we enter the new year, 3 million low-wage workers in 21 states will gain a small increase in their wages, thanks to increases in state minimum wages. People you know will see a wage increase — your neighbor, your teenage kid, the person who serves you coffee and donuts.
The minimum-wage increase is a good thing because it increases income in a small way to the workers on the low rungs of our economy. A stagnant minimum wage redistributes income from workers to owners and managers and, ultimately, shareholders and customers. As the minimum wage has failed to keep up with inflation and productivity increases, our political economy has redistributed significant income from low-wage workers to owners over the past 40 years. One reason this happened is that workers have no leverage vis-à-vis corporations. They are price takers for their labor.
Minimum-wage increases reverse this redistribution so that workers win back a little bit of what they have lost. Minimum wages should be associated with value added instead of the powerlessness of workers to demand higher wages. But minimum-wage workers are not compensated for the value of their work for their employers. Raising the wage begins to remedy that undercompensation. If the wage goes too high, then employers will not hire workers, because their compensation exceeds the value of their work. But as we have seen, this is not the case with minimum-wage increases, which simply means that for the past decades workers have been paid less than the value of their work for employers.
How does increasing the minimum wage redistribute income? An increase in the wage results in a decrease in the payments to managers and profits for the establishment. That’s redistribution. We can argue that this might not happen because of productivity increases by the worker, but that merely means that the productivity increases (or a portion thereof) that might have gone to the employer instead go to the employee — hence redistribution from owners to workers. Redistribution also can occur between worker and customer. If a restaurant increases prices due to an increase in the minimum wage, in an attempt to avoid a decrease in profits, then the customers pay more. These customers have the disposable income to patronize restaurants. We can make the assumption that the customers have greater incomes than the people who wait on them. Thus, an increase is again redistributive, with the increase coming from increased prices paid by customers. Imagine: In Seattle an Amazon IT person goes out to lunch. (It feels like they all do.) Instead of paying $15 at the Skillet truck, they pay $17. They have lost $2, and the Skillet truck workers will have seen an increase in their wages. Redistribution to minimum-wage workers is good for them and pushes up the floor for the bottom half of all wages.
We too often equate increasing the minimum wage with living standards and poverty levels. This is dangerous for several reasons, including the fact that it sets a precedent for slicing and dicing the minimum wage: Do you have dependents? Do you pay for your own health insurance? How old are you? Are you paying for tuition yourself? All these are important questions, but taken to their logical conclusion, they move the minimum wage into welfare policy, so that an 18-year-old student could get paid less than a 25-year-old who is on her parents’ health insurance, and she might get paid less than a single mom with one kid, who could get paid less than a spouse in a household with three kids, etc. These are life situations best handled by social policy, social insurance and the appropriate provisions of public goods and services. But a focus on the minimum wage as welfare policy debases the fact that we should be raising the minimum wage because we should be insuring that workers are paid the value of their work. That is, such a focus disrespects workers as workers.
A lot of liberals don’t want to call increases in the minimum wage “redistributive.” It brings the reality of class conflict too close to the surface, apparently, and portrays workers as workers, not as victims. But in order for workers to not be victims, they must be compensated for the value of their work. That is not happening now, not in these United States. These state minimum-wage increases begin to reverse the damage, precisely because they are redistributive, from the owners of capital to the workers they employ. That is a good thing — and an excellent beginning for the new year!
By: John R. Burbank, ; The Blog, The Huffington Post, December 31, 2014
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