Apr/May 2001
Energy
Crisis or greed crisis?
Jackie alan Giuliano, Ph.D.
US
Science And Technology Policy
A New Century, A New Framework
Jill Chopyak
An
Ounce Of Precaution: The "Precautionary Principle" Versus "Risk
Management"
Donella
Meadows
The
Pain of the World Passes Through Us
Gaea Yudron, MRET
Plastic
Softeners in Food & Water Linked to Reproductive Disorders
Rachel’s Bi-weekly
Political money: Like A Big Water Balloon by John Darling
Congress:
The Real Pros At Quid Pro Quo
Arianna Huffington
Citizen
Protests Continue: Worldwide Opposition
Kayla M. Starr
Fiddling
While Rome Burns
Blair Bobier
These
Mountains & Rivers as Home:
The Work of the Siskiyou Field Institute
Let
the Children Move
Jon Bredal, MA
Breastfeeding:
A Simple Choice
Pamela Jorrick
Monthly Prayer by Peter Moore
The
Future of Energy Medicine
Richard Gordon
Shock:
How It Limits Our Lives, What We Can Do About It
Peggy Rubin
Cosmic Calendar by Salina Rain
Political
Money: Like a Big Water Balloon
By John Darling
We have the best Congress that money can buy. That was the joke during the corrupt years of Reconstruction, when special interests got their way with outright bribes. We’ve come a long way since then. Politicians now rarely take such outright graft—few wads of cash, junkets and loose women. But not because of any improvement in their morals. It’s because of videotape, special prosecutors and opposition research conducted year-round by the other side.
Today, politicians are as bought and kept as they ever were in the time of U.S. Grant. How do they—corporations, unions, political action committees (PACs), the religious right—buy and keep politicians who are seemingly chosen by the people to do the people’s business?
Answer: special interests buy access and votes by paying for the tv campaign ads vital to getting elected. Is there someone who doesn’t know this yet? The politicians get to go to the dance and, folks, no matter what any pol says, you "dance with the one who brung ya." It’s not cash bribes, but it works the same way, and the result is they are not our public servants; but the servants of the special interests. The interests also keep report cards on each elected official, and if you get 90 or 100, the money and the issue ads are there. If you get zero or 10, you’re in the crosshairs.
After Watergate, it seemed that campaign finance reforms passed into law would stop all this. In the mid-1970s, Congress capped hard money contributions—money given directly to a politician’s campaign—at $1000 from any person or organization. Fine. But, as one federal lobbyist observed, money is like a water balloon. You try to compress one part, but it just pops up somewhere else.
The interests soon learned to dump the money into political parties, where there were no limits and no reporting. In recent years, they—corporations, unions and issue groups, such as the Sierra Club or the NRA—have leaped beyond party and candidate, perfecting the so-called "issue ad," which is almost always a personal attack ad trashing a foe candidate by name. These are totally unregulated free speech and untold millions can be carpet-bombed on a candidate until he/she just curls up and politically dies.
Over half a billion dollars was spent on these last year. What this means is that the special interests have truly become a fourth branch of government. They now carry the power to elect a slate of their own representatives and are restrained only by the issue/attack ads of the opposing special interests.
What to do? The First Amendment restrains Congress from making any law abridging free speech. But democracy, fairness and the public order require us to somehow restrain the interests. Republicans have opposed campaign finance reform, but in the recent very dramatic and genuine debate in the Senate, even Republicans saw something had to be done.
"This obscene money chase—it’s so degrading," said Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., referring to the endless hours politicians must spend on the phone dialing for dollars, when they could be, gosh, studying and debating issues, listening to the public and recovering their self-respect.
Actually, Wellstone’s proposed amendment to McCain-Feingold was the only one that seemed able to reform the whole monster without entering into the swamp of free speech infringement. We have to love this guy. He’s a sweetheart, a good man, a commonsense guy who doesn’t posture a whole lot. What he wanted was to limit contributions to one million (public funding from a tax check off) plus 50 cents for each voting-age resident of his/her state. That’s around a third of the money they have to raise now. You could see it made senators (the Democrats anyway) dizzy with happiness at the thought of being freed that much from the fundraising harness.
What lit up Wellstone was the food! It’s a food freedom bill, he exuded. With this change, we don’t have to eat that rubber chicken crap at hotels. We can go out in the ‘hoods of our state and hang with the people and eat in the Thai, Somalian, Italian restaurants! Real food!
But no—all Republicans and even 17 Democrats hated it. They saw they couldn’t defend more use of public money, even voluntarily by taxpayers, against issue attack ads to come. Well, that’s the price you pay when the electorate chooses to channel surf and remain uninformed.
Back to reality. The Senators knew their debate was the debate on campaign finance reform. Twice in the last few years, the House passed campaign finance reform only to see it killed by filibusters in the Republican-controlled Senate. After the dreadful excesses of the 2000 campaign season, even Republicans knew something had to change. The House will likely pass McCain-Feingold in some form and George W. said he just likely will sign it. So, in the Senate debate, politicians saw their lives flashing before their eyes.
What the Senators did was wipe out soft money for parties. In the last election, the two parties spent half a billion each. That’s immense power. A hotly-debated amendment by Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., tried to avert this carnage with party money caps of $60,000 a year, to be made up for by tripling hard money. It failed with 47 votes. Soft party money died and party budgets were chopped by 60 percent.
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