Since the very beginning there has been those detractors of American democracy that have predicted its demise…but few have been accurate until recently….the activist judges (to use a GOP slogan) on the Supreme Court have taken a step to finally end the government of the people, for the people and by the people…..
This from an article in the LA Times:
The ruling removes limits on corporations from spending their money on federal races, meaning that companies — and probably labor unions — will be free, for instance, to buy up advertising time days and weeks before an election to support or attack a potential candidate, perhaps creating slick spots with high production values similar to drug or car ads, or purchasing large blocks of network time.
Previously, federal law prohibited corporations and unions from using their treasuries to advocate for a specific candidate, allowing them to express themselves only through political action committees that were tightly regulated. They will still be prevented from donating money directly to campaigns even after today’s decision.
The question now is whether corporations and labor unions will take advantage of their new freedom. For the past decade, labor unions have been more aggressive than corporations in finding legal ways to fund independent political campaigns. But the relaxation of campaign-spending restrictions could clear the way for groups from all points along the political spectrum to spend more, and target more of that spending in the critical final days of a campaign.
This ruling is putting the very fabric of American democracy in danger….no longer will the people be the deciders…but rather the corporations will decide who rules and who gets what…..
The American will NO longer be a minor inconvenience to be tolerated; they will become insignificant to the political process…I have always said that Americans get the best government money can buy and now, thanks to the Supreme Court, I am proven right, yet again…..
The American voter will NO longer be relevant to the political process….more so than NOW!
It’s the partisan thing and, to be honest, I think the unions may well be a big player in this. As you’ve pointed out, they have always found ways to spend huge amounts of their members’ subscrition money on political activity – and now they can do it with impunity.
If they do it, so will the corporations, but it a “chicken and egg” situation (which came first? the chicken or the egg?) and who knows how these things start?
There is a simple answer – ban everyone from contributing more than 1000 dollars to any political organisation and ban and rigorously enforce the ban on ALL political candidates and parties from funding campaigns – EVERY candidate gets 20,000 dollars from the public purse to campaign and NO more!
In fact, you could reduce it to 1000 dollars and buy (or insist it be given for free) from the principle TV and newspaper companies the space (equal space for all) to get each candidate’s message across – say two minutes each – ONCE per campaign!
That’d stop it! Dead!
THat is it! Public financing of campaigns….everybody gets the same amount of money, the same amount of air time and so on……but this new ruling is killing any idea of campaign reform…it will take the Congress to step in and we see how good that works for health reform…democracy is fucked!
The American voter still matters. Some one has got to watch the impending propaganda and vote accordingly.
Terrant, I want to believe we still amtter but it gets harder by the day…..
But with all the media power in the hands of corporations, unions, gun lobbyists, insurance lobbyists and every other sort of pressure group, watch all you want, it’ll make damn all difference. Sorry, but I’m with Lobotero and I wish it were not so…
I guess I didn’t convey enough sarcasm there. 🙁
Ahh – comprendo… 😆
This is an important discussion and I agree we should be having it. But notice how the choices have been narrowed down to whether corporations spend unlimited amounts to influence political decisions, or just very large amounts. Certainly they find ways of influencing the political process since they almost seem to own it: lobbying, the revolving door between corporate America and the bureaucracy, even the drafting of legislation has been given over to them (remember the Bush administration’s energy policy, which was practically dictated verbatim by oil companies through their receptionist, Dick Cheney, and the provisions in the healthcare bill that were taken word for word from health insurance industry memoranda).
The problem is a larger one, and has to do with the citizen’s acceptance of the corporation itself. Why do we think there is nothing we can do about this structure, which has almost turned into a god, and which is certainly already regarded as an essence which seems to float above us and surround us somehow? Why can’t voters, I mean consumers, do something about it? This sense of powerlessness in the face of the corporation is not just limited to America of course. But I want to say something almost heretical here. I think we should stop concentrating on government, because not only is this not getting us anywhere, I think, in a sense, this is exactly what corporate power-brokers rely upon.
The traditions of democratic governance are quite entrenched in the cultures of the West. This is something corporatists can rely on. This is maybe the one consistent aspect of culture from the past in a consumerist culture that has been created largely through marketing by corporations to begin with, and that has wiped out everything else from our collective history. In this sense, the corporation, far from being some kind of all-seeing, all- powerful agent, is destroying the very grounds it relies on for its existence. There is very little left to it that binds people together, except for politics, which binds us in conflict, spectacular, can’t-look-away-this-is-too-important conflict. This is why when corporations, or an entire industry, really want to get something done, they start a political debate about it.
Think about healthcare reform in America. Who started the debate? Grassroots activists? Patients rights advocates? No. Health insurance companies did. Going all the way back to the Nixon administration, and even before, the industry pestered government to do something about the poor state of healthcare as a way to boost their bottom line. They saw, correctly, that any action by the government–subsidies, HMO reform, Medicare reform, etc.—would primarily benefit them, by providing them with more patients while at the same time only instituting weak new rules that they could then challenge and circumvent anyway.
And that is exactly the whole point of the healthcare debate right up to today in America, and, to a lesser extent, the same debate that is going on in many European countries (through arguments about reimbursements and rates), where, far from having “government run healthcare” as is so often repeated by (admittedly well meaning) activists in America, there is a thriving private insurance industry which simply bills the government. In other words, in America you pay them direct, in Europe, the government gives them a tip. This is ridiculous, on both counts.
Why not short circuit the corruption at its source? If people can’t get healthcare, attack the corporations. Criticize them. Buy into them and take them over. Undermine their advertising campaigns. Sue them. Protest them. Find out where their CEO’s live and….
Well, you get my point.
There will probably be meaningful financial reform in America and Europe. As a matter of fact, already the loophole that allowed for unlimited leveraging against derivatives schemes, credit default swaps and so on, has been closed. The largest investment institutions are largely healthier today not because of the bailouts but because the market has confidence in them due to their no longer being leveraged against these faulty instruments at a rate of 30 or 40 to 1. This is a fact. How did this happen? People got furious. People protested. People threatened. And yes, Bernie Madoff got prosecuted, jailed, and even shoved. And a few banking execs even had their houses stoned. So be it. Let the fracas begin.
People should take a lesson here. Intimidation works. Address yourselves to the source. Attack the corporation. I’m not saying, forget about government. But if that’s all we’re concentrating on, we’re missing the point. And that just leads to another ride on their merry-go-round.
ToG
I agree with much of that (up to a point) up until the last para… it ISN’T just the corporations – it’s every goddamn group with an axe to grind! Voting should be an INDIVIDUAL choice and NOTHING should be allowed to detract from that!
Violence is NEVER an answer. You cannot complain if someone walks through your door and kills you and all your family, if you advocate violence against others. YOU are not RIGHT any more than I am right – we each have opinions and we are each entitled to them… just as corporations, unions and others are entitled to their opinions. You do NOT save democracy by threatening it!
Simply blaming corporations, or anyone else for that matter, for doing what they are allowed to do (and indeed what we should expect them to do) is, in my opinion, over-simplification, if not downright blinkered and foolhardy.
Change the SYSTEM – don’t try to change people – rich or poor – it simply won’t work and it’s not even realistic. It’s even just as unfair as the current result.
Added to that, compared with America, we in Europe DO have government run healthcare that is LIGHT YEARS ahead of the US! Don’t confuse the fact that modern healthcare for all citizens that is available for ALL and EVERY whim, is simply and TOTALLY unaffordable by ANY nation on Earth (with the possible exception of a lucky few like Dubai).
Please! Don’t be so bigoted! Just because there is a thriving private system takes nothing whatsoever away from the government run systems – in fact, the state systems are sometimes dependent on them. In any event, IF the private system is sometimes better (and it often ISN’T – just more expensive to the individual) it simply forces the government systems to aspire to do better. If you take away that “competition” normal people will just be told, “Well, that’s what we do and if you don’t like it – f*ck YOU!”
Never, EVER, try to do away with the private systems in anything – it keeps government systems on their toes and, if you do succeed in removing it, the rich who want it will simply take their money and piss off elsewhere in the world, which will leave YOU (and me) poorer and without choice.
Bullshit. European healthcare systems are different country to country, but the vast majority hold stock in health companies or reinvest through systems of reimbursement, sometimes doing away with the middle man of healthcare insurance, but not the pay provider end. And the idea that corporations have opinions is based on the ridiculous assumptions that they are people. Bullshit again. They’re machines for making and selling stuff. The rest is a mish mash of childish consumerist cant. Good boy.
TOG
Excellent comment!
The fact is that people who are ideologically opposed to ANTHING (or in favour of anything) are in my opinion bigoted and just plain silly. They rarely look at practicallity and they are just as bad as the situation they are complaining about – in fact they usually perpetuate it, sometimes in a different direction.
I am NOT wealthy, but I LOATHE AND DESPISE the idea of equality in ANYTHING but opportunity and access. 👿
Total rubbish! And in any event, who cares? The fact is that healthcare provision for ordinary people is 1000% better in the major EU countries than it is in the US.
Utopia doesn’t exist, never will and is probably not even as desirable for humanity as most people think it would be.
If there were only people like Quin in the world, of course we would never get the chance to test out any improvement at all, radical or otherwise. But this contains a kernel of truth, too. Utopianism is rather silly, and at worst, dangerous. What one must ask is, ‘Why is it so utopian to insist that coporations not become nightmares?’ Certainly there is a regression here: we were clearer in the beginning of the formal capitalist period about what it is that corporations are and what they are not and never can be. The real indulgence in utopia is on the insipid free-market end, where all is fine and dandy so long as a very few people are making all the wealth. If I am anti-anything, I am anti-utopian in this sense, anti-Fukuyama, anti-anti-realism when it comes to the real effects of capital.
TOG
As much as I can understand right now, I think you’re right!