College of Political Knowledge
Subject: Government/Politics
Paper #40
The 2010 mid-term elections are now over and they proved to be the most expensive for the special interests…..about $80+ million was spent so that the GOP could regain the House and damn near took back the Senate….this was up from the $16 million spent in the 2006 mid-terms….so this begs the question, Is our democracy served by special interests?….to be answered.
An observation in the HuffPo by Julie Hirschfield Davis….
Interest groups from across the political spectrum are spending millions to target ultra-specific messages to voters in the final days of congressional campaigns in efforts to turn out key groups that could sway tight races from California to New Hampshire.
Armed with carefully tailored lists of which voters are sympathetic, these organizations are hoping to transform their top issues into deciding factors in close contests. They hope to cut through the near-universal worries about the economy and job losses that have defined this year’s campaign and appeal to people on a single topic that could motivate them to keep – or fire their representatives.
All this was made possible by a decision from the US Supreme Court….
Thanks to a sweeping and ill-considered 5-4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority, corporations will now have the same rights as citizens to support candidates through independent expenditures. With this action, the court has effectively undermined the influence of individuals and parties on electoral outcomes, while vastly increasing the clout of business behemoths and their lobbyist representatives to influence and intimidate legislators to support their agendas. If the lawmaker doesn’t play ball, he or she can be threatened with an unregulated financial blitz come election time.
The court’s ruling came in a case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, that centered on a conservative advocacy group’s expenditures to publicize an anti-Hillary Clinton movie shortly before last year’s Democratic presidential primaries. Current federal law bans such corporate expenditures for communications targeting individual candidates 30 days before a primary and 60 days before a general election.
The SCOTUS has in essence made special interests the 4th branch of our government…..to the point that they write the bills and finance the passage……the FinReg was basically written by the financial sector….Health reform was basically written by the insurance sector and look at the Pledge To America…the GOP plan to save the country….it was written by a pharma lobbyist….so welcome our newest branch of government…..the special interests….
I ask again…..Is our democracy served by special interests?
Straightforward question with a simple answer – NO!!!!!!!!!!
Yep…but surely someone somewhere has a different idea….ya think?
Probably, but would anyone listen?
I am beginning to think that NO one here has enough brain power to understand the damage that is being done….
Yeah. I’m not really a conspiracy theorist (though I like them for the interest), but I sometimes wonder if anyone is aware of the “world coup” that is taking place – at least in the Western half of it…
I think they are oblivious……it is like a slow cancer and no one seems to care….
Probably, like cancer, most people are hoping against probability that they are wrong and it’s benign…
Maybe Obama-care will change all that…..no way!
It appears to me that Obama-care, like almost everything else he’s done, is a hugely watered down fudge – a very pale imitation of what was advertised – and probably fairly insignificant in the greater scheme of things. But then it sort of appears to me that this is often the natural result of a democracy – as they are currently set up.
Someone once said that a camel was a horse designed by a committee and so it seems to be with democratic politics – ugly, a bit of everything, but not really anything specific or startlingly successful either (though camels in the right enviroment are far better than most political systems – IMO).
Sad, but without a vastly superior political model which no one has yet found or implemented, that is what democracy will always be – better than most dictatorships, but still a sickly shadow of what it COULD be!
I believe that Winston Churchill said it best, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”……
Yes – and he was exactly right (and about a lot of other things too – more than many want to admit).
But there is more……”The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” Winston again….
Yeah, now who does that sound like (apart from us)?
Thinking……I cannot think of a single name other than ours…….does that make us avant garde?
Maybe, but didn’t one of the ancient Greeks say something along those lines? You’re clever, surely you know… 😆
Plato comes to mind….”Democracy passes into despotism.”