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Democracy for sale! Democracy for sale! Get your control of the world’s most powerful democracy with its $14 trillion GDP for the low, low price of a few hundred million. From the Wesleyan Media Project (PDF):
An estimated $198M has been spent on advertising in U.S. Senate and U.S. House races in the five weeks between 9/1 and 10/7. With September as the traditional start to the general election season, the 75 percent increase in spending (from $113M during the same period in 2008) includes an 84 percent spending increase in U.S. Senate races and a 65 percent increase in U.S. House ads. [...]
“Breaking down the air war by party reveals big advantages to Republicans in both party and interest group investment in federal races,” said [Micheal] Franz. “Combining party and coordinated totals, Republicans are outspending Democrats by almost 3 to 2. Among interest group spenders, Republican-leaning organizations are outspending Democrats by a margin of almost 9:1 in House and Senate contests.”
The Citizen’s United ruling has clearly unleashed a flood of outside corporate spending on our elections, and we don’t even know who is trying to shape our government with their millions. The beneficiary of all this new secret campaign spending is overwhelmingly the Republican Party.
With tens of millions of dollars worth of campaign ads coming their way, it is no wonder Senate Republicans joined in lock step to filibuster the DISCLOSE act, which, while incredibly weak, would have at least attempted to help address this problem. What is completely inconceivable is why the Democrats allowed this insane abuse of an 18th Century Senate rule drafting mistake to continue and didn’t simply eliminate the filibuster. Democrats’ insane love of protecting institutional malfunction has literally been destroying them.
I would care little about their childish incompetence and slavish adherence to a disgusting anti-Constitutional tradition if it were only torpedoing their re-election hopes, but, unfortunately, it is also undermining our entire government. They fiddle with their stupid clubhouse rules while millions in secret corporate dollars are used as kindling to burn our democracy.
I only hope that, seeing this election as the dark harbinger of things to come, Democrats will use the lame duck session to kill the filibuster if need be to pass the DISClOSE Act and Fair Election Now Act, and attempt to put our Democracy back in the hands of regular Americans. Of course, I fear thay are instead planning to use that time to cut Social Security–people have their priorities, after all.
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Democrats cower, surrender and lose – then blame us for not fighting harder for them
What I have not myself seen is the observation that the money given for right wing TV advertising is self-sustaining. Much of the media is owned by right wing billionaires. A given. Much of the money given to right wing orgs for advertising therefore lands back in the pockets of these RW plutocrats. A gift that keeps on giving.
It is pointless to continue on to how tax relief to rich folks abets this.
sound about right, that’s where 90 percent of the wealth is and that wealthy wants to take even more middle class assets
soon that figure will be about 9.9 to 1
What’s interesting is that some Democrats (like Russ Feingold) have figured out how to turn this against the GOP — namely, by calling secret contributions what they are, which is bribery:
Well now we know what companies are doing with that money they’re sitting on instead of hiring people. But Obama keeps reaching out to them. Either he’s too corrupt to be president or he’s too stupid to be president.
Nice metaphor, dude. Very excellent post.
I’m all warm from the fire inside.
Which side are you on?
It’s not just self-sustaining, it’s a profit center because it’s siphoning even more money from the rubes. There’s enough dough floating around to create a small army of Palin wannabees.
I don’t know about anybody else, but I am this sick of all the "We’ll do it in the lame duck session" garbage.
I’m sure there are exceptions, but the Congressional tradition of the past 20 or so years has been that, during a lame duck session, only terrible garbage gets passed, and very quietly too.
Excellent. When things get really rocky, may need to resurrect that song as a battle cry.
I’m an old Wobbly and like Seeger’s version but Natalie Merchant and Billy Bragg et al have newer versions which would prolly resonate better with the younger folks.
The essential question remains:
The bosses or labour. Which side are you on?
OMG!!
You’re telling me people and corporations really care about elections and so spend money trying to convince others of their viewpoint??
Really!!!?????
HOLY COW! WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN??
It certainly must be STOPPED. We should have a special commission of experts tell us who to vote for and eliminate these evil people who want to persuade me how to vote.
Thank you. Thank you for pointing this out. I’m stunned.
Indeed!
So it’s ok that the scales are tipped hard in favor of the rich? It’s OK that they can dump as much money as they like into a cause or a candidate and not be obligated to tell us?
Uhhh. Yes.
It’s called free speech.
It’s odd that you would even make that point given you are clearly disguising who you are, “Phoenix Woman.” How do I know you are from Phoenix, or a woman. By Golly, you may be one of those evil foreigners trying to influence the election by lurking on web sites and cheering on the democrats.
Come on Phoenix Woman (if indeed you are either one of those). Reveal yourself. Tell us who you are.!!!
Democracy demands it.
Trolls on parade.
sorry. didn’t mean to interrupt your pity party.
What happened to the Tinman. The quality of the trolls is falling like a stone.
I hardly see this as a “pity party.” Yet again: truth hurts. Pointing out the obvious here: that the wealthy and foreign corporations are running these elections. Guess we’re not supposed to do that for some as yet unobvious reason.
Most US citizens do not know about the SCOTUS “Citizens United” decision, much less have a clue about its impact on our electoral process.
I don’t feel like a victim, but I do feel like having this information get out there where some small portion of the citizenry might LEARN about it. And I agree that it is bribery.
If one enjoys corporations and rich Oligarchs running the show and ripping off the middle and lower classes: so be it. I happen not to agree with that, but that’s just me.
heh – yes, yes, and Tinman is a pretty low bar to set, but yeah: better than some trolls, that’s for sure.
The only thing that is going to stop this is a Constitutional Amendment that authorizes legislatures to put limits on campaign spending. Every other Democratic country imposes those limits; in Canada they are especially severe; violators can go to prison in extreme cases, and candidates who are involved are barred from running for office. The Director of Elections is an extremely powerful person up here.
Of course, there are always ways around the limits. The Conservative Party, which has engaged Republican operatives, does attack ads outside the Election period. The attack they pulled of Stephane Dion worked marvelously. They haven’t had the same success with Ignatief, and the public are in any event getting wise to their game, so they are reduced to preaching to their already converted.
Bottom line. The US is probably the only place outside Italy and Russia where Big Money has a free shot at perverting elections.
Thanks for that insight; I quite agree. I’ve been chided here before for comparing present-day conservative tactics to post-Soviet Russia. IMO, present-day USA Oligarchs are taking copious notes from their Russian-mafia Oligarch “brothers.” My opinion, but there ya have it.
And conservative voters seem to think that’s just “great.” Just as conservative voters find it equally great in CA, where Oligarchs E-Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina wag their entitled fingers at CA citizens and instruct us that we should ever more resemble our communist Chinese worker counterparts. No lie, and go figure.
Just saying…
And that says it all. I don’t feel sorry the Democrats. They just gave 30 million captive customers to the insurance industry, and the insurance industry will roll part of that money right back into the Republican coffers. The Democrats will give Wall Street our Social Security money and Wall Street will roll some of it back into the Republican coffers. Maybe the Tea Party will go out in the streets and scare some sense into the Republicans. “Keep your government hands off my Social Security!” I remember when I laughed at that.
I just don’t understand your arguments which seem to be some combination of corporate speech is bad and speech by people above some income/wealth level is bad and anonymous speech is bad. And you keep asserting those things without any evidence to support the claim and without any consistency to the argument.
For instance, if I’m a rich person, let’s call me George Soros, I can spend as much of my personal fortune as I desire on trying to persuade voters. Substitute Jon Corzine, Jay Rockefeller, Meg Whitman, Ron Johnson, Ross Perot for Soros and all of that is still OK by y’all. But if I’m George Soros Inc then it’s bad and a subversion of the Constitution. How is that?
So then you say, well, George Soros is spending too much money. He’s sharing his story too widely. But why is that the case? How much should he be allowed to share? Only as much as the poorest amongst us? Only as much as the average donor to a political party? What is the appropriate amount of money he should be allowed to spend? You never even come close to addressing this, supporting why there is even a “correct amount.” Instead you just fall back on, money = bad = subversion of the Constitution. If I decide to devote my work day to trolling web sites like this, and forego a higher wage, should those foregone wages count as part of your money entering into politics equation?
Why should you limit my speech? If I want to bankrupt myself for a candidate, or bankrupt myself as a candidate, why is it good for you to prevent me from doing that? You won’t limit people to how much time they spend writing about this issue; why is money so inherently different. Both time and money are means to the same end: Persuading voters. And if election speech can be restricted, than any speech can, and that, friends, is not good.
As far as anonymous speech goes; What’s wrong with that? Most of us here are anonymous yet we can freely share our views. Why is that so bad? The validity of our arguments has nothing to do with our anonymity. Anonymity, many times, hurts the persuasiveness of the argument. As well, identifying yourself many times helps the argument. But what is so bad about anonymity?
Do you have that low of an opinion of the voters that you believe they’ll believe anything? And if that’s the case, what you should really be arguing is to restrict voting based on intelligence or passing a civic lesson. Which you don’t.
Your friendly anonymous troll.
The Roberts run US Supreme Court is a branch of the repub party, just as the repub party is a branch of Australian Rupert Murdoch’s FOX News. Chief Roberts and Justice Sam Alito HAD to roll back democracy for the 2010 elections, and they did it.
When Justice Alito was saying, “NO NO NO” during the President’s State of the Union speech before the Congress, he wasn’t disagreeing that the decision in Citizens United would open the election process to a flood of corporate money, he was confirming that FOREIGN corporations would be secretly buying votes in the US Congress by secretly funding Karl Rove.
The Citizens United case proves that Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Sam Alito are political whores for Foreign Corporations buying control of the repubs in the Senate and House!
Justice Thomas’s wife is a tea-bagging money raiser for conservatives. Justice Scalia is plain bonkers. Shame on Justice Kennedy for going along with these democracy usurpers.
Here’s a hypothetical how it works: big coal mining corporation has a case against it for violating safety and pollution laws with impunity. Buys a judge, runs against the one sitting on the case, and wins thereby ruling for the coal mining corporation.
Or, Chinese firm wants to own hi-tech company that manufactures drone airplanes to obtain the technology. Figures if have three unsuspecting teabagger numbskulls in the Senate, can swing it, so secretly fund their campaigns by millions of dollars, they win, they owe a debt, and the deal clears controls. Simple.
It just shouldn’t cost so much $$$ to run for elected office in this or any country; That invites corruption and bribery.
If that’s the government you want which panders to the BIG corporations and allows them to run all over the citizens of a country and squash them like bugs, then, you’ll have to live( or not) with the consequences.
As the $$$ has risen to top since Reaganomics, conversely, it’s become harder to make a living or hope for a better, saner future in this country and the world. Meanwhile, politically insulated corporations poison us and everything else with their addiction for ever more.
Maybe that sounds good to callow righties, but it sure doesn’t to me.
I have some experience of how little the average citizen matters anymore and it isn’t very much fun.
But, in educating myself and understanding The Corporation has more rights than I do, I can make decisions so I don’t lose what little I have left…..hopefully.
Access To Justice In U.S. At Third-World Levels, Says Survey