Corporations to Buy Elections

So the Supreme Court ruled that corporations (and presumably other organizations, but it's the billions of corporate money we ought to be worried about) can spend as much as they want in political races to benefit their candidates.

The ruling was 5-4, broken down with conservatives in favor and liberals against, and Washington Republicans almost universally praised it. This makes sense, as the Republican party usually benefits from large corporations, because Republicans tend to do things like let corporations exploit tax loopholes (putting tax burden on regular people) and remove regulation (allowing corporations to charge whatever the hell they want, allowing them to collude to fix prices, etc.). The extra money will mean that almost the only message you're going to hear is the one side, regardless if they're lying or not.

I actually think this is an incredibly horrible decision. Corporations are NOT people, they don't make decisions like people, and corporate goals and interests (and therefore the candidates they support) are not the same as a citizen's interests. But since the Civil War, businesses have been allowed to operate as if they were entities, and this has led to all kinds of complicated idiocy. Such as this. Partisan politics is already out of control (if one side introduced "puppies are adorable" legislation, the other would immediate launch into anti-puppy rhetoric), and this money is only going to mean the Republicans are going to be able to drown out the Democrats, regardless of whether or not they're the right people. I think the last administration should have shown people the flaws of one-sided debate. Agree or disagree, you ought to at least hear both sides, and with this kind of funding, that's not going to be possible.

It all comes down to money, and corporations are going to give theirs to the person that will let them make the most. Investing millions to make billions. And the citizens are going to suffer for it: government for the benefit of business is actually one of the classic elements of fascism, as is a single-party government. If this is allowed to go down, we're on our way to something that makes the Bush years look like a sunshiny day. That's my prediction, at least.

Thoughts? Reactions?

Democrats are just as bad as Republicans. One is a party of no ideas and the other a party of bad ideas. This is all fucking ridiculous.

What it all comes down to is this is merely the most blatant in a series of steps to make it clear that money = vote. Corporations have been considered "human," for tax purposes for a long time so I've been wondering when they'd finally be allowed other human rights. The only difference between what will happen now and what happened before is that big business will no longer be constrained by the aegis of some sort of actual give-a-shit concerning under the table donations and money funneling through multiple organizations.

Now it's just a fucking holiday giveaway. Cheney was able to walk away with his campaign contributions, right? What's to stop future presidents from walking away with theirs?

I think Robin Williams recently summed it up in a single comedic, yet intelligent point: we should treat our politicians as we do our racecar drivers. As in, when they go to work, in front of a camera or simply going about their day, their suits should be covered in the patches of whomever has donated to them. This way we'll know which people are owned by Texaco, which by Verizon, which by Chase and so on.

Whether or not that ends up helping matters I'd at least like to be aware of who's fucking me over!

But in all seriousness, I try to keep an eye on things like this and my despair echoes your own. As much as I want to believe in the country of my birth, believe that it not only won't collapse before I do but that it'll be going stronger than ever when that time comes, I find myself more and more losing faith because of such issues. When is the last time there was a protest; a real one? When is the last time people stood up as a group and said that this is not acceptable? The problem is that those in charge have figured it out, controlling the media, controlling the candidates, doing everything they can to have the masses believe there's only Right or Left, and that even a suggestion of an alterier solution is unpatriotic.

I still remember the first time I lost faith in the system. It was the governor's race, time before last, for the state of Washington. Closest election margin in history. A lot of people I know over here focused only on that and thought the election was a shining example of every vote counting and such. But you had three recounts, each with different results. There were some 8000 odd more votes counted than actual registered voters in the state (And the final result was by less than an 8000 vote margin), and it all came down in the end to a board of three people in King County voting to allow some 500 odd votes (Again, still more than the final victory margin) to be counted that were thrown out previously due to being illegible.

Oddly the Florida thing in 2000 didn't have that evisceral effect on me. Then again, I was too young to vote then, just barely, whereas I did vote in the above election.

Course, then you see examples of protestors now a day, and the civilian opposition. Big change from the days in my history books where people were getting beaten, firehosed, and dogs sicced on them. Especially when I was seeing that Penn and Teller episode which just highlighted some of the things I had been seeing. A Peace Rally with Che Guevara posters as a symbol of peace. Protestors in Washington who thought they scored a victory because they "Made a real connection with that security guard" and were shooed out. When politicians do thier road tours and protestors are given "Designated Protestor Zones", usually a few miles from wherever the political figures are. The "Redistricting" which leaves the political district maps looking like some digital mosiac.

And now this.

Getting bad out there. I'm reminded of the old quote "No man should be afraid of his government". But I routinely am. Especially as I continue to hear things like legislation being voted on that no one had even read in its entirety, much less reviewed and carefully weighed. And now we will have elections being bought. At least on the national scale, maybe the state.

Not to say the system isn't broken entirely. At least on the local scale, city and county I've seen it work. I've been able to get results, and at least have my representatives listen to me, if not consider and champion ideas I propose. But State, Federal... I have no hope, and I don't see them even considering turning down the right road.

On redistricting:

Remember a few years ago when those Texan representatives fled the state so the state government wouldn't be able to complete a vote? That was when the governor was forcing through some hinky redistricting to right and properly gerrymander the Texas voting districts. The redistricting was off-schedule from when they were SUPPOSED to redistrict, and was being forced through because the governor had a majority and if the vote was cast, there was no way his opposition could beat him. So they used the only tactic they could: tried to keep them from having a quorum enough to hold the vote, and they only way they could do that was to not be present in the state. That is literally the only thing they could do to even slow down this technically illegal (except it was being perpetrated by the people who make the laws, so they could call it whatever they wanted) redistricting action.

So of course they were painted in the media as freaks and madmen. Never mind the questionable politics they were protesting. Buuuuut the perception of the corporate-owned, money-controlled media as "liberal" is a rant for a different day.

The parties involved? Let's just say the absentee crazy politicians were Democrats.

I recall reading about that. I also recall that they had Texas Rangers raid the place the politicians were hiding out in and drag them back to Texas. I also recall thinking that somene should rightly be pissed about jurisdiction protocols in there as well.

I'm also of the belief that politicians should have patches showing sponsors. Not only do I get to know whom I'm voting for, it's one of the few ways to add colour to the place.

*rim shot*

That joke is less funny after Obama, but it still works.

I have little to no real knowledge of politics, but what this says to me is 'whoever has the most money wins the election.'

Would that be right, or am I missing something?

Zombies Galore said:

Democrats are just as bad as Republicans. One is a party of no ideas and the other a party of bad ideas. This is all fucking ridiculous.

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I can name a few democrats that are actually genuinely good, intelligent people. Al Franken, Howard Dean, Bernie Sanders (only caucuses with them, but still).

On the other hand, on the Republican aisle, three out of four Republican senators voted against a gang rape victim's right to trial.

I have to choose between mildly corrupt / stupid and a party that actively ignores gang rape and child sex slavery, whose brightest members are at best a match for some of the dimmer Democrats.

At least if I vote democrat I can wash my hands knowing that the person I voted for has some shred of decency.

Kite Xiroh said:

I have little to no real knowledge of politics, but what this says to me is 'whoever has the most money wins the election.'

Would that be right, or am I missing something?

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That is essentially the truism. Whoever has the most money has the best chance; the less wealthy candidate had better be DAMN good to beat relentless and only possibly-true advertising. That's how things have stood for many years now.

What this ruling does, it makes it so non-human, non-voting legal entities, like corporations, no longer have legal limits on how much money they can give to their candidate. Which means the candidates most deeply in the corporation's pocket gets all the moolah. Yay, democracy?

This isn't Democracy anymore. It's bullshit. It's advertising.

We need revolution.

The baby boomers need to die off in mass.

Kite Xiroh said:

This isn't Democracy anymore. It's bullshit. It's advertising.

We need revolution.

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Careful how you talk like that. You know the FBI pays to have agents join groups like "parents for peace" and such and monitor them for subversion. A few wrong words and you could have your phone tapped without a warrant, or be declared an enemy combatant and shipped off to Gitmo.

Oh, wait, it was the previous administration that did that. It's the enemy of freedom and the American way, Barack Obama, who's overseeing the exposure of all that.

What is it with these Republicans being caught out doing horrible things? It's almost as if these self-avowed patriots and good Americans... aren't what they say they are. Hmmm...

Raziel99 said:

The sad thing is, Democracy is considered the best and most 'fair' of all governments. Does anyone agree that this is not a Democracy anymore? It's some sort of sick reverse Communism with the label of Democracy protecting it.

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Corporatism is still a form of central planning - communism at its worst - but Fox News wouldn't dare present that angle.

Sidenote: America is not, and has never been, a Democracy. It's a constitutional republic. There is a large difference. To quote the Federalist Papers (Essays by our founding fathers to educate the former revolutionaries why they should follow the new American Government, rather than the loose articles of confederation), "Democracies have always been as violent in thier excesses as they are short in thier lives."

Important? I think so, got to understand what your government is if you're going to really talk about options and what could, should, or might be done. The misuse of "Democracy" seems minor overall, but remember that Democracy is truly Mob Rule, we're not that bad yet, and a republic is rule by law. Given a choice between the two I would choose law over the whims of the mob.

Here's the thing: democracy (or representational rule by law in republican form, abbreviated to "democracy" as necessary for conversational purposes) in general is the most fair system we've developed so far, but I can't say that America is the finest example of it. Oh, idealistically, our goals are in the right place (at least as far as founding documents, etc., go), but in practice, money and greed run the machine, which victimizes the rest of us. I don't know that we need to sweep everything away, but we need deep reforms, and much as that's a buzz-word in Washington right now, nobody's flexing sufficient muscle to force it, and that's what's going to be necessary to make the kind of changes we need.

There are many ways we can safeguard our democracy, such as it is, and one of those is transparency. If everybody would publish and make available all their financial supports, all their influences, make the process of government visible, so that people are held accountable for what they do. This is something that's coming back (in fits and starts; not everybody is on-board as much as others), thankfully, but it's been 8 years of basically classifying every damn thing, and that takes a while to undo. Corruption thrives in secrecy, which is why transparency is important.

A lot of folks have trouble with disclosure of their donors (I have the 2004 edition of The Buying Of The Presidency, which couldn't give accurate donor numbers on Bush's 2004 campaign because they'd missed a number of deadlines, and their estimates kept rising and rising... the plethora of Dems in that race all turned in their lists, such as they were, but not the incumbent), but that sort of thing is the barest minimum that needs to be in place in a situation like this. Ideally, we ought to find a way to reverse this whole donor thing. It would be best if we could do something about letting businesses have the same rights as people, as that's the root of a lot of evil in American politics, but it's been more than a century of precedent for that, so I don't see that likely.

Thanks for the defining Mr. Master. Like I said, seems minor I know but I do believe it's an important point.

Actually I see part of the problem being a lack of education among voters. I consider myself fairly well educated on the issues and people I vote for. I read my local paper, and the Seattle Paper, I watch several different news casts each day (From CNN to BBC), listen to the BBC world news on the radio quite often (Gods I love Satellite Radio).

No one else I know does anywhere near as much to keep informed. But despite me spending a good 5 a day keeping up with events I still don't consider myself to have a perfect grasp of the issues at hand.

Compound that with emotional stupidity that people do. For example, nine of my friends told me, in 2004 and 2008 "I'm voting all democrat because I don't like Bush". Now, fine, you don't like him. He's a fuck up, he deserves your scorn. But can you tell me what voting for your state level represenatives has to do with that? Or your county? Or city? Do they even KNOW what platforms those people were running on? To a man, they had no idea of even ONE issue that said people they voted for actually ran on.

...

Let this sink in. Lots of problems. Money is part of it as negative ads get a lot more play than positive ads. People learn who they "Hate" without understand what they're actually choosing. They let the anger from a national campaign cloud thier whole ballot, regardless of what the people involved on said ballot stand for or any transparency they try to maintain.

Well, transparency is a useful tool, I would say a necessity, but it's not a feature on its own. It's what politicians need to be forced to do, and what voters need to pay attention to. It's what that transparency reveals that's important. I merely bring it up because we got people getting hard knocks for a lot of things which might not even be heard about if it weren't for the transparency they're trying to establish, and I don't think that's right.

Anyway.

Yeah, informing is doubly difficult when you've got the negative ads that run on half-truths and misinterpretation. Oh, the people who make them know what the true facts are, but they intentionally phrase it like that to twist the viewer's reactions. The classic is the telephone "push poll" the Bush people ran during the 2000 primary campaign against McCain. I found this summary: "South Carolina voters were asked 'Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?' They had no interest in the actual percentages in the poll, the goal was to suggest that he had. This was particularly vicious since McCain was campaining with his adopted Bangladeshi daughter. The sight of the little dark skinned girl made the seed planted earlier grow and John McCain lost South Carolina, effectively ending his run for the presidency." That's the kind of thing voters have to deal with, and more money means more and more effective versions of this, plus media ads, and so forth. It's getting so I won't vote for a person if I see they've run an attack ad (or had one run on their behalf; you know how these "independent organizations" are just a screen to allow deniability).

Speaking of voting, i do try and stay informed about the principles going on, but frankly, I'm just tired. I'm burnt out. I've been doing it since 2000, trying to pull the wool off people's eyes, to very little effect, and I'm just exhausted from it. I'm still aware of the faults of the system, but I have very little fire left. As a result, I am occasionally guilty of voting party. If I don't know anything about the candidates (and that is occasionally the case), my instincts are Anti-Republican and Broaden The Playing Field, in that order. So if there's only two candidates, I'll vote for the one that's not Republican. If there's three, I'll vote for the third party, most often. That's only if I don't know anything about them.

I've got nothing against conservatives as people, but GOP politicians are a different breed than your citizen voter, and that machine gets enough support, it doesn't need mine.

Damn, I'm ranting again, aren't I? Sorry. The conversation seemed to be branching, and I went with it.

Point is, think of how hard it's going to be to get the straight dope on all the candidates when you've got the wealthy party spewing mistruths and hatred and fear from all media avenues (ads, news articles, opinion pieces, talk show hosts, etc.). That's why this decision is one of the (several) worst things to happen to American politics in a while.

"Wealthy party" reminded me of something. Old SNL Weekend Update skit from the Clinton years. The guy playing the anchor did a line about "Democrats in the senate were opposed to the proposed tax cut for the wealthiest 3% of americans until they realized "Wait, that's us!".

And no one laughed in the audience. he had to go "What, come on people, think about it." Just as many wealthy, influential people on both sides.

I vote third party quite often too. I hate the Yes or No, no Grey, nature of just two parties.