Ian WhiteCash for Votes?
December 26th 2010 12:22
Category: No Category
I often end up in the middle of some political discussion with earnestly partisan citizens. They'll be tossing around issues they feel are the most crucial and are usually the most popular: "Immigration," "War on terror," "The bailouts," and when my objective view is requested, I never say what they expect. Or for that matter what many have even heard of. My pet peeve issue you see, is campaign finance reform. I know it doesn't sound sexy and provocative, but I think it could be the most important issue. Besides maybe the war on drugs and how it ties into the prison-industrial complex. While popular air head conservative women were unable to name any supreme court rulings this decade, a plethora of pundits pouncing with derision neglected one of their most important.
The supreme court, the other slayers of progress, voted 5 to 4 against a government ban on corporations spending money in candidate elections. What I think is the central problem in politics, is that candidates are bought 10x over by the time they even get on the ballot. Our elections are based almost entirely on money, which any reasonable person should see lends itself to corruption. However using a laughable interpretation of the 1st Amendment, the court deemed it okay for corporations to buy candidates, I mean, make their voices heard. Well now it looks like the ethics committee has their hands full.
It turns out that an uncomfortable number of congress members have held fundraisers with huge donations collected right around the time they were writing or participating in the creation of new laws. In many cases, the donators shockingly had a large stake in the proposed laws. For example, going back to June the members of a joint House and Senate committee worked to draft final rules for regulating the financial industry. You know, that industry whose machinations brought down the economy. Well 35 members of the drafting committee collected $440,000 from that supposed to be regulated industry who were lobbying for lax rules. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the Senate banking committee collected the most that month - about $90,000 from financial interests. Executives of accounting Ernst & Young, a massive entity in their field, contributed the majority of that amount for Schumer: $49,000 in all of June, including $2,000 from chief executive James Turley. Ernst & Young works for some of the biggest (and most corrupt) firms on Wall Street. To give you an idea of what kind of business they run, New York state sued the company for allegedly using a paperwork shuffle to help Lehman Brothers hide billions of dollars in debt before that firm's 2008 collapse. Yeah, nothing fishy there.
At the beginning of this very month, democratic senator Max Baucus gave himself a birthday-party-fundraiser the same day the chamber was taking its first vote on an $858 billion dollar tax deal for wealthy citizens and business interests; Baucus was the chairman overseeing tax policy. Baucus was furious at the insinuation and would of course fiercely deny the notion that his vote could be bought. Well he didn't deny it. Baucus was so indignant that his spokeswoman Kate Downen did so on his behalf.
The ethics committee warned of these practices but as you can see, it had little effect. The politicians stand by their rhetoric about only wanting what's best for the people. Okay, if you're all such honest patriots, then there should be no problem putting our fears to rest. If you only care about the people, then stop holding fundraisers when you're about to have a vote or write a law. Heck, let's throw out the entire campaign process. No more relying on massive donations to get your point across and determine who runs. Total transparency, caps, etc, let's just make it about the issues. Because I'd hate for the good name of politicians everywhere to be slandered by what I'm sure is a misunderstanding. I mean the notion that you'd alter your vote just because you take money from companies that want to alter your vote, is outrageous. These apparent conflicts of interests are easily explainable. Perhaps they really like you, or a series coincidences led to the timing of your fundraisers coinciding with the writing of a law. Whatever the case, just put our minds at ease. What do you have to lose? (millions?)
The supreme court, the other slayers of progress, voted 5 to 4 against a government ban on corporations spending money in candidate elections. What I think is the central problem in politics, is that candidates are bought 10x over by the time they even get on the ballot. Our elections are based almost entirely on money, which any reasonable person should see lends itself to corruption. However using a laughable interpretation of the 1st Amendment, the court deemed it okay for corporations to buy candidates, I mean, make their voices heard. Well now it looks like the ethics committee has their hands full.
It turns out that an uncomfortable number of congress members have held fundraisers with huge donations collected right around the time they were writing or participating in the creation of new laws. In many cases, the donators shockingly had a large stake in the proposed laws. For example, going back to June the members of a joint House and Senate committee worked to draft final rules for regulating the financial industry. You know, that industry whose machinations brought down the economy. Well 35 members of the drafting committee collected $440,000 from that supposed to be regulated industry who were lobbying for lax rules. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the Senate banking committee collected the most that month - about $90,000 from financial interests. Executives of accounting Ernst & Young, a massive entity in their field, contributed the majority of that amount for Schumer: $49,000 in all of June, including $2,000 from chief executive James Turley. Ernst & Young works for some of the biggest (and most corrupt) firms on Wall Street. To give you an idea of what kind of business they run, New York state sued the company for allegedly using a paperwork shuffle to help Lehman Brothers hide billions of dollars in debt before that firm's 2008 collapse. Yeah, nothing fishy there.
At the beginning of this very month, democratic senator Max Baucus gave himself a birthday-party-fundraiser the same day the chamber was taking its first vote on an $858 billion dollar tax deal for wealthy citizens and business interests; Baucus was the chairman overseeing tax policy. Baucus was furious at the insinuation and would of course fiercely deny the notion that his vote could be bought. Well he didn't deny it. Baucus was so indignant that his spokeswoman Kate Downen did so on his behalf.
The ethics committee warned of these practices but as you can see, it had little effect. The politicians stand by their rhetoric about only wanting what's best for the people. Okay, if you're all such honest patriots, then there should be no problem putting our fears to rest. If you only care about the people, then stop holding fundraisers when you're about to have a vote or write a law. Heck, let's throw out the entire campaign process. No more relying on massive donations to get your point across and determine who runs. Total transparency, caps, etc, let's just make it about the issues. Because I'd hate for the good name of politicians everywhere to be slandered by what I'm sure is a misunderstanding. I mean the notion that you'd alter your vote just because you take money from companies that want to alter your vote, is outrageous. These apparent conflicts of interests are easily explainable. Perhaps they really like you, or a series coincidences led to the timing of your fundraisers coinciding with the writing of a law. Whatever the case, just put our minds at ease. What do you have to lose? (millions?)
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