Robert Samuelson’s syndicated column defending the deregulation of campaign finance has appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country this week. Samuelson has written down what he believes to be three “myths” regarding campaign finance law. Let’s look at each of these in turn.
“Myth One: The rich and corporate interests rule government through campaign contributions and lobbying.
This is absurd. In 2009, $2.1 trillion (60 percent) of federal spending went for “payments for individuals.” This included 52.5 million people receiving Social Security; 46.6 million on Medicare (many of the same people); 32.9 million on food stamps; 47.5 million on Medicaid; 3.9 million with veterans benefits. Almost all these benefits go to the poor and middle class. Meanwhile, the richest 5 percent of Americans pay 44 percent of federal taxes.
Does this look like government for the rich?”
Not to put too fine a point on it, but sure, sure it does look like government for the rich, especially Social Security and Medicare. As Robert Samuelson surely knows, the richest 5 percent of Americans don’t pay 44 percent of payroll taxes, the taxes that support Social Security and Medicare. The people who pay the taxes that support Social Security and Medicare are people who earn their income through paychecks. Since Social Security and Medicare are there, paid for out of workers’ paychecks, there’s less pressure on corporations to provide pensions and health care for their retirees, which corporations decreasingly do. Workers pay for it. Corporations benefit.
Medicaid as a program can tangibly benefit big corporations: just ask WalMart, whose employees are on Medicare instead of on a corporate health care program. Veterans benefits also reduce the pressure for corporations to pay health care benefits.
“Myth Two: Political spending is out of control.
Not so. In 2008, spending for federal elections (the president, Congress) totaled $5.3 billion, up 27 percent from 2004. Over the same period, the economy grew 21 percent. By comparison, Americans spent $297 billion in 2008 on mobile and landline phones. Neither party has a permanent fundraising advantage over the other. In the last seven elections, Republicans raised more money in four, Democrats in three.”
Notice that Samuelson quietly documents the acceleration of spending in federal elections before distracting you with other figures.
“Myth Three: Spending isn’t speech.
Well, try “getting your message out” without spending. If money is necessary to disseminate campaign themes, then limits on spending (“independent” or otherwise) restrict speech.”
I have some sympathies with Samuelson on this last point, but he’s being sloppy. Even if money is necessary to disseminate campaign themes, then money is a resource used to amplify speech. That makes it different than speech itself.
And money is not strictly necessary to “get your message out.” It may be necessary to “get your unpopular, less-than-resonant message out,” that’s true. But when one’s messages actually, naturally, match the inclinations of other people, little to no money may be needed for the messages to spread. Example #1: the Occupy movement, which hardly spent any money but which was so popular that police with pepper spray had to be called in to try and shut it down. Example #2: Here at Irregular Times, I’ve gotten a series of messages out regarding the political corporation Americans Elect without spending any money on the effort at all. People have shared the information when they’ve found it relevant. Can you think of any other examples of successful no-budget or low-budget political speech that’s been effective? If you think about it, you should be able to manage it.
Yes, and meanwhile corporations use our roads, have a ready supply of already educated workers that they can abuse, misuse, and underpay, and make use of the already existing (paid for by taxes) phone lines, internet lines, water lines and sewage lines – all practically FREE to them while society pays the freight.
These dinosaurs need to be extinct. Unless they come up with some real money and spend it on the wider social fabric, instead of it going to the top tier of the corporation, these free supply lines are going to shrivel up.
Not to disagree with anything in the post above, nor to disagree with the comments. I am making a new point, that the volatility in the Republican presidential race only is possible because of the ability of wealthy individuals to spend massively on independent spending. If massive independent expenditures were outlawed, Romney could not be successfully toppled. Santorum and Gingrich are only keeping their campaigns alive because of independent expenditures made by extremely wealthy individuals, and, yes, corporations.
That’s true, Richard. What these money battles do is turn a presidential campaign into a battle between camps of wealthy people and corporations. It’s pluralism for the moneyed elite.
I agree with Richard. Liberals try to spin everything in a class warfare way, but it’s really an individual way. Individuals should be able to donate as much money as they want to any campaign.
The real problem isn’t money, but lack of choice of candidates which would be exaserbated in the abscence of money.
I read through Wikipedia article on the topic and the reference links at the bottom of the CU vs FEC article page to find tons of good articles on the subject. It took me a while to read all of them, but I absolutely reccommend reading all links especially RCR ie http://www.realcampaignreform.org/
It shows all the pertinent info and paper record of the case as well as the opinions of each individual Justice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_in_the_United_States#Public_financing_of_campaigns
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_reform_in_the_United_States#Current_proposals_for_reform
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aU.fsorJbt3E
http://articles.cnn.com/2010-01-21/opinion/rollins.campaign.rules.obsolete_1_campaign-finance-election-or-defeat-midterm-elections?_s=PM:OPINION
http://citizensunited.org/blog.aspx?entryid=8225648
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/22/AR2010012203874.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jan/21/divided-court-strikes-down-campaign-money-restrict/?page=2
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11159
http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/citizens-united-v-federal-election-commission
http://www.nysun.com/national/aclu-may-reverse-course-on-campaign-finance/86899/
http://www.city-journal.org/2010/eon0125bs.html
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/193894/president-wrong-i-citizens-united-i-case/bradley-smith
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/opinion/26baran.html
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/how-corporate-money-will-reshape-politics/
http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/82636522.html
http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/49322/defending-i-citizens-united-i/anthony-dick
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/77629-poll-public-agrees-with-principles-of-campaign-finance-decision
http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/
http://www.realcampaignreform.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Paul
http://www.house.gov/paul
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_Owners_of_America
http://gunowners.org/
http://citizensunited.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_gubernatorial_election,_2002
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_in_Massachusetts,_2000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carla_Howell
http://carlahowell.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_in_Massachusetts,_2002
http://michaelcloud.org/
Stephen, your consideration of your “favorite liberals” elsewhere in this other thread of comments to include defenders of the 1% is inconsistent with your proclamation here that liberals are all about class warfare in trying to prevent moneyed people from contributing unlimited amounts to campaigns.
Also, and I’m just mentioning this as a matter of strategy, not as a matter of censorship, because I won’t censor, is that if you’re sticking up long lists of links to very broad websites, you’re not liable to actually get anyone to read them. People’s eyes will glaze over and they’ll move on to the next comment — and not unjustifiably, since people have learned through experience that long lists of links tend to be spam. If you want to convince people, try using links sparingly, as links to sources useful for documenting particular claims that you discuss in clear text.
Undifferntiated mean, I can use the same word in various different meanings. I used the wide definition of liberalism in the previous page, but in this page I limited myself to the narrow definition.
Defenders of the 1%? I only included classical liberals, kantians, and individualists in my list of favorite liberal theorists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Classical_liberals
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kantianism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Kantianism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Kantian_philosophers
It’s really complex because liberal and liberalism are subject to differentiated mean problems. Differentiated mean happens when people use the same word, but ignore different meanings that same word can have in various contexts.
I for one will defend the 100% (if you lump the 1 and 99 %s into one group). I will defend each individual!
I think Americans are holding two irreconcilable ideas:
1. We are a democracy, which means everybody has an equal amount of power in determining government policy.
2. We have freedom of speech, which means everybody has an equal freedom to spend money to influence government policy.
We can’t have both of these as absolutes, because the second undermines the first.
We have a feedback loop going, where money (speech) is used to drive government policy, then government policy is driven to favor the accumulation of wealth (speech) in the hands of a few people, then that money (speech) is used to drive government policy, etc. It’s eroding democracy.
One of the things we heard in response to the Occupy movement was that “free speech is not absolute”; free speech is restricted by things like park ordinances, laws against wearing masks in public, etc. That is to say, other laws, like park ordinances, can limit freedom of speech.
If we, as a society, consider park ordinances–but not damage to democracy–a legitimate reason to limit free speech, we’re in a lot of trouble.
The sppech doesn’t directly determine government policy, but informs the people about the candidates that are being voted on.
People vote for candidates and candidates vote for government policy.
Those earlier examples aren’t curtailment of free speech, but property rights defining speech.
Property rights are why speech cost money. Park ordinances are logical bacause parks are government owned. Free speech is only absolute in private property, the private property that you yourself own.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11159
This is my favorite link of the long list of links in the other post.
Both premises 1 and 2 aren’t contradictory. All people have the right to vote thus equalizing all voters’ influence on policy.
2 is incorrect in that people spend money to inform people about both the good points and bad points about candidates.
I don’t agree that property ownership should determine freedom of speech. I think we have a very impoverished democracy if there is not a substantial right to public free speech, which is something you do not seem to leave room for.
Speech (money) does more than inform voters before elections. Money/speech is also spent by lobbyists to gain unequal access to elected representatives–and therefore unequal influence over legislation–after the election as well.
Even if it were true that money/speech did nothing but inform people about candidates before elections, it would still undermine the equality of power among citizens of a democracy. If money controls the way people are informed or misinformed about the decisions they make in a democracy, it is a considerable source of unequal power.
Would you rather have that no one was informed at all if it meant equality? If you take money/speech out of politics how will people know anything about any candidates?
Hardly anyone I know (other than me) watches C-SPAN for instance. They run third party Presidential debates for candidates who are on the ballot in enough states to win 270 or more electoral votes if they won all or enough of the states they appear on the ballot in.
Would you support elections without campaigns?
I don’t know how realistic it is, but an election without a campaign could be an amazing demonstration of grass-roots democracy in action. I would much prefer to see prospective voters seek out information for themselves than to see select demographics bombarded with campaign ads funded by wealthy donors.
I should note the difference between participatory and representative democracy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_democracy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy
The basic problem is that half of the people are too apathetic to vote at all. The other half are mostly politically uneducated.
Ask any random sample of people in any given part of the country who their representative is, who their senator is? Give them photos of politicians and ask them who they are?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvl0lqhCVio
How many percentage points of the electorate do you think qualify as educated?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_corruption
Wikipedia has an article on political corruption.
In the political arena, corruption is mainly proven by following the money trail. However, the connection between the contribution and anything in return is difficult to prove. For this reason, there are often unproven rumors, that are termed, smear campaign, about many politicians.
Politicians are placed in apparently compromising positions because of their need to solicit financial contributions for their campaign finance. If they then appear to be acting in the interests of those parties that funded them, it could be considered corruption. Though donations may be coincidental, the question asked is, why are they funding politicians at all, if they get nothing for their money.
Laws regulating campaign finance in the United States require that all contributions, and their, use should be publicly disclosed. However, some manage to evade disclosure till at after votes were made or years later. Many companies, especially larger ones, fund both the Democratic and Republican parties. Certain countries, such as France, ban altogether the corporate funding of political parties. Because of the possible circumvention of this ban with respect to the funding of political campaigns, France also imposes maximum spending caps on campaigning; candidates that have exceeded those limits, or that have handed in misleading accounting reports, risk having their candidacy ruled invalid. They also may be prevented from running in future elections. In addition, the government funds political parties according to their successes in elections.
In some countries, political parties are run solely off subscriptions (membership fees).
Even legal measures such as these have been argued to be legalized corruption, in that they often favor the political status quo. Minor parties and independents often argue that efforts to rein in the influence of contributions do little more than protect the major parties with guaranteed public funding while constraining the possibility of private funding by outsiders. In these instances, officials are legally taking money from the public coffers for their election campaigns to guarantee that they will continue to hold their influential and often well-paid positions.
As indicated above, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe recognised in 1996 the importance of links between corruption and political financing. It adopted in 1837 the Recommendation on Common Rules against Corruption in the Funding of Political Parties and Electoral Campaigns (Rec(2003)4). This text is quite unique at international levels as it aims i.a. at increasing transparency in the funding of political parties and election campaigns (these two areas are difficult to dissociate since parties are also involved in campaigning and in many countries, parties do not have the monopoly over the presentation of candidates for elections), ensuring a certain level of control over the funding and spending connected with political activities, and making sure infringements are subject to effective, proportionate, and dissuasive sanctions. In the context of its monitoring activities, the Group of States Against Corruption has identified a great variety of possible improvements in those areas (see the country reports adopted under the Third Evaluation Round).
Note the important part about publicly funded campaigns:
Even legal measures such as these have been argued to be legalized corruption, in that they often favor the political status quo. Minor parties and independents often argue that efforts to rein in the influence of contributions do little more than protect the major parties with guaranteed public funding while constraining the possibility of private funding by outsiders. In these instances, officials are legally taking money from the public coffers for their election campaigns to guarantee that they will continue to hold their influential and often well-paid positions.