Wednesday, April 26, 2006

GOOD NEWS/BAD NEWS-- MONEY POURING INTO DEMOCRATIC CAMPAIGN COFFERS

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I've been watching apprehensively as the Beltway Republican machine fell in line behind GOP politician-turned-lobbyist who wants to turn politician again, Brian Bilbray. They have financed a vicious, misleading and massive-- $800,000-- negative attack campaign against good-government reformer Francine Busby down in CA-50 (northern San Diego County), where she hugely outpaced Bilbray in the first round of voting a few weeks ago. The new ads they are running-- completely false and over the top (trying to paint Busby-- an educator who has devoted her life to protecting children and fighting for their welfare-- as sympathetic to child pornographers). These GOP smear tactics, when backed by enough money, have been very effective in shaking confidence and determination among voters in the past.

So I should be happy to be reading the spate of stories recently about how the Democrats have been out-raising the Republicans this year. I'm glad the Democrats have been raising a lot of money, although I've seen Rahm Emanuel's corrupt, DeLay-like and Stalinist DCCC squander much of it attacking progressive and grassroots candidates to make room for Republican-lite shills and stooges who mirror his own reactionary Inside-the-Beltway politics. Democratic Party rules about letting districts pick their own candidates have been scrupulously observed by Howard Dean and the DNC and completely cast aside by the craven Chicago and NY party bosses Emanuel and Chuck Schumer.

But something scares me even more about this great influx of money. The small contributions coming in to candidates like Ned Lamont and Francine Busby, and even right-of-center Dems like Ben Nelson, from the grassroots warms my heart. The tainted sleaze factor money pouring in-- while much needed between now and November-- also scares me. Bloomberg just reported that the Inside the Beltway sleazy Democrats beat the Inside the Beltway sleazier Republicans in 2005 fundraising on Wall Street. "Democrats outdid Republicans last year in attracting political donations from investment banks, brokerages and fund managers for the first time since 1994, helped by support from hedge funds and companies such as Merrill Lynch & Co. Democrats got $13.6 million, or 52 percent of the financial industry's $26.3 million in political donations in 2005, said the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan Washington group that researches the influence of money on elections and public policy. In the two years leading up to the 2004 presidential election, Republicans received 52 percent of the $91.6 million given by the industry.

The money barons don't hand out money because they favor good government or Democratic Party grassroots values. God only knows what pigs like Emanuel and Schumer are promising to get their hands on this stuff!

The BLOOMBERG story paints a nice picture when they bring up an anecdote by progressive Torrey Funds chairman James Torrey. "Wall Street wants change'' on issues such as the Iraq war and the budget deficit. "I'm finding people who are registered Republicans who are saying to me, 'what can I do to help?'" BLOOMBERG further points out that Bush's catastrophic occupation of Iraq and the blatant corruption by the Republicans in Congress and in the Executive Branch "have helped drive President George W. Bush's public approval ratings to the lowest point of his presidency. That has spurred donations to Democrats."

But when you start digging down a little into the story, it gets less cheery. A big part of the Democratic success has to do with some of the worst elements inside the Democratic Establishment. "Hillary Clinton and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, both Democrats facing re-election this year, were the two most successful fund-raisers in 2005 on Wall Street, said Sheila Krumholz, acting executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. Senator Charles Schumer, also of New York, heads the Democratic fund-raising arm in the Senate."

A good example of how this sleazy business works is the picture BLOOMBERG paints of Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack's giving habits. A Bush Ranger-- he raised over $200,000 for BushCheney in 2004-- Mack gave Hillary's Senate campaign $4,000, his biggest donation to an individual politician. Has he seen the light? You tell me. He also contributed $1,000 to corrupt, far right maniac Rick Santorum. Furthermore, the article points out, that "while the industry's trend is to give more to Democrats, firms such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the world's second- and third-biggest securities firms by market value, have boosted their giving to Republicans in the past year... So far this cycle, Morgan Stanley's PAC has given 71 percent of its donations to Republican candidates, its highest proportion ever, according to PoliticalMoneyLine."

And, ominously, the story ends with the inevitable warning: "Still, if Democrats take control of at least one house of Congress, bankers and fund managers will have to cultivate relationships among a new set of committee leaders, some of whom have ideas about taxation and regulation that may not be well-received in the industry. 'I would imagine that is one of the calculations they are making now' when financial-industry leaders are planning their donations for the rest of the year." No doubt-- and no doubt they will feel very soothed talking to the likes of Lieberman, Emanuel, Schumer and Clinton, people not known for rocking any corporate boats.

In a not unrelated matter, today's NY TIMES has an editorial about the Republican's sham ethics reform bill, which the TIMES is properly calling "The Lobbyist Empowerment Act." This disgraceful piece of anti-citizen garbage almost makes the Democratic leadership's tepid and pathetic attempts at pseudo-reform look decent. Basically it's the difference between an F for the Republicans and a C- for the Democrats. Sure a C- is better than an F but... not that much better. To me it's just the Inside the Beltway Dems and their horrid, always-sure-to-lose consultants once again playing into Republican hands by not distinguishing themselves from the Inside-the-Beltway Republicans. (Of course, how could they when the Inside the Beltway monsters of both parties have more in common with each other than they do with their own constituents?)

"The House Republican leaders," rails the TIMES, "managed a new feat of cravenness during the recent recess, hollowing out their long promised 'lobbying reform' bill to meet the dictates of-- who else?-- Washington's power lobbyists. During two weeks of supposed inactivity, the leadership bill was chiseled down at the behest of K Street to an Orwellian shell of righteous platitudes about transparency and integrity. The measure to be debated this week has been stripped of provisions to require full disclosure of lobbyists' campaign fundraising powers and V.I.P. access in Congress. The measure buries all attempts at instituting credible ethics enforcement in the House. The nation should not be fooled. The proposal is a cadaverous pretense that Congress has learned the corrupting lessons of Jack Abramoff, the disgraced superlobbyist; Representative Tom DeLay, the fallen majority leader; and Duke Cunningham, the imprisoned former congressman. It makes a laughingstock of the pious promises of last January to ban privately financed junketeering by lawmakers. Instead, these adventures in quid pro quo lawmaking would be suspended only temporarily, safe to blossom again after the next election. The bill's cosmetic requirements for limited disclosure are overshadowed by the brazen refusal to plug the loopholes for lobbyists' gifts or to end their lavish parties for 'honoring' our all too easily seduced lawmakers. The G.O.P. leaders can't even marshal the courage to rein in the shameful use of corporate jets by pliant lawmakers. It's hard to believe that members of Congress mindful of voters' diminishing respect would attempt such an election-year con. One Republican proponent had the gall to argue that we mustn't 'chill' the right of lobbyists, the ultimate insiders, to petition government."

3 Comments:

At 10:02 AM, Blogger JUSIPER said...

Ever since Bill Clinton turned the party into a soft money whore, it has done a lot of corporations bidding--culminating with last year's bankruptcy bill.

But that said, if Democrats take the house, many of the committee and subcommittee chairs (John Conyers etc) will be true progressives. I have fewer hopes for a progressive Senate, whoever is in charge.

 
At 9:39 AM, Blogger Timcanhear said...

Here's a campaign finance reform bill idea that is sure to upset the media elite but if we're serious about ending the money influence in politics, it's the way to go.

Political media campaigns should come at the expense of we taxpayers. Paid for by 'we the people', political candidates would receive an amount of media airtime based on research call out that determines who moves the needle on the issues of the day.
This would force candidates to do more grassroots, door to door style campaigning. Once the research comes back, a board should read the results and determine WHICH CANDIDATES are speaking to 'we the people' and award them free airtime from the media who would then receive tax breaks to cover the cost, ultimately being financed by 'we the people' of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union!
It's a simple plan that any truly concerned politician can support.
Let's end the money game in politics. Where on earth in our constitution does the ability or inability to spend money during a campaign become free speech? Somehow, money has been wrongly morphed into a free speech concern.

 
At 11:53 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Posted on Down With Tyranny blog, Sat. 22 July 2006


Politics has always been about the lesser of two evils; not because ideology splits the seam of good and evil and the inevitable compromise toward the middle is inevitable, but because the nature of man (male "man" ) is self-aggrandizement with a plethora of rationizations to make it seem "ok". Probably all of us do it -from small expenses -taxable - but not included on the 1040 - to Ken Lays' and Tom Delays' "F__ You to the owners of government - we the people - and a "that $5Trillion Surplus from Clinton Years belongs to me and my boys".

In biological systems chaos theory correctly predicts behavior: when decimated and deprived of resources to live, the dying virus or bacteria will devise a "clever" escape route -leading to unexpected and novel new strains. So it is with humans, many orders up the scale of evolutionary systems: we have seen the dark sides of stupidity (most Americans who cannot spell "habeas Corpus" let alone know its meaning, or know the distinction between Paine's "Democracy and all else hangs on the vote", and J.Stalin's "It is not the voter, but the vote counter who is important"), callous indifference and an apocalyptic moral turpitude never seen in 230 years, the likes of which Tammany Hall or the great Nixon debacle pale in comparison.

So I agree. If John Conyers, Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, Byron Dorgan, Russ Feingold, Chuck Schumer et. al. are the closest we will see in this tattered Republic to a George Galloway: Servants of the state who speak truth to power and stand on principle rather than protocol,.... then perhaps we will - like the lowly virus whose life is being squeezed - return anew, awakened from this nightmare and rebuild the Republic. Bush - the "acumen-not-required-here" drab little peanut of a man has done more to awaken an epiphany in our conscience than the proverbial tea in China.

And that ...believe it or not,.... has been a good thing.
I for one have written over 255 letters to the US Senate and 200 to members of the House; countless letters to editors, national news services and so on the past 6 years.

Now if only the DNC will get that "it is the vote stupid" - that matters most. When one little shrub says nothing more and nothing less for six years than "terror, terrist, axis evil, terror, fear, yellow alert" and has said absolutely nothing of any consequence about "human dignity, rights to sue for pain and suffering, strengthened OSHA work standards; fortified EPA regulations; true alternative energy policy directives, FUNDED mandates; visions to be bold and daring into space, into stem cell research and gene therapy cures; minimal safety nets for the least among us; single payer medical based on competitive drug pricing; etc., and when one little peanut brain hasn’t the capacity to figure out that repeating the oxymoron “perpetual war for perpetual peace” is simply codewords for continued stealing, war profiteering and mass murder of innocent human beings on the planet,…. Then you would think that winning not just the US Senate, but also the House would be the equivalent of a blind man shooting fish in a barrel with both chambers.
What is ABSOLUTELY scary is that the “Snatch- defeat- from –the- jaws- of- victory Democratic Leadership” have perfected the knack for missing even at this range. Witness Francine Busby having her win over Bilbray stolen…yet again. Witness John Kerry saying two years after Nov 2004, “yes,….now I agree, the election was stolen”…… Witness the off-mike comments by the Ohio RNC chairman and Diebold president admitting that their job was to see Bush won –no matter what they had to do – before the election and nothing was done by my side to make it clear they would not steal the voter rolls in Ohio……

Bottoms up.
R. Banos
Mill Valley, Ca., 94941

 

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