The Secret Big-Money Takeover of America--A Call for Action by Robert Reich!

[KoKo]

The Secret Big-Money Takeover of America
Robert Reich

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Not only is income and wealth in America more concentrated in fewer hands than it’s been in 80 years, but those hands are buying our democracy as never before – and they’re doing it behind closed doors.

Hundreds of millions of secret dollars are pouring into congressional and state races in this election cycle. The Koch brothers (whose personal fortunes grew by $5 billion last year) appear to be behind some of it, Karl Rove has rounded up other multi-millionaires to fund right-wing candidates, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is funneling corporate dollars from around the world into congressional races, and Rupert Murdoch is evidently spending heavily.

No one knows for sure where this flood of money is coming from because it’s all secret.

But you can safely assume its purpose is not to help America’s stranded middle class, working class, and poor. It’s to pad the nests of the rich, stop all reform, and deregulate big corporations and Wall Street – already more powerful than since the late 19th century when the lackeys of robber barons literally deposited sacks of cash on the desks of friendly legislators.

Credit the Supreme Court’s grotesque decision in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, which opened the floodgates. (Even though 8 of 9 members of the Court also held disclosure laws constitutional, the decision invited the creation of shadowy “nonprofits” that don’t have to reveal anything.)

According to FEC data, only 32 percent of groups paying for election ads are disclosing the names of their donors. By comparison, in the 2006 midterm, 97 percent disclosed; in 2008, almost half disclosed.

Last week, when the Senate considered a bill to force such disclosure, every single Republican voted against it – thereby revealing the GOP’s true colors, and presumed benefactors. (To understand how far the GOP has come, nearly ten years ago campaign disclosure was supported by 48 of 54 Republican senators.)

Maybe the Disclose Bill can get passed in lame-duck session. Maybe the IRS will make sure Karl Rove’s and other supposed nonprofits aren’t sham political units. Maybe pigs will learn to fly.

In the meantime we face an election that marks an even sharper turn toward plutocratic capitalism than before – a government by and for the rich and big corporations — and away from democratic capitalism.

As income and wealth has moved to the top, so has political power. That’s why, for example, it’s been impossible to close the absurd tax loophole that allows hedge-fund and private-equity managers to treat much of their income as capital gains, subject to a 15 percent tax (even though they’re earning tens or hundreds of millions a year, and the top 15 hedge-fund managers earned an average of $1 billion last year). Why it proved impossible to fund expanded health care by limiting the tax deductions of the very rich. Why it’s so difficult even to extend George Bush’s tax cuts for the bottom 98 percent of Americans without also extending them for the top 2 percent – even though the top won’t spend the money and create jobs, but will blow a $36 billion hole in the federal budget next year.

The good news is average Americans are beginning to understand that when the rich secretly flood our democracy with money, the rest of us drown. Wall Street executives and top CEOs get bailed out while under-water homeowners and jobless workers sink.

A Quinnipiac poll earlier this year found overwhelming support for a millionaire tax.

But what the public wants means nothing if our democracy is secretly corrupted by big money.

Right now we’re headed for a perfect storm: An unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the top, a record amount of secret money flooding our democracy, and a public in the aftershock of the Great Recession becoming increasingly angry and cynical about government. The three are obviously related.

We must act. We need a movement to take back our democracy. (If tea partiers were true to their principles, they’d join it.) As Martin Luther King once said, the greatest tragedy is “not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

What can you do?

1. Read Justice Steven’s dissent in the Citizens United case, so you’re fully informed about the majority’s pernicious illogic.

2. Use every opportunity to speak out against this decision, and embarrass and condemn the right-wing Justices who supported it.

3. In this and subsequent elections, back candidates for congress and president who vow to put Justices on the Court who will reverse it.

4. Demand that the IRS enforce the law and pull the plug on Karl Rove and other sham nonprofits.

5. If you have a Republican senator, insist that he or she support the Disclose Act. If they won’t, campaign against them.

6. Support public financing of elections.

7. Join an organization like Common Cause, that’s committed to doing all this and getting big money out of politics. (Personal note: I’m so outraged at what’s happening that I just became chairman of Common Cause.)

8. Send this post to your friends (including any tea partiers you may know).

http://robertreich.org/post/1263581986

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Not to be contentious, even if this Plan were public knowledge, would any group or

individual be able to stop it?

[Scuba]

3. Yes, there is one group that can stop it.

They're called "voters".

[OHdem10]

5. Look at what a small group and I mean small group called

Tea Partyiers have accomplished in a relatively short period
of time It takes focus.

[Scuba]

6. So let's get focused, damnit.

All the "debate" about fire departments and other hot topics (pun intended) is mentally stimulating, but FOCUS, DAMN IT !!!

The ONLY thing that matters at this point is getting progressive voters to the polls on November 2nd.

You can help do that.

Volunteer down at Democratic HQ. They need people to make phone calls, knock on doors, compile lists of local events, do data entry, etc.

Help others get their early ballots in case they can't get out on election day.

Get a yard sign.

Talk to your cousin/nephew/aunt etc.

We need to focus on this or the next two years of DU will be not about how to improve the country, but about limiting damage.

thanks,

Scuba

[glitch]

9. A "small group" with billionaire funding and corporate media FULLY behind it.

Not quite the grass roots they'd like to appear.

[SammyWinstonJack]

2. K&R

:grr:

[rustyd55]

4. dirty business

We have to do something about rich getting richer.I wrote to my senator who is republican she said will take my complaints under consideration ha ha.It is going to backfire on them and when upper middle class start losing houses or the quality of life goes downhill then there will be trouble.We need to do something now to protect our rights and educate these people for we are A country becoming super rich and super poor with no middle.Big corp. will keep buying elections breaking unions we will continue to lose teachers cops fireman and as they break the unions we will be back 100 years.Again how many Waltons are billionaires.They like all these other big corp. treat workers like shit and lie.We are going to get our country back and bring these greedy people down with or without the politicians who they own.

[hfojvt]

7. kinda funny

When I googled "Citizens United Stevens dissent" the first result was a post at DU!!

Congratulations DU!! We're number 1!!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7536905

"In sum, over the course of the past century Congress has demonstrated a recurrent need to regulate corporate participation in candidate elections to “ ‘(p)reserv(e) the integrity of the electoral process, preven(t) corruption, … sustai(n) the active, alert responsibility of the individual citizen,’ ” protect the expressive interests of shareholders, and “ ‘(p)reserv(e) … the individual citizen’s confidence in government.’ ” McConnell , 540 U. S., at 206–207, n. 88 (quoting Bellotti , 435 U. S., at 788–789; first alteration in original). These understandings provided the combined impetus behind the Tillman Act in 1907, see Automobile Workers , 352 U. S., at 570–575, the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, see WRTL , 551 U. S., at 511 (Souter, J., dissenting), FECA in 1971, see NRWC , 459 U. S., at 209–210, and BCRA in 2002, see McConnell , 540 U. S., at 126–132. Continuously for over 100 years, this line of “(c)ampaign finance reform has been a series of reactions to documented threats to electoral integrity obvious to any voter, posed by large sums of money from corporate or union treasuries.” WRTL , 551 U. S., at 522 (Souter, J., dissenting). Time and again, we have recognized these realities in approving measures that Congress and the States have taken. None of the cases the majority cites is to the contrary. The only thing new about Austin was the dissent, with its stunning failure to appreciate the legitimacy of interests recognized in the name of democratic integrity since the days of the Progressives.

IV

Having explained why this is not an appropriate case in which to revisit Austin and McConnell and why these decisions sit perfectly well with “ First Amendment principles,” ante , at 1, 48, I come at last to the interests that are at stake. The majority recognizes that Austin and McConnell may be defended on anticorruption, antidistortion, and shareholder protection rationales. Ante , at 32–46. It badly errs both in explaining the nature of these rationales, which overlap and complement each other, and in applying them to the case at hand.

The Anticorruption Interest

Undergirding the majority’s approach to the merits is the claim that the only “sufficiently important governmental interest in preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption” is one that is “limited to quid pro quo corruption.” Ante , at 43. This is the same “crabbed view of corruption” that was espoused by Justice Kennedy in McConnell and squarely rejected by the Court in that case. 540 U. S., at 152. While it is true that we have not always spoken about corruption in a clear or consistent voice, the approach taken by the majority cannot be right, in my judgment. It disregards our constitutional history and the fundamental demands of a democratic society."

[felix_numinous]

8. I am tempted to say if this letter came out years ago

our task of pushing back corruption would have been easier, but I am not sure the public was ready to see it. We needed 10 years of GWB to wake up this much as a nation. Not only are we awake, but the internet can record and uncover corruption like never before--The People's Computer--along with the fact that these corrupt people have been breaking laws in the open for so long there are reams of data on them. As we know that is the real reason they want to shut us down. If they succeed we may not have this chance again.