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Playinghardball

(11,665 posts) Sun Jun 14, 2015, 12:51 PM Jun 2015

Here’s how Bernie Sanders could win: The one issue where Hillary’s vulnerable, and where the Tea..

....Party might be right..

After one of many trips to sub-Saharan Africa, Bono recalled that on his first visit there he thought its biggest problem was AIDS. Later, it seemed it was poverty; after many visits over many years he at last saw that it was corruption: the problem that kept all other problems from ever being solved.

Corruption is hard to unmask, and harder to measure, but we know its cost to Africa is truly staggering. One study puts it at a quarter of the continent’s total GDP, itself a paltry 2.4 percent of world GDP. Another says it slashes growth by 20 percent every year. It was long hoped that the sale of Africa’s vast trove of natural resources would generate the investment capital necessary to move its people out of poverty and into the modern age. Instead, the money is siphoned off by corrupt elites who blow it on lavish lifestyles, park it in Swiss banks or invest it in high-end Paris or London real estate. It’s the world’s most common form of treason and goes largely unpunished.

We live amidst a global pandemic of corruption. It ravages Asia, Latin America and the Middle East and devours Africa. It was the issue at the heart of every uprising of the Arab Spring. It has spurred riots in India and Brazil, struck fear into the hearts of China’s leaders and contributed mightily to the warping of Russia’s politics as well as its economy. It tops liberal agendas everywhere in the world — everywhere, that is, but here.

America has not had a full-throated debate of political corruption since Watergate. In that scandal’s immediate aftermath Congress enacted sweeping campaign finance reforms (struck down by the Supreme Court in its vile Buckley v. Valeo decision). In the mid ’70s, states passed a flurry of reforms, establishing what were often their first ethics, campaign finance and freedom-of-information commissions. But politicians have chipped away at those reforms ever since. Few commissions have anything like adequate enforcement staff. Most states lack the civic self-respect to enforce their ethics laws, preferring to leave the job to overburdened federal prosecutors.

Some say the reason our politicians talk less about corruption is that we have less of it, but it’s a hard point to prove. How much money do we lose to corruption each year? Our government goes out of its way not to know. All major retailers itemize “inventory shrinkage” in their annual reports; 2013 losses were pegged at $37 billion. No public-sector budget itemizes the cost of corruption, but here’s a safe bet: America loses more to corruption than to shoplifting.

Some say voters don’t care about ethics. Political consultants tell their clients that nobody cares except old “goo-goos” — good government types — and even they don’t care much. It’s just a “process issue,” they say; too abstract, too far removed from people’s lives to matter. For the consultants who pocket millions from corporate and political clients alike, it’s a convenient theory, but it’s a lie, proven to be such again and again by election results and, yes, even by polling data.

Every election year major news organizations conduct nationwide exit polls to ask, among other things, what issues brought voters out. Ethics is never even on the list. In 2009 and 2010 pollster Scott Rasmussen posed the same question but included “government ethics and corruption” as a possible response. Both times over 80 percent of voters called it very important and both times it topped the list, edging out even the economy — this in the teeth of a protracted recession.

This week the Times released a poll on money in politics. Eighty-five percent of respondents said the system needs “fundamental change” or even to be “completely rebuilt.” Eighty-five percent said politicians do their donors’ bidding some or all of the time. Seventy-eight percent want to limit spending by independent groups. Seventy-five percent would require disclosure of donations to any entity engaged in politics. Just 23 percent said all Americans have an equal voice in their democracy. And here’s an interesting fact: On every question, it seems Democrats and Republicans felt pretty much the same.

Republicans are by nature better at ginning up anger, but lately it’s as if they had the patent on it. Progressives were first to oppose the 2008 Wall Street bailout. The first protest was hosted by TrueMajority, a liberal advocacy group founded by Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream fame. But by 2009 Obama owned the bailout and word went out that to attack it would only undercut him. Enter the Tea Party, amidst cries of “crony capitalism,” to tap the rich vein of public anger. For the first time, economic populism was the property of conservatives. It was some gift.

Of course, Republicans don’t really want to fix the government; they want to kill it. The only corruption they really oppose is when some business that gave to Obama gets a federal contract. But they do have a nose for the issue. And since the decline of the religious right they’ve been looking hard for other hornets’ nests to poke. Thus Rick Santorum in his recent announcement speech mentioned abortion only twice, while referencing corruption and moneyed interests 10 times.

http://www.salon.com/2015/06/14/heres_how_bernie_sanders_could_win_the_one_issue_where_hillarys_vulnerable_and_where_the_tea_party_might_be_right/