PACs

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Who Owns America? Not You!


American political parties today are dominated by political action committees. Democrats and Republicans both have PACs who make large contributions to support their various causes. It may come as a surprise to you but the limit for giving, individually, is $35,000. There is, as there always seems to be, a catch.

Let us say, for example, that I am Charles and David Koch with more money than I know what to do with. And I decide I want Joseph Stumblebum to be president of the United States. I start by giving my $35,000 directly to Joe’s campaign. Then another $35k from my wife, another $35k from each of my kids but his kids are all grown. But there is no limit to how much I can give to a national PAC which is not directly supporting a particular candidate.   That is the loophole.

As of February 9, 2016 (www.opensecrets.org) there exist in America today 2,197 groups which are classified as Super PACs! There is no limit on how much money I can give a Super PAC. And of the top 20 Super PACs you have to go all the way down to number 20 to find the first one which supports liberal candidates. But to be fair, of those 20 top Super PACs, one claims no political persuation.

The number 1 Super PAC, which happens to support Bush (Right to Rise USA), has raised a whopping $118,300,000!

According to Forbes Magazine (October 2, 2015) Super PACs have raised over ½ billion dollars for this election cycle. The Forbes 400 estimates the contribution by those 400 to be approximately $66.5 million. But there is a problem with these figures. Like dark matter which is undetectable, Forbes has deemed this sort of giving to be “Dark Money.” It effectively challenges anyone to figure out how much it is and who exactly is giving it.

The original political action committees were formed in the 19th Century to lobby Congress for their various projects and desires. And for all of the 19th Century and a good part of the 20th Century these groups stayed away from political campaigns. It was deemed dishonorable but as soon as campaign finance reform became an idea, certain large industrial groups fearing heavier regulation, transparency of operation and being held accountable, brought the Super PAC into existence.

I am not a supporter of Bernie Sanders but God bless Bernie Sanders because he has done something no one else has had the courage to do. He has flatly refused all PAC money and is at this point running a very successful campaign for president. Bernie has flatly stated that if we want our government back we have to turn away the PACs.

Without regard to party, our Congress has abdicated its obligation to the citizens of the United States favoring the opinion of the PACs and the corporations behind those PACs. Every candidate will make the claim that he, or she, promises to do the will of the people. A multitude of polls have shown the will of the people includes, legalized abortion, tougher gun laws and controls, a higher minimum wage, a better health system (we are 37th in the world just ahead of Slovenia and behind Morocco and Colombia to name a few). Americans want a curb put on jobs being sent overseas, want their roads fixed, their water systems made safe, and their voice heard!

Sadly, America is run by about 1000 people total and not a single one is an elected official. How can I say that? The phrase Political Action Committee is merely a euphemism for political control. The majority of the most power PACs are conservative in nature but there are many liberal PACs as well.

Well, why don’t we just outlaw PACs? Seems like a reasonable solution however it would unconstitutional. It comes under protected speech of the 1st Amendment.

I believe the most reasonable solution is the enacting of term limits for members of Congress limiting any member of Congress to a total of 20 years. That would mean 3 terms for senators and 5 for representatives.

There is no simple solution to the afore-mentioned problems but Americans are going to have to come to terms with these problems if they care to regain control of their government. But until that day, regardless of your political persuasion, the person you put in office will do the bidding of the PACs they are beholding to.

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Where Has America Gone?


I went to graduate school to study U.S. History. I have always wondered how we, as a country, have gotten to where we are. I still wonder that but at least now I have a good working knowledge of the forces which brought us to this day. I have a deep appreciation of George Santayana’s words: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

I, like so many Americans today, look upon our Congress as the most dysfunctional body imaginable. The present Congress in its dysfunctionality is not, in my opinion the worst ever. That honor, if you will, belongs to the various Congresses which presided during our Civil War of 1861 to 1865. Both major parties where so horribly splintered it is amazing they ever agreed upon anything. It was only a few years earlier, 1856, when Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina attacked Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on the senate floor, literally with his cane, beating him so badly he required medical attention. Brooks was ostensibly defending the honor of Sen. Andrew Butler whom Sumner had earlier called an “imbecile.” For his actions Brooks was fined $300.

It is of note that members of Congress in the 19th century were seldom millionaires although most were from well-to-do families. They were elected because they espoused the desires of their constituency and, as in the case of Brooks, were willing to literally fight for those desires. Brooks was incensed over the personal verbal attack abolitionist Sumner made on Butler by saying, “Senator Butler has chosen a mistress. I mean the harlot, slavery.”  These men were obviously and heatedly devoted to those causes important to their state.  Sadly, I do not believe such can be said for any member of Congress today.

Every American has 3 representatives in Congress, two senators and a representative.  But if someone were to ask me what any of those three people has done for my state, Massachusetts, lately, I quite honestly could not say a thing.  I simply do not know even though I do my best to remain informed.

At its inception the United States could easily have broken apart into 13 separate countries.  After all, each state had long before adopted its own constitution, set up its own form of democratic elections, and put together a fully and independently functional state government.  But by 1783 the colonies had come to realize the value of coalescing into a single and strong central government.  Still, they were bitterly divided upon what that government would look like and how each state could maintain a reasonable level of autonomy within the structure of a federal government.  To that end they decided on an election process which provided for the possibility of a complete turnover of the federal government at 6 year intervals.

That process was designed prior to political action committees, huge and rich corporations, and even, yes, political parties.  Thomas Jefferson believed that their need only be a single party made up of the “wise and well-born.”  But Jefferson actually oversaw that exact change when he departed from the Federalist party line, with which he greatly disagreed, and stated the Democratic Republicans.  He realized that Virginia’s needs were frequently at odds with those of Massachusetts or New York.  The original fight over state autonomy versus federal regulation continued until 1868 and the adoption of the 14th Amendment which, in part, bars states from enacting laws contrary to federal law.  At that time states fought jealously to preserve the general good and well-being of the residents of their state.  They did this through those elected to Congress.

At the beginning of the 20th Century politicians who were called “Populists” saw well-moneyed interests exerting control of the US Government to the detriment of the individual citizen.  Industrialists like Vanderbilt had lobbied and secured eminent domain so they could gain control of otherwise privately owned property.  Rockefeller who was able to gain monopolistic control of the fledgling oil industry, Carnegie the same in the steel industry and other “tycoons” of the day.  Congress enacted anti-trust laws, monopoly laws and in 1934 the Securities and Exchange Commission.  It took well over 30 years but Congress properly recognized that corporate America had systematically diluted the power of the individual American for its own use.

From 1900 until 1980 Congress and the President did an excellent job of insuring that the rights of the individual American were not trampled on by a few powerful interests.  But when Ronald Reagan became President the executive and legislative elements of our government began undoing all the work of the previous 80 years.  Reagan used sleight of hand by breaking up the communications monopoly AT&T had created while his real agenda was something entirely different.  Reagan started the charge against the average working man when he successfully oversaw busting the air traffic controllers union.  It was an entirely unnecessary action as the power of the president has always allowed for his ending a strike when he believed the national interest and the national defense were at issue.  Previous presidents had used this power to end lengthy coal miners’ strikes for example.  But none ever considered breaking up a union as this would have been viewed as un-American.  He effectively declared open season on America’s unions even though the power of all unions was lessening and the frequency of strikes decreasing.

He then took aim at the federal regulatory process, in particular financial interests.  He declared that such institutions were too heavily regulated and unnecessarily regulated, that they were self-regulating by their very nature and in their own interest.  This gives rise to the question of why the stock market crash on 1987 happened.  Is it possible that the sudden deregulation had gone contrary to the public good?  Congress ostensibly righted that ship by putting in place laws which would limit or stop stock trading should the market give signs of being in a free-fall.  But the deregulation continued.

Since 1980 control of the Congress has switched between the Republicans and Democrats many times.  But they have increasingly shown an inability to come to a consensus of compelling domestic and foreign issues, not the least of which is the regulation of the giant conglomerates existing in the United States today.  While America’s infrastructure deteriorates at an alarming speed, Congress is having a food fight over taxes, entitlements, and defense.

No state and nor individual, conservative or liberal, is benefiting from the actions of today’s Congress.  If individual members of Congress were truly interested in the welfare of their constituents, they would be figuring out how many multiple trillions of dollars it will take to bring our infrastructure back to where it should be rather than allowing it to continue where it where it is.  Such an investment would of course greatly benefit corporate America but unfortunately they are totally devoted to their own selfish interests.  Every year corporate America spends literally billions of dollars lobbing Congress to do their bidding while trampling on the rights of private Americans.  For example, the energy industry has long touted how “clean” burning natural gas is while failing to reveal that in reality from its mining to its burning natural gas actually hurts the environment more than coal!  But who has more money to spend on lobbying, environmentalists or the energy industry?  The energy industry has done such a great job of championing their cause that they have been able to get local environmentalists to do their bidding, vis-à-vis closing coal burning electric generating plants.  It would be fine if they actually maintained the 3% pollution rate they claim rather than the 16% reality.

Starting around 2006 and continuing for the next 5 years the foreclosure rate in American sky-rocked mostly because of a mostly unregulated banking industry which allowed sub-prime loans to people who had little idea of the agreement they had entered into.  Worse, these very same large financial institutions were making bets on the success or failure of marginal investments.  It came to light that these institutions were cooking the books, so to speak, to justify what they did.  First came Enron, then Morgan Stanley, then Shearson, and so on.  A few failed but most were propped up thanks to the federal government, “too big to fail” was the war cry.  Why did it happen?  Deficient regulation and oversight.

Sadly, while all this was happening, Congress was kowtowing to the moneyed interests which got them elected while to some extent, if not completely, ignoring the welfare of the individual American.  Democrats and Republicans had obfuscated their duty to the individual American rather than anger the PACs which got them elected.

At this point I should come up with a solution.  Sadly, I do not have one short of saying America needs to toss out everyone who now populate Congress and put in new people.  That is not going to happen but something akin to it needs to happen.  Today’s members seem to feed on being antagonism and lack either the will or ability to come to any sort of an understanding with their adversary, they seem to believe that maintaining an adversarial relationship is the recipe for political success.  They use that very negative adversarial and contentious mood to invigorate those who voted them into office.  They sell it as acting in their constituents’ best interest when nothing could be further from the truth.  Members of Congress keep their attention focused on the next election and how they will get re-elected while subordinating the needs of those they represent.  Congress has become adept at selling Americans a ticket to hell and having those same Americans out beating the bushes for directions.

I fear for the future of my children and grandchildren, it seems very bleak right now.  I fear the America my ancestors fought and died for has been purchased by corporate America and that future governance is being decided in America’s boardrooms rather than America’s living rooms.  America is in desperate need of a revolution, a revolution that will empower them and put them back in control of their future.

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America’s Failing Democracy


Lest there be any doubt, at the forefront of the American Revolution were American merchants who were primarily interested in protecting their right to run their business as they saw fit.  Paul Revere was a silversmith, John Hancock was a merchant whose interest lay in shipping.  Thomas Jefferson was a tobacco farmer, among other trades.  Samuel Adams was a tax collector, John Adams a lawyer, and Benjamin Franklin a printer, writer, philosopher, and scientist.  None, save Samuel Adams, was particularly interested in going to war with Britain in 1775.  They, and their peers, favored amelioration over confrontation.  But when confrontation came, as those same people feared it would, to a man they claimed taxation without representation to be tyranny.  When the war ended in 1783, all returned to their former business.  The first government, the Continental Congress, assembled without the aid of a single of those men, their attentions returned to business, as they understood it.

The Constitution was written entirely with business in mind.  No issues reinforces this point than the fact that the issue a slavery, condemned by most who designed the Constitution, purposely left the issue out knowing that no state from Virginia southward would accept the prohibition of that institution.  The reason was simple, the southern economy heavily relied upon the institution of slavery to keep the cotton and tobacco plantations viable, at least in the minds of those in that business.  The idiosyncrasy of the constitution was such that even though 75% of the American population lived north of slavery, nearly 50% of the states needed to ratify it were a party to slavery, and that meant, quite simply, with 9 states needed to ratify, at least half of those slave states would have to vote for it.

For the most part, ideals of democracy state that the majority rules, but America put a twist to certain of its law-making ideas, a 2/3 vote was necessary for not just the ratification of the Constitution, but for any changes, amendments, to it.  The stated idea behind this was the protection of the less populated states of being consistently overruled but the more populous states.  This is also seen in each state be apportioned 2 senators, regardless of population.  But even so, from a purely democratic point of view, America was not a democracy but a republic with democratic tendencies.  These principles work quite well as long as the will of the people, a shared sentiment of the founding fathers, is always at the base of our legal system.  And our legal system, a set of rules and regulations, states how we conduct ourselves as a republic.  But that republic was formed at a time when the agrarian economy ruled supreme, and all other forms of business, shipping, smelting, and service, existed only to serve the farmer.

Maybe we can blame the Irish and Ely Whitney for the shift from an agrarian economy to an industrial one.  Whitney’s cotton gin ended the hand cleaning of cotton, and the Irish invented the mechanized loom which ended the cottage industry of cloth manufacture.  And we could probably blame Francis Cabot Lowell, with his theft of the design of the power loom, using a man with a photographic memory to see first-hand how the English power looms worked and bring that design to America.

The mechanization of the textile industry quickly spread to the burgeoning Massachusetts shoe industry.  The industrial revolution was on, and America’s agrarian past gave way to invention and mechanization that continued until 1929 when the stock market crash brought the American economy to its knees.  But during those 100 years America had to come to grips with industrialization and all its problems.  The first strike of any sort occurred in 1834 Massachusetts when a group of women struck, not for better wages, but better working conditions.  They won.  But it was another 35 years before the idea of unionizing labor came to reality with the founding of the Knights of Labor.  The Knights, for the first time, pitted worker, in an organized manner, against management.  The Knights, however, were inherently weak and seldom won any of their strikes.  Their core belief that any strike must include all members of a certain trade, and not just those dissatisfied with a particular employer.

Until 1912, the American industrialist had had its way.  During those 80 plus years of industrialization, the industrial leaders had learned how of impose their will upon the Congress of the United States.  The textile industrial had been able the get congress to enact import duties that restricted the ability of foreign competitors in the American marketplace.  They also were able to have rules of trade put in place so that American cotton growers and sheep farmers could only sell to American mills and make any sort of profit.

In the period of 1912 – 1920, it was basically the American slum which brought an end to the vice grip exerted by industrialists upon labor.  Minimum wage laws, child labor laws, and the length of workday, created what we know today as the American middle class.  Starting with the Theodore Roosevelt administration and continuing through the Carter administration, the American government passed law after law regulating every American industry.  The industrialists of 1912, largely unregulated, were so wealthy that today’s billionaires, Gates and Koch, pale in comparison.

One of the more noticeable effects of government regulation of industry were the safety issues enacted to protect that industry’s workers.  In the ensuing decades, with the introduction of such agencies as the Food and Drug Administration, the safety of the public was the focus of regulation.  Today, save commercial aviation, no industry is more heavily regulated.  But that wasn’t always true.  In 1929, when the stock market crashed, the federal government realized that the conduct of the American economy started in its banks and other financial institutions.  In 1929 the number of people involved in the stock market was extremely small, but the repercussions of its failure were inflicted on all Americans without exception.  Even those Americans who had wisely invested or secured themselves, found the relative value greatly reduced.  It was only the second time the financial systems of the United States were radically changes, the institution of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 being the first.

When the banks started failing in 1929 and 1930, average Americans ran to their bank to remove their funds only to find that these same banks had been a party to the financial meltdown and did not have their funds.  The Roosevelt administration set up the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to insure that all deposited funds would be guaranteed by the full force of the federal government.  With that corporation congress enacted a series of laws and regulations that spelled out exactly how financial transactions would happen.

In the 1930s when the cost of labor in the north was high, the northern textile mills closed and moved to the south where far cheaper labor existed.  Other American industries, reigning supreme on the world’s markets, survived through their might in those world markets.  Other countries made everything the United States but no one produced as much, and in some respects, foreign manufacturers were of inferior quality.  But World War 2 ended all that.

By the 1970s the traditional American heavy industries, steel and automobiles, could no longer compete on an even basis on the world markets.  The American industrialist’s response to this was to shut down his American operations and either move overseas or invest in foreign manufacture.  To maximize their profits they paid their lobbyists to get congress to change American trade laws.  They argued that to compete in the world’s markets we had to open American markets to all comers and to do so without the imposition of tariffs.  But it was always a hollow claim as American production of textiles, steel, automobiles, and most other industries, fell.  Imports to the American market quickly outstripped exports and such has been true for over 40 years now.

And this brings us back to the issue of capitalism versus democracy.  Democracy states that the will of the people must remain supreme at all times.  By extension, and common sense, the will of the people is that Americans experience as low a rate of unemployment as is reasonably possible.  But it would probably surprise most Americans to find out that the real rate of unemployment in American today, 2013, is closer to 20% than the 8% claimed.  That is simply because the American rate of unemployment is arrived at by counting the number of Americans receiving unemployment checks.  It does not count the chronically unemployed, the homeless, those who rely entire upon welfare and other forms of public assistance for their income.

Until the early 1980s, the American labor union was the working man’s hedge against noncompliant employers.  But on August 3, 1981, President Ronald Reagan decertified PATCO, the air traffic controllers union, claiming public safety, he signaled industrialists that the weight of the government was in their corner.  To be fair, labor unions were weakened by their own corruption.  But all unions have been so weakened that in a blatant anti-union move,
the governor of Wisconsin removed public employees’ unions’ right to collective bargaining.  According to the Cornell school of law: “Collective bargaining consists of negotiations between an employer and a group of employees so as to determine the conditions of employment. The result of collective bargaining procedures is a collective agreement.”  This had traditionally been the very basic element of all unions.  But in a move by a single man, the will of thousands of people was co-opted for political expediency.

Today, Americans are the best educated of any generation.  And yet the average American finds little comfort in the promise that the will of the people will be affirmed.  Gun control legislation, a hot button issue in America today, never sees the floor of congress even though it is the will of upwards of 80% of the people that tighter controls exist.  Why is this?  Powerful and extremely smart lobbyists exert power over enough of congress to insure the issue is not even discussed on the floor of congress.  And this is true of countless other issues where extremely strong and well-fund lobbies assure the will of the PAC will rule over the will of the people.  It is easy for liberals to point to strong conservative lobbies and claim malfeasance but liberal PACs achieve the same results the same way as their conservative counterparts.  And in the end, the will of the people is nullified by the will of the well-placed and the well-financed.

What Americans must become can be stated in a single world, pragmatic.  By definition: “of or pertaining to a practical point of view or practical considerations.”  The founders of our country, those who spelled out our special version of democracy, were quite pragmatic and equally adept at compromise.  It is a fact that our political leadership today is adept at neither and that is a blatant attack of what little democracy we have left.

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Can Mr. Smith Return to Washington?


In the 1939 movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” Jimmy Stewart played an honest man who went to Washington as a newly elected senator from his state.  Smith (Stewart) went to Washington full of idealism and energy only to encounter monied interests who were about to plunder the state for their own selfish ends.  While entertaining, the movie was a commentary on how well-connected wealthy interests were able to sway the votes of congress to do their bidding.  This was nothing new, even then, but it seems today we are faced with a crisis of the same sort.

In today’s Boston Globe (August 3, 2012), there is a story about the “Super-PACs” and their power.  To my surprise, and disgust, it was revealed that a majority of the funding of these PACs comes from a mere 10 people.  No, that unfortunately is not a typo on my part, the number is 10.  It goes on to say that about 98% of all funding of these PACs comes from just over 1000 individuals.  This should be abhorrent to any thinking individual.

It is said that those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it, and so it has come to pass.  In the late 19th and early 20th century, the PACs of that era, then known as “trusts” combined to set prices, levy high taxes on imports, and restrict the amount of government regulation upon their industry.  Americans, finally fed up with this behavior, passed the Sherman Anti-trust Act, the minimum wage law, and child-labor laws.  That era, known as the Populist Era, passed quickly, by around 1915, and America quickly reverted to some of its old ways.  The result was the great stock market crash of 1929.  This time, however, it was the financial interests who had leveraged Congress to allow them carte blanch in their affairs.  Because of the nation’s crisis, FDR was able to enact a host of laws that both allowed free enterprise to flourish but had the government keep a watchful eye on exactly how business went about doing so.

But once Ronald Reagan was elected to office, he set about reversing many of the regulations, weakening oversight, and assuring large business that the government would no longer be “meddling” in their affairs.

This led to the rise of special interest groups in Washington who enticed members of congress to acquiesce to their desires.  But that helped bring about campaign finance reform which, briefly, worked.  But Americans are both smart and industrious, and it was not long before monied interests found all the loopholes in those laws and, of course, found a way to circumvent the law.  They will tell you, correctly, that they are acting entirely within the law.  But of course, they are entirely out of line with the “spirit” of the law.  The most egregious of these is the present-day “attack ad.”  Both conservative and liberal groups address only their party’s platform in either supporting their candidate or attacking the opposition.  They do not mention who they are supporting so such ads are not viewed, or counted, as contributions to the election of any particular candidate.  But the result, of course, is the same.

In the movie, Mr. Smith discovers that the power behind the vote is not the senator who has the vote, but the man who finances the senator.  This, unfortunately, is still going on in Washington, probably more so now than at any time in our history.  And if it is not stopped, it will spell the death of our vaunted political system.  The power of the ballot will cease to exist in the individual American, but will reside in the hands of the few who hold sway over powerful interests who do business in Washington.

The solution, in part, is a very simple one; cap the amount any person, any corporation, any organization can give to any political cause in any one year to $5000.   A PAC would simply be unable to accept any gift larger than $5000 from any single source during a calendar year.

But we as Americans are responsible for holding our elected officials to a high standard.  We must insist upon transparency of their actions.  We should know who in power is whispering in their ears.  We should demand of them the highest standard of ethical behavior.  It should not be corporate America that elects our officials, as I fear happens only too often today, but the individual voter.  We should have the knowledge that those running for office have not allowed facts to be spun so heavily as to defy good logic, a fairness of presentation, and the simple truth.  Next time a politician declares he is for or against something, look for the man behind the curtain.  Look for the secret agenda, and ask yourself if it is indeed in the best interest of those affected, and not just to line the pockets of those who are well-connected and wealthy.

Want to know how much the super-PACs take in and who they endorse?  Follow this link

http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/superpacs.php

 

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Is This the Year We Return to 1912


I have a great deal of knowledge about 1912 in the U.S. because I did my master’s degree thesis on that year.  I am certain that more than one of you will wonder how I can possibly ask such a question considering what things were like then and what they are like now.  I am going to present here what 1912 looked like in many of America’s east coast and mid-American cities.  The west coast was not at all developed save for San Francisco, and to a lesser degree, Seattle.

Child labor

Child labor, such as seen above, was unfortunately very commonplace in 1912.  Many states had labor laws restricting children under the age of 14 from working in factories.  But states such as South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama had no such laws and children as  young as 10 were found in workplaces.  The picture above was taken in North Carolina in 1908.

These children were sent to work at such a young age because working class families were having great difficulties in just putting food on their tables.  Of course they also had trouble with living conditions, health care, and clothing.  They were forced to make choices between buying a pair of shoes or buying a loaf of bread.  The people most affected with the new immigrants of the day, mainly eastern and southern Europeans.

The early 1900s saw the rise of the Progressive movement.  These were people who immersed themselves frequently in immigrant neighborhoods.  Most notably were Jane Addams who founded “Hull House” in Chicago to help immigrant women, and Margaret Sanger who brought her nursing skills to the lower east side of New York to help the immigrant women there.  Both women believed that health care in the United States failed to meet the needs of these immigrants.  These immigrants clustered in particular portions of America’s cities.  These people were viewed as ignorant and draining the resources of the communities they lived in as well as taking jobs for those born in America.

Lawrence MA 1912

Images like the one above were unfortunately very common in 1912 but are we heading in that same direction today?

In 1912 there was no federal tax on personal income.  People took home every penny they earned.  Still, America’s wealth existed largely in the hands of a very few.  Industrialists of the day joined associations dedicated to their particular product.  These associations in turn lobbied Congress to do their will, usually successfully.  They convinced Congress that their desires were always good for all Americans.

In 1912 unions were extremely weak, and seldom won any strikes.  Industry was largely unregulated.  Child labor laws were basically non-existent.  There was no minimum wage.

I am not suggesting that we are definitely going to return to just the way it was in 1912, that would be foolish.  What I am saying is, there are those who are trying to change existing laws that would effectively return us to a state similar to that in 1912.