"Well doctor, what have we got- A Republic or a Monarchy?"
"A Republic, if you can keep it"
-Benjamin Franklin, 1787.
The above mentioned Republic is, for all intents and purposes, finished. It was done with the flick of a pen by your supreme court last month. For anyone not aware, the determination was made that corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money to support political candidates in their run for office.
The fallacy of this should be obvious to a five year old. The most profitable and powerful corporations on the planet can now buy the politician of their choice and pretty much guarantee that they'll get into office. There's a direct correlation between a candidate's campaign coffers and how well they do in an election.
Once in a blue moon a little guy who's vastly underfunded (which usually means an independent) wins but in the long run this is a statistical anomaly, much like the numbers behind a casino.
It's no secret that all politicians are ultimately bought and paid for, that's why there's over 30,000 lobbyists on capital hill. But now, the gloves have come off. Let's look at what this portends for the future.
Over the last two years ExxonMobil's profits were 85 billion. Not revenue, profit, so after all their expenses and operating costs were covered they literally had 85 billion sitting in the bank and wondering what to spend it on. In the same two year period, total spending on the 2008 federal election (including 2007), from all sources was 5.2 billion. Emphasis on all-sources. That covers all the donations to democrats, republicans, independents coming from literally millions of private citizens, corporations and special interest groups.
If ExxonMobil wanted it badly enough, this single company could choose to spend 12 percent of their annual profit on the party (or even single candidate) of their choice and in doing so equal or outspend ALL campaign contributions to all parties and candidates in years previous. If a single company were to provide 5 billion dollars in funding to a president who got into office, how likely would that president be to support legislation that may be in the interest of the people but would hurt Exxon's bottom line? He wouldn't, because that would literally be career suicide.
Of course this is a ridiculous scenario. I highly doubt that Exxon would spend 5 billion on a single candidate, but what if Exxon, General Electric, Pfizer and a couple other heavyweights decided to each kick in 1 billion dollars each to the same canditate or party? For Exxon that would be a paltry 2 percent of their profits, going to ensure that they'd get a candidate who would never fuck with them on emissions, environmental legislation or a multitude of other measures that would be beneficial for the nation but harmful to the company (maybe there might be a little added pressure from higher up on the golf course for a certain judge to take a harder line on a lawsuit regarding a little ol' oil spill a while back)
What if AT&T kicked in 500 million in contributions? Would Washington dare to bite the hand that feeds them and enact tougher requirements on the company for net neutrality and minimum service levels for customer's broadband?
What if General Dynamics and a handful of other major defence contractors threw together a cool one or two billion to throw to the "hawk" candidate of their choice? Never mind the pure comedy of taxpayer dollars flowing from public coffers to private hands, then back to individual politicians to ensure that the public money would keep flowing or even increase. What if these contractors were producing lemmon weapons systems.... years behind schedule, massively over-budget, massively-over complicated and therefore breaking down far too easily in the field, and ultimately under-performing on a real battlefield? Would those contracts and defence appropriations get canceled if it would mean the loss of billions in campaign finance? I think not.
I hope you get the picture. But it's not all bad though. The farce is just beginning, as we all know what happens once a corporation feels they own someone or something for shelling out big wads of cash..... branding!
Just picture it- a session of congress will be almost indistinguishable from NASCAR, what with the TIDE and VIAGRA logos that will be plastered all over the company-approved outfit the politician will have to contractually wear (in exchange of course for a boat-load of money)
And of course, we can't miss out the re-naming of buildings that have been bought by corporate money;
"The President will be making a special address to the nation tonight, live from the Exxon-White House..."
Hard as it is to believe, I find Mumble just as nuts as the rest of you, although in certain situations his views line up with mine, just as in certain situations yours line up with mine.
And again, you're completely missing my point. I don't give a good nickel about your opinion of either candidate (by the way, Sheehan is one of the bravest people I can think of.... when was the last time you ran for office against an entrenched incumbent and won a significant chunk of the votes hmmm?)
The point is, with more funds on your side you can ensure that your voice will be heard louder than the other guy's. You can run a more sophisticated campaign where in more people go door to door, bigger speeches and rallies are held, and of course, this cannot be emphasized enough, image management. With lotsa money you can make a devil look like an angel and do the reverse for the other guy.
Oh Nitro, did you miss the part where I said "don't think for a second that I'm only talking about tv commercials and lawn signs?" If you sincerely think that that's all a campaign's funds pay for then you are a moon-bat and I cannot help you. It's not just an attempt to make your candidate look great but to make the other guy look like a slime-ball. Kinda like that whole thing where Kerry was made to look like a slime ball for having the audacity to go see combat in Vietnam and get wounded (but never mind the GWB during the same period was in the air national guard and hardly ever showed up... by far, much more manly then getting wounded in pansy combat, right?)
And you're completely missing my point Dr Guy, so allow me to elaborate. I was referring to Casino's in particular, not gambling in general. Casino's, statistically speaking, always win in the end. That is why they are always profitable (until of course the number of patrons coming through the doors starts to dwindle, but that's another matter entirely)
This is why, casinos almost literally have a licence to print money.
And so it goes with campaign financing. Go back and pull up the numbers- except for the odd once-in a blue moon good ol' fashioned underdog win, history has already proven my point for me- the most well financed candidate usually wins.
Even assuming you're correct about the most well financed candidate usually winning, that doesn't by itself prove your point:
A well organised candidate with a well planned election would, all else equal, be expected to raise more money. They'd also be expected to have a better campaign (without that money) and better chances of election than if they were disorganised and running a poor campaign. In this case the increased finance is in part a symptom of their electoral success, not the sole cause
Similarly as I mentioned earlier, a popular candidate expected to win will find it easier to attract finance, and hence the finance is again in this case partly a symptom of their electoral success, not a cause.
Finally, your proposition based on history from that comment alone would suggest that you could just need to have a bit more money than the other candidate - that is, your finance needed to increase your chances of winning would be relative to your opponent - and hence spending vastly more than them might not actually make a big difference (hence allowing unlimited finance for campaigns wouldn't have much impact unless both candidates were already frequently hitting the cap).
Well, that's an assumption on your part. Again, employ a little common sense. I'm not talking about a democrat going head to head with a republican- both of those candidates will have massive coffers that are at least in the same ballpark.
What I -am- talking about is a no-name independent going up against the democrat or republican who will have a massively larger war chest than the no-name. Right off the bat, the no-name pretty much doesn't stand a chance. Statistically speaking that is. Go ahead, prove me wrong!
you and the other defeatists here, many that wouldn't give squat for the freedoms they enjoy.
I find no bravery in pissing on your dead sons grave for your own publicity. You obviously don't know the whole story. Read something besides the liberal propaganda.
Perhaps if he didn't throw his medals away and call his "fellow" servicemen "war criminals" in congress, what do you think? Nice transition into Bush though, it's never what your candidate did, it's what the other guy does with liberals, and they are still running against Bush in the continuing Obama campaign, pathetic. And they call themselves "progressives" when they can't even progress past the last administration.
Good answer, very moderate.
Well yes that's to be expected, but not because they have a smaller war chest - some people will vote for a party regardless of the candidate (or at least be heavily influenced by it). Other people will vote tactically not for the person they like the most, but for the canditate they dislike the least out of the two most likely to win, because a vote for a no-name is almost certain to be a wasted vote. Maybe having a huge warchest can buy such an independent a fighting chance if they can spend so much money that they can convince voters they have a chance at winning, but it won't be able to guarantee them victory, as you seemed to indicate in your original post:
Edit: Triple post (forums really playing up)
Edit: Double post
Ah, you have my apologies. Clearly I am an uninformed idiot, since I am a "defeatist" (what exactly is that?)
Please explain to me why I don't know the whole story and what parts of it I'm missing. Now, if she really were "pissing on her dead sons grave for publicity" this point could actually be argued -if- she had a history of doing things like this. But, she doesn't. She was just an average gal living a suburban life who woke up to the fact that much of your nation is in fact built on a myth and ruled by crooks.
Also, I asked you if you had ever run for office against an entrenced candidate as an independent, and how you fared. Well?
I'm sorry, this is a rather non-sensical ramble. The proof is in the pudding. Prove me wrong, that statistically speaking better campaign financing doesn't give one candidate a tremendously significant advantage over their competitors.
I'm late to this party & have skipped over a number of replies, but what world have you been living in? Are you really laboring under the delusion that only us little people make campaign contributions now? Did you not hear that PhRMA dumped $150 million to run ads in support of Obamacare?
Your notion that SCOTUS has unleashed the apocalypse is, what's the word... a tad too apocalyptic.
Sorry for the late reply, but I did not miss your point, you just missed the house. In your analogy, the house is the corporation. But that is not the case. They are the high rollers, the house is congress. All too often we see where a member is elected, and then goes against what he promised. Bettors do not make the rules, the house does, and the house is the government.
See Daiwa's reply for an all too common occurrance and proof of who is the house and who is the gambler.
You're the one making grand statements like how this is the end of a republic etc., - it is for you to prove this statement, it doesn't simply become true because you say so and mean I then have to offer clear proof that it's wrong. I've given a number of reasons as to why your suppositions are flawed, and not only have you failed to respond to them, you've also failed to present any actual evidence yourself, and then expect me to give you loads of evidence.
I know from looking at some numbers analysing the effect of campaign contributions on the outcome of an election a few years ago that they run into greatly diminishing returns, but there's no way I can be bothered to dig around for those sorts of numbers, especially when you haven't bothered spending a second of time providing any evidence yourself.
Yes, lets fear corporate America, meanwhile:
METHODOLOGY: The numbers on this page are based on contributions of $200 or more from PACs and individuals to federal candidates and from PAC, soft money and individual donors to political parties, as reported to the Federal Election Commission. While election cycles are shown in charts as 1996, 1998, 2000 etc. they actually represent two-year periods. For example, the 2002 election cycle runs from January 1, 2001 to December 31, 2002.
Data for the current election cycle were released by the Federal Election Commission on Sunday, January 31, 2010.
NOTE: Soft money contributions to the national parties were not publicly disclosed until the 1991-92 election cycle, and were banned by the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act following the 2002 elections.
Feel free to distribute or cite this material, but please credit the Center for Responsive Politics.
The above chart displays properly at https://forums.joeuser.com/375674/page/2 if it appears incorrectly, you're viewing from http://artysim.joeuser.com/article/375674/We_the_Corporation/page/3. Try the first link.
It still cuts off the last column(s) in the forums, but enough is there to make your point.
Thanks for the feedback Doc. On my PC it looks fine on the forums and lousy on articles. Not sure why, edit won't work for me there either.
And this is the reason I want to see contributions coming from an individual citizen as the only legal form of campaign donation.
Not gonna happen. And not a bad thing, as long as meaningful disclosure occurs.
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