Quid Pro Quo

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Huzzah! (as they said when the Founders were pups.) There is apparently some movement toward kicking the debt ceiling can down the road until right around Thanksgiving, when we can all sit together at a cautiously laden table, white-knuckled and anxious over pending doom and global depression. And in order to earn that tiny respite, it’s suggested that the Pubs are determined to ask for some small pittance like a hit on Social Security* or passage of the XL Pipeline.

Some liberals are suggesting that these weeks of theatrics might have been about gutting SSI all along, but I think it’s bigger than that, including but not limited to anything the left considers necessary to stabilize a middle class platform for American citizens (while the poor are uniformly thrown under the bus.) Yet, despite an all-time low approval rating — some polls indicate 5% or less — Congress continues its face-off, the Pubs confident that they know exactly what the American people want and aim to give it to them just as soon as the black guy can be put in his place.

Meanwhile, the small faction with a gun to America’s head rejoices in its funding intervention — what FOX News calls a “government slimdown” — attempting to discipline the nation with forced shutdown until it screams Uncle and returns to the halcyon days when government was local, taxes were nil and people were free to take care of themselves and determine their own destiny. In essence, they want a return to that mythical small town America that only exists in their imagination (and “Little House on the Prairie” re-runs) and they will not cease spreading their tough love come hell or high water. Both are anticipated to arrive soon.

I’m thinking hell and high water could well be renamed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, this week. We’re only going to look at one of these today, but the other is worth your time and attention. If you don’t know about the TPP, this is a good place to begin an investigation. If you are aware of it, you probably have great links to share and I encourage you to do so.

This week the Supreme Court heard a case that directly confronts campaign contribution limits. One would think, considering the broad public disapproval of Citizens United — 76 percent of conservatives and 85 percent of liberals favor repeal — a raise in the cap of donor limits would be unthinkable, but this is the Roberts court we’re discussing. This is the court that sides with big business and corporate interests every chance it gets, even in the controversial ruling affirming Obamacare’s constitutionality, pitting the Pubs against Roberts as a traitor to the conservative cause.

The ACA is, essentially, health insurance reform, creating new markets to offset the loss of less even-handed business practices like caps and denials. It is not the single payer system progressives favored, but rather a cousin of Romneycare, established in Massachusetts by the failed Republican presidential candidate nobody seems to remember anymore. Thank goodness.

Capitalism did not get hurt in the ACA ruling, even though the one-trick-pony party cried “sell out!” at the Roberts ruling and vowed to kill off Obamacare in some other way (like a government shut down, planned within the inner sanctum of the Tea Party and bolstered by private funders since before the turn of the year). I’m always amazed when these people don’t even seem to understand their own platform. Pubs pointing fingers in hysteria over anything that benefits the public is the one trick they do the best, but furthering capitalism IS the conservative cause. Ask Romney’s 47%.

Consider: the most recent legislation designed to protect the public, coming on the heels of bank corruption so huge we still can’t get our arms around it, was the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which remains — despite being passed in 2010 — understaffed and unfinished. It was built around a series of deadlines, some 60 percent of which have been missed as regulators attempt to finalize complex rules and regulations preventing the banking industry from running amok. This suits the Pubs just fine, thank you. They’ve quietly done everything they can think of to keep Dodd-Frank limping rather than up and running.

For instance, as part of Dodd-Frank, this year the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finally got a Director, Richard Cordray, after Elizabeth Warren, who proposed and shepherded the Bureau into existence, was denied its leadership by a threatened business class. Warren took that hit, gathered herself for a Senate run and eventually knocked Playgirl centerfold Scott Brown out of Teddy Kennedy’s old congressional seat over a two year period, and all the while the Powers That Be dickered over a proposed CFPB replacement without naming one. That illustrates how the clout of moneyed interests can put a hitch in the populist giddy-up. Foot-dragging and stonewalling have been the entirety of the Republican agenda for over five years and sadly, it shows on the troubled face of the republic.

The people just can’t get a break these days, or at least that’s how it looks at the moment. Due to the way we finance our elections, money runs politics, democracy be damned, but it wasn’t always so. Campaign finance didn’t become a big deal until after Watergate took us on a magical mystery tour through the bowels of corruption, political paranoia and special interests. Coming up for air, the public demanded that the implied quid pro quo — you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours — of big donations and fat cat backers be limited.

Rebuffed (in one of their final brilliant moves as a political movement: Democrats, take heed!), the GOP established an underground of think tanks and lobbying groups to bypass citizens by chipping away at legislation protecting public interests. Forty years later, their efforts have all but erased the safeguards put in place by previous generations, leaving us exposed to the whims of plutocracy.

No, money doesn’t always win. Due to their inability to put forth a viable candidate, the 2012 election put a crimp in the Pub pocketbook as well as their playbook. They spent multi-millions to defeat the black guy but he had his own share of donors and an invigorated demographic. I remember when spending a million bucks on an election was considered over the top and that wasn’t so very long ago. The 2012 election cycle ate its way through two BILLION dollars and cleared a path for even more to come in 2016.

I used to get weary when correspondence from the Dems or the White House came with a requisite solicitation for money, but at some point I got it: my being peevish with the process doesn’t change the fact that the better financed party has the edge, and the edge is constantly in flux. This is my best and most personal argument for the end of money in politics: there is never — will never be — enough.

In McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission — the case the Supreme Court heard this Tuesday — a wealthy political patron was put out at having limits put on his direct donations to candidates he favored and decided to sue. Josh Silver, director of a group called Represent Us (an anti-corruption group you will want to visit) wrote one of the clearest explanations of this issue, including the ins and outs of PACs, Super PACs and the 501c organizations that regularly move millions under the radar and in secret. You will find activist opportunities at Silver’s website.

What Citizens United did for corporations, McCutcheon does for individuals. The core issue of this case is very clear to most of us who have charted America’s slide due to 21st century money brokers. Can anyone in their right mind think that a $2.95 million dollar contribution could be considered anything OTHER than a backroom deal, a silent agreement that smacks of bribery or, at minimum, perception of corruption? Isn’t this exactly how special interests purchase a politician — sometimes a whole party — ensuring the furtherance of their agenda?

I don’t know how many Americans are watching SCOTUS right this minute, oxygen sucked away by the shutdown and debt crisis, but they need to keep an eye on this case. Post-Citizens United, this is essentially the Republicans suing for an end to caps on contributions. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (endorsing McClutcheon’s position and providing Republican cover) sent his own lawyer to the court to pitch for an end to contribution caps, period, no holds barred. McConnell is selling this as an expedient answer to the fundraising legislators are required to do. Regrettably, raising money takes a good deal of their time, estimated at up to 50% of their work week. This is a task that has long needed remediation, but hardly by kicking over all the barriers to big money’s influence.

And sadly, at a time when the miles-wide breach between the 1% and the rest of us pits logic against what Elizabeth Warren has called “a clear danger,” there’s every reason to believe that the right-leaning court will find in McCutcheon’s favor. This case focuses on striking down the cap on “aggregate contributions,” money given to joint fundraising committees that are then dispersed to other committees and individuals. Alito called a portion of Solicitor General Don Verrilli’s argument regarding the possibility of money laundering through committee “a wild hypothetical” (not) while other right-leaning justices seem unmoved by the obvious pay-for-play dangers of as much as a single $2,950,000+  political contribution.

Indeed, so far the consensus of their opinion seems to be that gratitude to a person, as opposed to a political action committee, is “no more or less compelling nor does it guarantee favor,” building on their ruling in the Citizens United case that gratitude or indebtedness is not the same as corruption and must not be used to justify campaign finance limits.

It appears that the majority of conservative Supremes are as bubbled as their Bagger counterparts, living life in a delusion of society fleshed out in their own image — I’m laughing, thinking of Scalia’s recent proclamation that he is in the majority in believing that the Devil is walking among us in human form — and sure down to their toes that money may buy access but not influence (although I bet when they’re ruminating over their second — or third — brandy of an evening they realize that’s a big load of crap).

In the days when politicians were scrupulous about these things (and it was a very brief window), simply the hint that they had been swayed by contributions was enough to harpoon a career. Those days, I fear, are well behind us. A recent article by Amitai Etzioni at Huffington included this quote: “House representatives who voted for the amendments designed to water down Dodd-Frank had received, on average, 7.8 times as much in campaign contributions from America’s four largest banks as representatives who voted against the measures.” And that is only one example. There are many.

So, SCOTUS, care to rethink? No, I didn’t think so, but then this isn’t about truth on the ground, it’s about theory and as long as the right-leaning justices believe that limits to contribution are violations of First Amendment rights on free speech, then theory wins out. To me, it’s less about theory and more about judicial approval of the oligarchy we all know owns our political platform at the moment, ignoring the obvious elitism that currently defies the true purpose of democracy. Analysts think of the Roberts court as having the sensibilities of a good barber, shaving off a little here, cutting a bit there until the whole of the law is quietly reshaped.

Still, should the Supremes give the 99% a sucker punch this spring when a decision is expected, we still have recourse, although it’s at the extreme end of the spectrum, as is everything in these unsettling times. We have amendment to the Constitution, harder to achieve but certainly possible as our systems continue to fall apart. We needed to do something about Citizens United anyhow, a goad to get us up and moving.

The week — the month, the whole of the political season — has been full of such goads, threatening to tip us over with their intensity. Perhaps that’s the whole point. Perhaps we’re being driven to that place where we simply can’t ignore the realities facing us any more; tucking our heads beneath our wings and hoping for the best hasn’t turned out so well. Perhaps we’ve forgotten that this is our world, our nation, our community, our life. WE get to set its tone and define its future. If we needed some potent reminders, they’re right on time.

If America is indeed exceptional, it’s in our assurance that this government was put in place to reflect us, written into our Constitution and Bill of Rights, and that we can impact it with our activism. The more absurd this schism between right and left, between science and faith, between haves and have nots, the more attractive and necessary it is to stand up and be counted among the thoughtful, sane and well-meaning.

And in these remarkable days, here’s the quote that keeps coming to mind, repeating over and over, even in twilight sleep, and attributed to no one in particular, some anonymous person who had — as do we all, in the core of our being — the heart of a lion: “I never said it would be easy, I said it was worth it.”

* My Bagger representative has signed a letter to Boehner, along with 49 other House reps, calling for Social Security solvency legislation which includes raising retirement age, adjusting the inflation formula and means-testing as the price for kicking the can. My little local group is planning a protest on Monday next, alerting the public as best we can, the majority of whom, here in the Patch, collect Social Security. If what’s wrong with Kansas is also what’s wrong with Southern Missouri, the least we can do is point out to those being victimized how little the Pubs do for their own.