Government by a well-to-do minority

At The Atlantic, Lawrence Lessig explains that those who run America, those on both the left and the right, are much fewer than the 1%:

[W]e give the tiniest fraction of America the power to veto any meaningful policy change. Not just change on the left but also change on the right. Because of the structure of influence that we have allowed to develop, the tiniest fraction of the one percent have the effective power to block reform desired by the 99-plus percent. Yet by "the tiniest fraction of the one percent" I don't necessarily mean the rich. I mean instead the fraction of Americans who are willing to spend their money to influence congressional campaigns for their own interest. That fraction is different depending upon the reform at issue: a different group rallies to block health-care reform than rallies to block global warming legislation. But the key is that under the system we've allowed to evolve, a tiny number (with resources at least) has the power to block reform they don't like. A tiny number of Americans -- .26 percent -- give more than $200 to a congressional campaign. .05 percent give the maximum amount to any congressional candidate. .01 percent give more than $10,000 in any election cycle. And .000063 percent -- 196 Americans -- have given more than 80 percent of the super-PAC money spent in the presidential elections so far.

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Congress won’t even require campaign donors to identify themselves

Senator Al Franken is dismayed that Congress, won't even consider passing the DISCLOSE Act. It's up for a vote again, and Franken is not at all optimistic. What is DISCLOSE?

This bill doesn't overturn Citizens United. It doesn't limit how much money individuals or corporations can spend on independent expenditures. All it does is require that this spending be disclosed publicly. It reflects what used to be a bipartisan consensus around the effectiveness of transparency and disclosure in avoiding corruption.

Why do we need to pass the DISCLOSE Act?

Already in 2012, we've seen a single individual write multi-million-dollar checks in support of his favorite presidential candidate. We've seen corporations spend tens of millions of dollars on attack ads. We could see $1 billion in outside spending before Election Day.

Worse, there is little sunlight to be found in the post-Citizens United political system. Corporations that want to hide their spending can create shell corporations to contribute unlimited money to a group -- so that when you look at the outside group's fundraising records (which are published only occasionally), you'll see the shell corporation but not the original source of the money.

And that guy who wrote all those seven-figure checks to support his favorite presidential candidate? We only know about that because he announced it himself (adding that some of his future spending would remain secret).

And because none of this spending is transparent, none of these spenders (or the candidates who profit from their spending) can be held accountable. We simply don't know who is wielding all this financial power in this year's elections. We just know it isn't us, the people. That's a system in need of disinfecting.

There's a lot of people out there who think that as long as they have the right to vote, democracy is alive and well. This is dangerous thinking. It's like arguing that as long as I can choose to buy one of the two brands of bread at the grocery store, I still retain meaningful choice. But what if both brands of bread are corrupted with bugs, pesticides, mold and chemical additives? Would you really waltz out of the store announcing that you had a meaningful choice, just because you were allowed to choose between Brand A and Brand B, where both of them were bad choices? These huge secret campaign contributions corrupt our candidates. They are given to buy access and special attention to the donor's wish list. If the candidate fails for follow through with the promises that WERE made in order to get these big contributions, the candidate's OPPONENT will get that money next time. And by the way, when was the last time that your President, Representative or Senator invited you out to Washington D.C. to discuss the important issues of the day? Maybe you need to get a job that pays 100 times as much as you are now making, so you can make a huge contribution, which might get you on the political radar.

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The gods swat back the corporations who think they own the Fourth of July

Last year I expressed great frustration with corporations who have no compunctions hoisting their own profit-tool logos on the same flag poles as American Flags. And they choose to do this on America's most holy of civic holidays. I first noticed this crass display last year at the biggest Fourth of July celebration in Fair St. Louis. What's the problem with allowing corporate logos to flap in the wind right next to Old Glory? I can't think of a bigger insult to the People of the United States at a time when big money, mostly corporate money, has essentially purchased Congress, divesting ordinary people of the ability to run their own country. If there is anything that the Fourth of July is supposed to represent it is the notion that the governed should be self-governed (but do also check out this excellent recent article by Mark Tiedemann, who considers what it really means to be patriotic).

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The federal government’s failure to prosecute high level Wall Street executives

On Democracy Now, Juan Gonzalez asked Glenn Greenwald to comment on Barack Obama's explanation for why high level Wall Street executives have not been criminally prosecuted. Here's the exchange:

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I want to play a comment by President Obama on why his administration has not prosecuted any senior financial executives. He was speaking at a White House press conference in October of last year.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Well, first, on the issue of—on the issue of prosecutions on Wall Street, one of the biggest problems about the collapse of Lehmans and the subsequent financial crisis and the whole subprime lending fiasco is that a lot of that stuff wasn’t necessarily illegal, it was just immoral or inappropriate or reckless. That’s exactly why we needed to pass Dodd-Frank, to prohibit some of these practices. You know, the financial sector is very creative, and they are always looking for ways to make money. That’s their job. And if there are loopholes and rules that can be bent and arbitrage to be had, they will take advantage of it. So, you know, without commenting on particular prosecutions—obviously, that’s not my job, that’s the attorney general’s job—you know, I think part of people’s frustrations, part of my frustration was a lot of practices that should not have been allowed weren’t necessarily against the law, but they had a huge destructive impact.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: President Obama on why his administration has not prosecuted any senior financial executives. Your response? GLENN GREENWALD: That answer is incredibly deceitful and misleading in several important respects. First of all, the massive orgy of deregulation that took place that let Wall Street do many things that for decades had been criminal, took place in the 1990s during the Clinton administration and under Democratic Party control and was led by people like Larry Summers and the whole acolytes of Robert Rubin, such as Timothy Geithner, who ended up being empowered by President Obama at the highest levels of his economic policy team. So this idea that he is somehow disturbed by or in opposition to the kind of deregulation that made a lot of this behavior un-criminal is incredibly misleading, given that those are the people who continue to run his administration. Secondly, you notice that he said "some of this behavior" was not criminal. The unspoken implication of it, though, is that much of it was criminal. And, in fact, I just did an interview with Eliot Spitzer, who of course was probably the only elected official in the last two or three decades to put serious fear in the heart of Wall Street, when he was a prosecutor and attorney general and then governor. And I had said, as part of this interview, you know, I know that there’s this notion that prosecutions might be difficult of Wall Street executives, but that’s not a reason to refrain from doing them. And he actually objected and said, "You know what? Prosecutions would not be difficult." And he’s right. We have emails from Wall Street executives where internally they’re mocking the assets that they’re representing to the public as being these sterling assets, and they’re mocking them as garbage and junk. They knew that they were committing fraud. Credit agencies were purposely shielding these assets, knowing that they were junk, as well. And then a third issue that he said was, you know, "It’s not my job to comment on prosecutions." That’s particularly ironic, given that President Obama expressly argued and instructed the Justice Department not to prosecute Bush officials for the crimes that were done as part of the war on terror. He’s made comments about Bradley Manning’s prosecution and decreed him guilty in public. And yet, suddenly, when it comes to Wall Street executives, who funded his 2008 campaign and are funding his 2012 campaign, he suddenly becomes very shy and reticent and says, "It’s not my job to comment on prosecutions." He is the leader of the party. He’s the leader of the country. And the fact that we haven’t prosecuted Wall Street executives is one of the greatest national disgraces. You see in Spain, as we heard in that report, some effort to move away from that. That is his responsibility to demand that justice be applied equally. The vow that he made when he announced his presidency—run for the presidency, in the first paragraph of his announcement, he said the era of Scooter Libby justice would be over. Scooter Libby justice means, if you’re sufficiently powerful, you don’t pay a price for your crimes. That was the promise that he made when he ran, and that’s the promise that he’s so woefully failed to fulfill.

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Non-transparency for President

This article by Vanity Fair raises dozens of questions about how Mitt Romney made his money and how he keeps it from being taxed. This is a clinic in non-transparency. It is a story about off-shore accounts and high-priced accounting gymnastics. It is not a story about investing in straightforward businesses here in America. It is a chapter in the story of how financial services have destroyed respectable businesses over the last few decades. There is no way Romney would have a chance to win the presidency, except that winning high office these days rarely has much to do with facts. Mitt didn't earn his money anything like the way that an auto worker or a store clerk earns money. If each of us had an army of lawyer and accountants, maybe we would do what Mitt has done, but we don't. Mitt is not one of us. He is Exhibit A on how to play the game by taking advantage of tax loopholes set up only for people like him. Mitt will be spending much of his time in this campaign trying to make it look like he is one of us. Mitt will be pouring gasoline on the culture wars. Mitt will be doing everything in his power to distract us from questioning whether his money is honest money. Let the circus begin!

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