The Center for Responsive Politics is the nation's premier research group tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy. Nonpartisan, independent and nonprofit, the organization aims to create a more educated voter, an involved citizenry and a more transparent and responsive government. In short, the Center's mission is to:
•Inform citizens about how money in politics affects their lives
•Empower voters and activists by providing unbiased information
•Advocate for a transparent and responsive government
We pursue our mission largely through our award-winning website, OpenSecrets.org, which is the most comprehensive resource for federal campaign contributions, lobbying data and analysis available anywhere. And for other organizations and news media, the Center's exclusive data powers their online features tracking money in politics — counting cash to make change
They have a wealth of information on how money flows into our political class, election processes, and government functions. The data is detailed, extensive, and able to be pulled up in summary form or extremely detailed form. For a political junkie or concerned American, one could probably spend days mining the information they have gathered, analyzed, and have charted.
Why is their work important? Their findings dramatically detail the amount of money from unions, corporations, lobbyists, etc. that flow into the campaign coffers of our political class, money that is huge and getting larger on every election cycle. It is my opinion that this gushing flow of money perverts the election processes in this country, making a every citizen's vote less and less important over time.
This large and constant political money peddling destroys the "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" principle for every American, replacing it with a new political class pledge: "You give me money and I influence legislation, not for the good of the country, but for the potential of more campaign donations in the future from you." Disgusting and discouraging to our democracy and our freedom.
Like I said above, you could spend days going through the Open Secrets website. However, for illustrative purposes of how bad the situation has become, consider a sampling of results I have pulled out of their treasure trove of information:
- The following data highlights the top ten campaign contributing sources to President Obama's 2008 Presidential campaign:
- University of California $1,648,685
- Goldman Sachs $1,013,091
- Harvard University $878,164
- Microsoft Corp $852,167
- Google Inc $814,540
- JPMorgan Chase $808,799
- Citigroup Inc $736,771
- Time Warner $624,618
- Sidley Austin LLP $600,299
- Stanford University $595,716
I find it very interesting that three out of the top seven sources of campaign funds were from three of the biggest banks in America. These banks received billions and billions of taxpayer bailout dollars from the Federal government, a bailout that Obama approved of as a Senator and allowed to go forth as President.
And as we pointed out in an earlier post this week, these banks and fifteen of the other biggest banks in this country continue to receive upwards of $76 billion annually as taxpayer subsidies. JP Morgan, the sixth largest contributor to Obama's 2008 campaign heads the list of subsidy receivers, annually receiving $14 billion worth of government subsidies, according to the IMF and analyses done by Bloomberg. Coincidence? I think not.
I really got a kick out of the next set of data. Mitt Romney used to work at Bain Capital, a company that would help maximize the assets and profitability of ailing companies. Sometimes they were able to reverse a company's decline, sometimes they were not able to and ended up maximizing shareholder value by dissolving the company and selling off its assets.
Nowhere has anyone accused Bain of behaving illegally in their ventures. Venture capital firms do these types of business ventures all the time, including the companies run by wealthy, liberal, Democratic Party supporters such as Warren Buffet and George Soros. Venture capital firms were big campaign donors to Obama's 2008 Presidential campaign.
However, if you were only to listen to Obama's campaign managers, they are trying to position Bain, and Romney, as insensitive to the needs of Americans by deliberately shutting down companies and getting rich in the process. I disagree with this assessment, again pointing out to the similar efforts done by Buffet and Soros, but that is not the point. Each person is entitled to their own opinions.
But talk about hypocrisy. If Bain Capital is so bad, why have the many Washington Democrats in the following list accepted campaign donations from Bain over the past ten years, according to Open Secrets, if Bain is so bad, so corrupt, so immoral, so despicable? You cannot accuse Bain of being the devil and still accept the devil's money without being the height of hypocrisy:
Al Franken (D) in 2012
Christopher S. Murphy (D) in 2012
Claire McCaskill (D) in 2012
David Cicilline (D) in 2012
Jack Reed (D) in 2012
Jeanne Shaheen (D) in 2012
Jim Himes (D) in 2012
John Kerry (D) in 2012
Mark Udall (D) in 2012
Mark Warner (D) in 2012
Michael F. Bennet (D) in 2012
Nancy Pelosi (D) in 2012
Niki Tsongas (D) in 2012
Richard Blumenthal (D) in 2012
Scott P. Brown (R) in 2012
Sheldon Whitehouse (D) in 2012
Anthony D. Weiner (D) in 2010
James Webb (D) in 2010
Jon Tester (D) in 2010
Maria Cantwell (D) in 2010
Paul W. Hodes (D) in 2010
Sherrod Brown (D) in 2010
Bob Casey (D) in 2008
Edward M. Kennedy (D) in 2008
Harold E. Ford Jr (D) in 2006
Marty Meehan (D) in 2006
John Kerry (D) in 2004
Judd Gregg (R) in 2002
Max Cleland (D) in 2002
Gordon H. Smith (R) in 2000
I find two names particularly interesting on this list, besides the fact the the list is overwhelmingly composed of Congressional Democrats who accepted Bain campaign money. Anthony Weiner, that less than stellar and upstanding Congressman from New York, received Bain money. If I was Bain, given sorry Weiner's disgraced history, I would have asked for my money back.
But best of all, Nancy Pelosi is also a recipient of Bain money. Please, Nancy, how can you look us in the face and agree Bain is bad, which makes Romney bad, if you have no qualms about taking the Bain money? Talk about hypocrisy, talk about a lack of integrity.
- What types of industries contribute to political campaigns? I thought that would be very interesting since all of us deal with most of these industries quite often in our daily lives. We should know what these industries are dong politically and how that might affect our day-to-day lives. The following list contains the contributions to the 2012 election cycle from just over the past year or so, a total of about $1.4 billion:
- Finance/Insurance/Real Estate $298,910,163
- Other $212,559,836
- Miscellaneous Business $194,198,190
- Lawyers & Lobbyists $130,201,920
- Health $116,194,309
- Ideology/Single-Issue $102,889,573
- Communications/Electronics $87,514,353
- Energy/Natural Resource $66,428,838
- Construction $54,280,646
- Labor $52,766,843
- Agribusiness $40,202,777
- Transportation $35,557,147
- Defense $15,569,517
- The second and third categories, Miscellaneous and Other, consist of a large number of smaller business categories that seem pretty unrelated to each other so the two largest, focused contributor groups appear to be the Financial/Insurance/Real Estate and Legal industry groups.
- Is it a coincidence that the Financial industry continues to get favored status in Washington, from bank bailouts, to favorable Federal Reserve treatment to annual taxpayer subsidies and also contributes the most to political campaigns?
- Is it just a coincidence that tort reform is not close to being a major part of Obama Care, even though tort abuse is a major driver of escalating health care costs, and the Legal industry is the second biggest contributors to the 2012 election cycle?
- Do we really believe that these industry groups, who have already contributed over $1.4 billion to the 2012 election cycle, want nothing in return for their contributions and what they want will always be for the good of the individual American and American family? I think not.
- Remember, this election cycle is no where close to being over, this $1.4 billion is just a starting point for what is to come.
Similarly, the Legal industry contributed about $60 million in 1992. By 2008, that pot of money was up to almost $300 million, a fivefold increase. The biggest contributor in 2008 was the American Association for Justice, one of the biggest tort lawyer groups in the world, an organization who would have probably been hurt financially if Obama Care had seriously implemented the right type of medical tort reform. Coincidence?
But it gets worse. These numbers and examples do not include the millions and millions of dollars that labor groups contribute. These numbers do not include the millions and millions of dollars that Super PACs are pumping into the election process. The volume is overwhelming.
Several steps from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" are critical if we are ever to stop this tidal wave of money and influence buying and peddling:
- Step 6 would allow only individual American citizens to contribute to election campaigns. When our Founding Fathers came up with freedom of speech I am pretty sure it was "individual" freedom of speech not PAC, Super PAC, corporate, and labor union freedom of speech that they had in mind.
- Step 7 would only allow people to contribute to elections that impact their Congressman's race or their Senator's race. They could not contribute to an election campaign in another state or Congressional district.
- Step 8 provides a process to take the Federal Election Commission out of the political realm and place it into the criminal prosecution realm so that we no longer have the wolves (politicians) guarding the hen house (our election processes.)
- Step 39 would implement term limits for all Federal politicians so that they serve one term only in Federal office. Since much of the influence peddling, buying, and selling revolves around incumbent election campaigns, making incumbents a relic would stifle this practice.
We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:
http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/
The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.
The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at
http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/
No comments:
Post a Comment