Corruption, Cronyism, Syria and Term Limits: Correlated of Causative?

As most informed Americans know, President Obama issued a dare/threat to the Syrian government in August, 2012, warning them not to use poison gas in their civil war against rebel forces. The President then proceeded to do nothing to operationalize that threat over the next twelve months, despite numerous and long vacations and many, many rounds of golf. He did not get Congressional approval to strike militarily if poison gas was used, he did not get United Nations approval to strike, he did not get the American public behind him, he did not pressure Syrian allies to force Syria not to use chemical weapons, nothing.

As a result, if reports are to be believed, the Syrian government did use poison gas on its people and the President is out on a very thin limb. He has now gone to Congress, twelve months too late, and is trying to get them out on the limb with him by authorizing a military strike on Syrian targets. Over the past week, Congressional hearings and meetings have been held to determine if Congress should give him this ill thought out and probably ill fated power to attack.

The first Congressional voted was held by a Senate responsible for such matters and a resolution passed, 10  votes for military action vs. 7 voted against military action. That resolution will now move along the Congressional process for a vote by the entire Senate. We have made the case this week, as have many other, smarter Americans why attacking Syria is a very bad idea. Those posts can be reviewed starting with the first one:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/09/political-class-insanity-special.html

So, given that so many Americans are against military action, I wondered why a majority of Senators on this committee voted to support military action. Was there something going on behind the scenes that we are not aware of? Well, an analysis posted by the Wired magazine website provides a theory and hypothesis of what is really going on.

Before going on, a quick discussion on correlation and causation. Just because two factors look to be interrelated, it does not mean that one caused another. Simple example. I recently went on a diet and as my weight dropped, my golf game improved. On the surface, it looks like my weight loss made me a better golfer, or said another way, my weight loss caused my golf improvement.

But I also took some lessons and bought new golf clubs in the midst of my weight reduction effort. In all likelihood, the new clubs and lessons CAUSED my golf game improvement, while the weight loss was CORRELATED with the improvement in my golf game, it did not cause the improvement.

Okay, that is a long winded way of saying that just because defense and intelligence companies and contractors gave a lot more reelection campaign money to the Senators who voted yes to go to war does not necessarily mean that their money caused them to vote yes for war, it could just be a correlation or a coincidence. 

But it is a worthwhile avenue of investigation since we are talking about spending billions of dollars to attack Syria and putting our fighting service men and women in mortal danger. It would be a shame if those costs were incurred for a few thousands dollars of campaign contributions from companies that would profit handsomely from another Middle East military action.

The following graphic of how the “yes” voters got more money from defense contractors and companies vs. those that voted “no” to war is lifted from the Wired article (double click on the image for a larger view):








The data is based on campaign contributions from 2007 through 2012. The information comes form the fabulous Open Secrets website that tracks all money being donated to all politicians over the years and what was the source of those contributions.

For this analysis, these sources include political action committees and employees from defense and intelligence firms related to such companies as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, United Technologies, Honeywell International, and others. This category of contributors in the Open Secrets website gave $1,006,887 to the 17 members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who voted yes or no on the authorization Wednesday, The analysis and data research was done by Maplight, a Berkeley-based nonprofit that performed the inquiry at WIRED’s request.

Let’s review the findings and do a little math work of our own:

• Those Senators that voted yes for war on average received 83% more money from defense contractors than those that voted no to war.
• A majority of those Senators that voted no to war (four out of seven), received less money from defense contractors than the lowest recipient of funds among the ten Senators that voted yes to war.
• If you assume that McCain on the yes side and Barrasso on the no side are outliers which distort the results, removing these two highest paid recipients on each side of the issue and recalculating averages show even worse results, with the yes side getting about 92% more from defense firms than the no side.
• If you leave Barrasso in and just remove McCain, the results are still damning, with the yes voters getting on average 54% more than the no voters.
• The top three recipients of defense contributions on the yes side received, on average, 94% more than the top three recipients on the no side.

It is tough/impossible to cut the data anyway possible and not come away with the conclusions that those that voted yes to going to war with Syria were much better financially supported by defense firms, companies that would do very well in a war environment, than those Senators that voted no. Again, this does not mean that heavy financial support to the yes voters influenced their vote, remember correlation vs. causation. It could just be a coincidence that it ended up that way.

But who really believes that. Consider another viewpoint that again, could just be a correlation/coincidence and have nothing to do with going to war or not. In the past month, the stock market’s S&P index is down about 2.49% while the Dow industrial stock average is down even more, 3.83%. 

However, if you look at four major defense firms, firms listed above that are heavy contributors to Senators’ reelection campaigns, we see that the Lockheed stock price over the past month is down only .43%, Boeing’s stock price is down just .91%, United Technologies is down 1.87%, and Honeywell is down 2.97%. Thus, in general, defense firms have done much better than the overall stock market in the past month as war talk and attacking Syria talk has ramped up.

Again, the better than market performance of defense firms in the midst of Senate debate on going to war could just be a coincidence. But if war is your business and the potential for engaging in military action is on the table, than business can be very good, especially if you can influence the events via lobbying and campaign funding.

These facts and figures could all be just a coincidence. But why take the chance? Shouldn’t Congressional actions, decisions, and votes be based on the merits relative to the majority of American citizens and not based on how much money incumbent politicians can potentially sell their vote for? 

And if we are not talking about a coincidence, isn’t it a disgrace that just over a $1 million in campaign donations can risk billions of dollars in war supplies and the potential deaths of American troops and seamen and airmen?

That is why we need to remove the chance for causation by implementing two steps from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government:”

1) Step 7 would allow only American citizens to contribute to political campaigns. No companies, no unions, no PACs, no Super PACs, and no lobbyists would ever be allowed to contribute to any political election campaign. Washington politicians should be voting on issues as dictated by citizens, not defense firms or any other kind of organized entity.

2) Step 39 would impose term limits on all Washington politicians. We get into these difficult situations because the primary purpose of anyone serving in Congress is to continue serving in Congress, election after election after election. These perpetual elections require money from various sources. 

And with money comes debts that need to be paid back in order to get more reelection campaign funding. Make reelection impossible and that would certainly focus sitting politicians on the real issues, making the proper decisions since reelection and the need for reelection funding goes away.

If those ten Senators that voted yes to go to war, those ten that had received much more campaign money from defense firms than the seven no voters, knew that reelection was not possible, it would be interesting to see if they still would have voted yes. 

In any case, we need to remove this suspicion of acting for reelection rather than the safety of our country,  our taxpayer wealth, and the safety of our armed forces. You can help make that possible by joining our effort to impose term limits on all Washington politicians at:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

Because, really, how much worse could it get when just over a $1 million could cost us much more in treasure and lives?

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:

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:

Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w