There are many problems with our system for financing political campaigns in our country. In this post I single out one of them, “money bundling”, since it seems to me to be such an obvious source of corruption and, more generally, a facilitator of fascism.
“Money bundling” is the process whereby a single person, typically the CEO, owner, or other high level personage of a wealthy corporation, collects money from hundreds of individuals and hands it over to a political candidate as a “campaign contribution”.
The purpose of money bundling is to avoid our campaign finance laws limiting individual contributionsThe most obvious thing wrong with this picture is that it is a blatant attempt to avoid our campaign finance laws. The
Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, better known as the McCain-Feingold Act, among other things established inflation-adjusted
individual contribution limits for political campaigns. In 2009-2010, those limits are $2,400 per individual per election.
The purpose of these limits is obvious. If there are no caps on campaign contributions by individuals, then they can contribute hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to a political candidate, and that political candidate will probably feel obligated to return the favor by passing legislation favorable to the contributor. The return on an investment of even millions of dollars in campaign contributions, which is a drop in the bucket for some individuals and corporations, could be, and usually is many times the original investment/“campaign contribution”.
But through the use of money bundling, individuals are able to collect huge donations, running in the hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, and present the whole bundle to a political candidate. Obviously, the political candidate doesn’t give a damn about the original source of the money. All he knows is that Mr. X gave him the money. Since Mr. X gave him the money, he owes a favor to Mr. X. The effect can be exactly as if there were no limit whatsoever on individual contributions. Why on earth was such a loophole allowed in this law?
This is legalized briberyIn reality, there is no substantive difference between this process and bribery of an elected official. The only difference in law is a minor technicality. If there is a written or taped verbal agreement between the contributor and the political campaign that a condition of the “campaign contribution” is that the candidate or incumbent office holder will repay the contributor with some legislative favor, then it can be called a bribe – which would be subject to criminal penalty. But the point is that there is no need for a written or verbal agreement. It is simply
understood that large campaign contributions will be repaid with favors by the office holder. The only time that anyone ever gets charged with bribery for doing this is when they get very careless or excessively greedy and put the agreement in writing or explicitly verbalize the agreement in a manner in which can be proven in a court of law.
But huge campaign contributions are very frequently meant as bribes, whether or not it can be proven that the contributor expects something in return. Bill Moyers explains the process in plain English in his book, “
Moyers on Democracy”, in a chapter titled “How Money is Choking our Democracy to Death”:
We have lost the ability to call the most basic transaction by its right name. If a baseball player stepping up to home plate were to lean over and hand the umpire a wad of bills before he called the pitch, we’d call that a bribe. But when a real estate developer buys his way into the White House and gets a favorable government ruling that wouldn’t be available to you or me, what do we call that? A “campaign contribution”.
Let’s call it what it is: a bribe.
Subversion of democracy and the principle of one person, one voteProponents of unlimited individual contributions to political campaigns have long held that political contributions equate with speech, and therefore are protected by our First Amendment’s free speech provision. In 1976, in
Buckley v. Valeo, the U.S. Supreme Court partially agreed with that interpretation, saying essentially that money can indeed be equated with speech, but that in certain cases the public interest may over-ride that right. That decision is
explained here:
The Court concurred in part with the appellants' claim, finding that the restrictions on political contributions and expenditures "necessarily reduced the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of the exploration, and the size of the audience reached. This is because virtually every means of communicating ideas in today's mass society requires the expenditure of money." The Court then determined that such restrictions on political speech could only be justified by an overriding governmental interest.
But the problem of equating money with speech is that some people have a lot more of it than other people. Therefore, wealthy people, by virtue of the fact that they have orders of magnitude more money than poor people, also have orders of magnitude more right to have their “speech” protected by our First Amendment.
And furthermore, it is well known that money contributed to political campaigns is translated into votes. Therefore, by allowing unlimited campaign contributions, the end result is that the wealthy have orders of magnitude more influence in elections (i.e. more votes) than other people. So, what does that do to the supposed principle of one person, one vote? It makes a mockery of it.
The point is that money used in political campaigns is NOT speech, and it should therefore not be protected by our First Amendment. It is very often bribery rather than speech. Why should we provide Constitutional legal protection for bribery?
This problem could be solved if campaign donations were required to be made anonymously, like the process of voting. If they were made anonymously with respect to the recipient of the donation, then their donation could not function as a bribe, since the office holder would not know whom to reward. If donations were required to be made anonymously, large donations would very quickly become a thing of the past.
People would still have the right to free “speech” (if you want to consider speech equivalent to money). They just wouldn’t be able to use their money/speech as a bribe.
Why can’t we just pass a law requiring that all campaign contributions of any size be made anonymously? – just like the voting process.
Subversion of the principle of anonymous votingThe process of voting in our country is anonymous – for very good reasons. Before voting was anonymous people could be, and often were, pressured by those with power over them to vote according to the way that that person wanted them to vote. That person was typically an employer. Voting the wrong way could mean the loss of a job – or worse.
But campaign donations are not anonymous – at least not to the recipient of the donation. And as noted above, campaign donations are typically converted into votes. That’s their whole purpose. Thus, the non-anonymous process of contributing to campaigns means essentially that the contributors are
voting non-anonymously, which is a subversion of the principle of anonymous voting.
Facilitating discrimination in the work placeIf employers are allowed to collect money (i.e. votes) from their employees for the purpose of campaign contributions, the potential for employer discrimination against employees who refuse to play ball is tremendous. In many or most states there is nothing whatsoever to prevent those employers from firing, withholding promotion, or dealing out other punishment to employees who refuse to contribute. Those employees essentially hand over their political rights (as well as their money) to their bosses.
Use of money bundling by George W. BushIt’s no coincidence that perhaps the most corrupt major politician of our times, George W. Bush, also set records for the use of money bundling. Here’s
an article that discusses how money bundling was used by George W. Bush in preparation for the 2004 Presidential election.
Hundreds of volunteers have helped Bush’s reelection campaign amass more than $175 million in nine months, the most ever collected in a presidential race… Bathgate says he has collected more than $500,000 for the campaign, and his techniques offer a glimpse into the Bush money machine and how it proved so successful. The Bush campaign, meanwhile, has kept track of how much he and other major fundraisers collected (Gee, I wonder why?), creating a type of rivalry among them.
Bathgate is just one of 187 so-called Rangers who have each collected $200,000 or more in contributions. Another 268 Pioneers have each raised $100,000. These efforts have given Bush a huge financial edge over Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Under federal law, individuals can give no more than $2,000 to the presidential candidates. It is this limit that makes fundraisers with large networks of contributors so important… Top Bush fundraisers bundle hundreds of donations… and send them to the campaign with a personal tracking number so they get credit (credit?) for the money. One Washington lobbyist and Ranger, who did not want his name used because his comments might anger the Bush campaign, said he was raising as much as possible for the president “so my life is easier at the convention.” He said the top fundraisers would get the best hotel rooms and buses, and special access to a hospitality suite in New York at the Republican National Convention…. “It’s kind of an investment, knowing what’s coming at me.”
Bundling money is nothing new, but it still troubles watchdog organizations. “The Bush team has refined the bundling operation to a high art. The problem with all these bundling schemes is that they’re contrary to the spirit of campaign finance laws, which limits the amount of money or clout any single American should have with a politician”…
After the 2000 campaign, Bush appointed 24 Pioneers as U.S. ambassadors. He named four other Pioneers to his Cabinet… Among the Pioneers and Rangers are Wall Street chief executives, real estate developers, trade group presidents, lawyers, lobbyists and executives representing such industries as insurance, oil and gas, healthcare and pharmaceuticals…
An example of the resulting corruption – the looting of Iraq As I said, it’s no coincidence that the George W. Bush is the foremost user of money bundling of his time (or any other time). The examples of corruption in the Bush administration are enough to fill several books. Here are excerpts from just one example, involving the looting of Iraq by the Bush administration, from “
Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009”, in an article titled “
Tracking Billions of Dollars Lost in Iraq”:
Beginning in April 2003, one month after the invasion of Iraq, and continuing for little more than a year, the United States Federal Reserve shipped $12 billion in US currency to Iraq. The US military delivered the bank notes to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), to be dispensed for Iraqi reconstruction. At least $9 billion is unaccounted for due to a complete lack of oversight. The initial $20 million came exclusively from Iraqi assets… Subsequent airlifts of cash included billions from Iraqi oil revenues…
When the US military delivered the cash to Baghdad, the money passed into the hands of an entirely new set of players – the CPA. Few in Congress had any idea about the true nature of the CPA as an institution. Lawmakers had never discussed the establishment of the CPA, much less authorized it – odd, given that the agency would be receiving taxpayer dollars…
Because it was a rogue operation, no one was responsible for what happened to that money. Accountable to no one, its finances “off the books” for US government purposes, the CPA provided an unprecedented opportunity for fraud, waste, and corruption involving American government officials, American contractors… In its short life more than $23 billion would pass through its hands… Incidents of flagrant abuse were rampant… Halliburton charged the CPA for 42,000 meals for soldiers while in fact serving only 14,000.
The precedent for legal impunity was established when whistle-blowers brought to light the case of Custer Battles, considered to be one of the worst cases of fraud in US history. The Bush administration not only refused to prosecute, it actually tried to stop a lawsuit filed against the contractors by whistle-blowers hoping to recover stolen CPA money…The administration argued that Custer Battles could not be found guilty of defrauding the US government because the CPA was not part of the US government. When the lawsuit went forward despite the administration’s objections, Custer Battles mounted a defense arguing that they could not be guilty of theft since it was done with the government’s approval…
In one of his last official acts before leaving Baghdad, Bremer issued an order prepared by the Pentagon, declaring that all coalition-force members “shall be immune from any form of arrest or detention other than by persons acting on behalf of their Sending States.” Contractors also got the same get-out-of-jail-free card… The Iraqi people would have no say over illegal conduct by Americans in their new democracy.
Matt Taibbi concludes, “What happened in Iraq went beyond inefficiency, beyond fraud even. This was about the business of government being corrupted by the profit motive to such an extraordinary degree that now we all have to wonder how we will ever be able to depend on the state to do its job in the future. If catastrophic failure is worth billions, where’s the incentive to deliver success?”
Does this make it obvious
why we went to war? Can anyone figure out why the Iraqi infrastructure that we promised to restore never recovered from the war? And is it any wonder that the Iraqis mounted an insurgency against us?
The end resultThe way that political campaigns are financed in our country is a recipe for turning democracy into fascism. How could it be otherwise? Wealthy corporations bribe our elected representatives to enact laws or provide them other favors that result in a return on their bribes… I mean investment… I mean “campaign contributions” of many times the original input. This is all done at the huge expense of ordinary citizens.
Bill Moyers explains:
There are no victimless crimes in politics. The price of corruption is passed on to you…
Look back at the bulk of legislation passed by Congress in the past decade: an energy bill that gave oil companies huge tax breaks at the same time that Exxon Mobile posted $36 billion in profits and our gasoline and home heating bills are at an all-time high; a bankruptcy “reform” bill written by credit card companies to make it harder for poor debtors to escape the burdens of divorce or medical catastrophe; the deregulation of the banking, securities, and insurance sectors, which led to rampant corporate malfeasance and greed and the destruction of the retirement plans of millions of small investors; the deregulation of the telecommunications sector, which led to cable-industry price gouging and an undermining of news coverage; protection for rampant overpricing of pharmaceutical drugs; and the blocking of even the mildest attempt to prevent American corporations from dodging an estimated $50 billion in annual taxes by opining a post-office box in an offshore tax haven…
What could be better suited to turn our democracy into a corporate state? How can democracy exist when the rich and powerful have so much disproportionate influence on our elections, and when they own our national news media as well?
Of course, there is still hope. Some might point to the 2006 and 2008 elections as evidence that there really isn’t much of a problem. But consider how bad things had to get before the American people began to vote out the utterly corrupt Republican Party. And many of our Democrats have been corrupted by the process as well. And what is almost as bad is that there doesn’t seem to be much of an effort to hold the Bush administration accountable for its vast criminal corruption and abuses of power.
Our hopes rest on the possibility that either there are enough honest and motivated high level politicians left in our country that they will aggressively begin to reverse the process – or alternatively that the American people will somehow become knowledgeable enough or just plain fed-up enough that they will elect enough progressive and honest third party or Democratic candidates in our next election to make a big difference.
It’s happened before.
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