Diary of a Mad Voter: Dan Rostad
Money Makes The Political World Go Round!
By Dan Rostad, 10-29-07
 |
|
 | |
|
Just say the word “Money” four times fast and your mind will immediately think of the melody to that old song that was taken hostage by Donald Trump to be the theme music for his defunct reality show.
It seems that all I hear about in the news is money. How much we make, how much we spend, how much more we need! “Money makes the world go around” is a phrase we often hear, and we know “Money makes the political world go around”?
Politics is full of money. Not one politician and not one political party is immune from the need for money. But you would think that the way Republicans have been bashed for their excesses in fundraising, the Democrats would have cleaned up the money games played in Washington.
You would think with all the efforts Congress has made to reduce the influence of lobbyists, through campaign reform legislation, there wouldn’t be any more big stories of abuse or money grubbing.
You would think, if you read the newspapers or watch the television news, all the evils of money in politics could squarely be blamed on the Republicans and you would think it was the Democrats that have finally cleared the playing field and made the corruption of money in politics go away.
Wrong.
Money might be the root of all evil, but it is also the root of all politics and of all those who want to be re-elected and hold the power that comes from being the majority political party.
I certainly wasn’t surprised when the Washington Post reported in an editorial this past week that Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign was getting campaign contributions from dishwashers and waiters in the Chinatown district of New York. It turns out that these are people who often do not earn much more than minimum wage, but they are making $1000-plus contributions to Clinton’s presidential campaign.
The Post editorial states that, “This appears to be another instance in which a Clinton campaign’s zeal for campaign cash overwhelms its judgment.”
Hard to imagine, given Hillary’s past condemnation of the GOP fundraising efforts, that Senator Clinton would fall pray to the evils of money grubbing.
Well, the best revelations of Democratic political payoffs, were contained in a Wall Street Journal column October 19th opinion titled: “Comfy with K Street”.
Heck, I thought it was the Republicans that were supposed to be in bed with those powerful “K Street” lobbyists.
According to WSJ columnist, Stephen Moore, the switch has taken place and now those same lobbyists are not only shelling out the big bucks for influence with the Democrats and their powerful committee chairs, but those same Democratic leaders are actually putting the squeeze on the lobbyists to pay up.
I’ve never felt the squeeze that we’re under now to give to Democrats and to hire them” says one telecom industry representative. ‘They’ve put out the word that if you have an issue on trade, taxes or regulation, you’d better be a donor and you’d better not be a part of any effort to run ads against our freshmen incumbents.
Moore also pointed to a recent Roll Call piece that reported what they called a “Democratic donor surge” noting that many of the highest-priced lobbyists from Washington’s “K Street” have already “maxed out” their donation limits to powerful Democrats in the Congress.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi used to denounce the “K Street” influence that curried political favor with Republican politicians, well now it seems to be that the tide has turned and the once squeaky clean Democrats are immersed in the love of money and influence that it can buy.
Why is it that you can’t run on your record and the issues, without needing to shake down a big bunch of lobbyists?
Why is it that those same Democratic politicians who used to shout out about the evils of big money and corporate influence on the political process, just to turn around and do those same things, they used to demonize the Republicans?
Hypocrisy, plain and simple!
Both parties are guilty and will probably always play the same game. But don’t we deserve better?
Editor’s note: Dan Rostad’s weekly blogs are part of a new feature on NewWest.Net/Politics called “Diary of a Mad Voter,” a group blog, published in partnership with the Denver Post’s Politics West intended give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the ‘08 election cycle. Check back this week at www.newwest.net/madvoter.
[End of article]Dan, thanks for writing this story. We do deserve better. Money buys votes and it buys influence regardless of the party in question. Do you have a suggestion on how to fix the system?
Comment By Dave Skinner, 10-29-07Dan might not, Glenn, but I sure do.
The trouble with politics is that the politicians spend so much time hooking for money they don't have any brain cells left for rationalizing policy.
Second, the reforms in place now were all created with the intent of hosing the other guy's supporters, or with the intent of protecting entrenched incumbency. It's a sleazy system, and it inevitably rubs off on its practitioners.
Adding to the sleaze is the secretive nature of political donations, one prime example is George Soros and his, ahem, Open Society outfit. Is that ironic or what?
Irony or not, dirty secret money corrupts the process and gives up a crummy result. I am sick of political sleazeballs hiding the salami only to find it between my back pockets every election.
The real solution would be to take the limits off conditional on full disclosure in real time. Let evil corporations, slimy tycoons and big unions throw money around all they want, just as long as the voter knows who is sacked out with whom, and knows it BEFORE the election. How to do this?
Any campaign, individual, candidate, whatever, would register with a central registry database accessible on the Web. Each party would have a unique identifier, and post all transactions in and out to a secure page in a standardized format, within 48 hours of the transaction taking place. That way you could track who actually paid for the ad buy attacking so and so. Failure to report timely would be heavily penalized.
Paid writers of political speech would also need to register and disclose their funding sources. That would include staff of 527's and 501c3s any time they do "issue education." If a charity sticks to charity, then they don't have to disclose.
I suppose you could put a bottom limit on reporting, say a hundred bucks. And there further needs to be a way to consistently track donors, meaning that their names and addresses must not change from check to check. John Terence Smith rather than Jay T. Smith and so forth.
Anyway, good points, Dan. Keep it up.