Flooding the Airwaves in Montana
Buying Votes on Climate Change and Healthcare
By Jonathan Weber, 8-28-09
I’m not sure when it became the norm for lobbying groups to flood the airwaves with campaign-style advertising relating to specific pieces of legislation, but the battles over healthcare and climate change legislation are playing out in a way that I’ve never seen before. It’s probably more intensive here in Montana, where TV ads are cheap and our two conservative Democratic Senators, Sen. Baucus and Sen. Tester, represent very important votes. But it’s discouraging to see the debate taken over by interest groups whose ads are, by nature, purposefully misleading.
Climate change legislation is denounced as an energy tax, without any acknowledgment of the actual purpose of the legislation. I certainly understand why oil and gas interests, fertilizer manufacturers, coal companies, and agribusinesses would oppose legislation that could raise their costs, but of course the TV ads urging me to call Sen. Tester and tell him to vote no are not honest about who is financing all this lobbying. Environmental groups are funding some ads in favor of the cap-and-trade climate change bill, but it’s not really a fair fight.
Healthcare legislation similarly affects many monied interests, and they similarly have no qualms about brazenly misleading advertising that suggests we’re on the brink of a British-style healthcare system where the government owns the hospitals and pays the doctors. Anyone involved in the discussion knows full well that none of the current proposals remotely resemble the British system, but that bogeyman is nonetheless trotted out to frighten the uninformed.
Certainly both healthcare and climate change are complex issues, and spirited public debate is generally a good thing. But in both cases, it’s obvious that reform is long overdue, and equally obvious that most of the ad campaigns are in the service of narrow economic interests, not the national interest. I hope our elected representatives have the backbone to stand up to it.
[End of article]http://amiba.net/pressrelease/cuvfec_release_7.31.html
Comment By Eric, 8-28-09Sorry for the premature post, the return button evidently auto-posts a message.
My point of the link was to say: don't worry about those pesky corporate front group ads--the Supreme Court may take care of them shortly by allowing major corporations to influence the decision makers much more directly: http://amiba.net/pressrelease/cuvfec_release_7.31.html
The ongoing debates over healthcare,
Climate change and illegal immigration
Have served to "unsettle" average citizens
Of this, our still quite viable nation.
Sufficiently, it's devoutly to be hoped,
To transmit signs of their discontent
To representatives, senators and executives
Who for proposing ill-designed legislation may be moved to repent.
Those very same corporations, ads, are what drive the election process. That the Democrats had a half billion dollars more to spend this last Presidential election, general election, should also be noticed, because it is money that is equated with free speech by the Supremes, and money is driving the process at every level.
In my state, public employees pay mandatory union dues, whether they belong the union or not. Most of the union money ends up buying elections, and for one party. From that you get a legislative body bought by union mandatory political money collected by the state, county, city, in the payroll process. Add to that the election of an administration from the same party financed by the same money. That money and influence appoints the judges to approved by the same money in the legislature.
The citizens are even picking up the tab to collect the money, account for the money, from public employee wages, and then the electronic transfer to union accounts. As a result of the influence, our state has lost over 100,000 private sector jobs from 2006 to date, and government has gained 5000 jobs. The union dues lobby a process to add to public employment, which increases the number of dues paying employees, which augments further the coffers of political money to dole out to like thinking legislators for campaign funds. We now have government that is for government, by government and the major beneficiary is government. And at all three branches. The State Supreme Court justices are first appointed by the Governor, and then elected in campaigns that in the end get financed by public employee union dues and trial lawyer donations. All three branches are captured. The only balance is that private sector campaign money has not been totally outlawed. Yet.
So, in the eye of the beholder, buying votes for health care and climate change is happening from all sides of the equation. A knowing person has to understand that all the draconian processes to regulate energy and use, the byzantium of rule and regulation, will come with an vastly expanded bureaucracy. And the "public option" of health care is also an expansion of government employees, only this time with much higher salaries and wages from which to gain more campaign money to espouse one political viewpoint. The size of the bureaucratic effort can only be imagined at this time. It will, like all government endeavors, expand to fill the spots and use the money appropriated, and the efficiency of the effort will decrease and we will have not gotten the gain promised.
The Supremes "money is free speech" decision is the thin buttress between a one party system of government and personal options in this country. It is fine to find fault with private corporate and personal financing of an opposing view only if you also hold the public sector to the same standard. Public employee union dues have a self interest to their collection, distribution, and that self interest is to increase public employment, public wages, benefits, and enhance the lives of those who work in the public sector, and in the end, raw power. We are close to the tipping point at which time public sector employment can no longer support itself due to the regulatory and taxation schemes that are evident in the process of send jobs overseas and across borders, and greatly diminishing family wage private sector jobs. The parasite is consuming the host, instead of allowing the host of continue to feed it. One would hope that private side political money will continue to slow the onslaught of a total government take over of our economy. GM and Chrysler are direct evidence of the direction we are headed. Saving those two companies was not about the US Economy and saving it. It was about saving the union jobs, the union retirement and health benefit that was the downfall of both companies. Legacy costs of two thousand bucks a car over what imports have. If unions can break GM and Chrysler as they did, you can imagine what chances we have to survive as a Nation with a union government running union owned business. Just look at what Rep Barney Frank and his committee did to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with the egalitarian regulations to make them loan to people who could not pay, and would not pay, mortgages. We are in a recession due to that policy decision, and are keeping the same people to make an attempt at the salvage of our economy. If you can't salvage logs from a burned forest without great damage to the forest, how can you salvage our economy under the same type of principles without severe damage to our well being? The first time it was shame on Barney, et al. Now it is shame on us. If it takes corporate money to expose that to more people, we should be happy.
The belief in anthropogenic climate change is driven by a faith based quasi religious belief of many secular environmentalists that humans are screwing up the environment and they better damn well stop or we're all doomed. The climate has been changing constantly since the earth was formed without any input from humans. Life on earth never depended on a narrow range of CO2 and still doesn't. The earth has been a hell of a lot hotter and a hell of a lot colder than it is now many times before and sea level as been higher and lower by hundreds of feet many times before. And no matter how many followers believe in anthropogenic climate change, they can't change laws of physics and the geologic record and make it true.
Comment By horst, 8-30-09Presently we seem to be entering the hottest period since homo sapiens became the primary resident, however. Previous high water events were not threats to major residential centers.
The economy has become so central to RightWingCrazy homo sapiens' thinking it is no longer seen as critical that there be clean air, clean water, arable soil, or even dry land?
The difference between a good, functioning economy and a deflationary depression, is that a good economy has the wherewithal and finances to care for the environment, to feed and house its people, and the poorest of nations and peoples only can find money to buy guns, bullets and death.
Africa is about personal poverty and endless killing. It is about pirates on both coasts and failing agriculture. HIV, AIDS, child death, senseless murders by the thousands, no education and no opportunity. All of that dooms species, habitats, and climate.
In the meantime, Asia looks for profits, and although governments are not democratic, and human rights can be assailed at will, people don't die violently or by starvation at the same rates they do in Africa.
So Horst, you are able to point the finger of blame at CrazyRightWing homo sapiens, as you call them, but you fail to realize that having a working economy is most likely the best preventative to all the strife, environmental damage, and foibles of mankind. And where did George Soros get his money? From Gaia?
Jonathan's point here was he doesn't like the balance of money.
What I find most annoying is not the money, but the utter lack of disclosure as to its source, at least disclosure in any timely fashion. Where's SEIU's funding sourced? What is Soros spending? What is Big Pharma dumping in? And what do each of these seek or stand to lose in the outcome?
Money and politics is like elephants stomping on jello. It always squirts out someplace else. Never mind that depending on what you lose or gain, the "investment" is always relatively small. A million in lobbyists gets you a billion in pork? Deal! And that's where the real problem lies...all of us forking over the billions and we can't put our finger on who took it from us.
Re Dave's post above, my point is actually closer to his - it should be clear who is funding these campaigns, particularly because the ads are so deceitful. That applies to both sides. I wouldn't be any happier if there were an equal number of misleading ads supporting the positions that I happen to support.
Comment By bearbait, 8-30-09I agree. That, and how can we macerate the political ambitions of elected officials who roll over and vote for obnoxious programs that cost tens of millions, after getting a few thousand for their campaign coffers. The beneficiaries of the legislation gain millions, if not billions, in exchange for thousands. Cheap whores, those elected representatives. Total transparency on all thing financial for elected officials. Every penny in and out. Elected office and personal. You want the job, you get the scrutiny. Even your family.
These people work their entire lives in the public sector, for non profits, for meager salaries as interns, aides, asst. to the asst., and always end up in elected office as multi millionaires. Obama brags about his income, says he pays and is willing to pay, high taxes. Yeah! Because he knows there is a lot more money for him if the government is taking in more. Duh!! as the grandkid would say. I am tired of the entitled political class living well while voting for me to not. And then they leave, because they "are tired" or "burned out" or whatever. But with their unspent campaign money. Millions in unspent campaign money. For a soft landing in a law firm or a lobby firm. Pro quid pro. Both parties. Either side. It is all a very choreographed dance to mislead us, and make them happy and wealthy. And it works. Because we let it.
Economies are pretty subjective, barebate, and ours of recent decades has become reminiscent of aborigine potlatches held by tribes in northwestern new world.
Your argument is pretty typically Reaganite voodoo economics.
(And what I remember most about that was his classification of Catsup as a vegetable in school lunches...)
Bearbait...glad you mentioned Soros. On 8/18 the WSJ reported the U.S signed a "Letter of Commitment," to Petrobras Brasileiro SA, Brazil's state-owned oil company, giving them two billion dollars to develop their offshore drilling. At that time, Soros was the 3rd largest shareholder in PBS, selling on 8/21. No telling when he origionally invested but after the "Letter" was announced the stock was up another three points...the value of his investment when he sold $900m+. Just collecting election debts!
Comment By paul stephens, 9-01-09Climate change is one thing. Obviously, the science is obscure to most people - even after Al Gore's crusade, and a thousand "special issues" and news stories about it. The questions which remain unanswered are: (1) Is it too late? Maybe we've already passed the "tipping point." Hansen and other experts tell us there is still time to stop and reverse the melting of polar ice-caps, but the political possibility of doing so seems almost nil.
(2) Hansen and others say that the current bill passed by the House isn't even close to what is actually needed. We need a direct carbon tax sufficient to prevent almost any new investments in fossil fuel technology, and close down most coal plants, greatly reduce petroleum consumption, etc. within 10 years.
(3) The coal, oil, and nuclear lobbies have managed to "mark up" the bill to actually continue and expand many of the subsidies and tax breaks they already get! A totally bad bill, and "some environmental groups are supporting it" (with TV ads?) Don't waste your money.
A similar process is underway with "health insurance reform." Basically, the discussion and promised "solution" addresses virtually none of the problems, adds to present astronomical healthcare costs, and even forces people to buy the defective "insurance" scams which have destroyed our medical system.
"Health insurance" is a category mistake. There is no such thing. All that people are "insuring" is some sort of access to the system, and protecting their assets from confiscation by the bill collectors. The vast majority of health care dollars still come from taxes or out of pocket, and they are being squandered shamelessly on several different corporate rackets.
And it's not a question of "politicians standing up to them." Even Gov. Schweitzer, one of the few elected officials ever willing to do so, is constantly being beaten down by the Republicans and Baucus Machine. Now is the time to support him and a Single Payer system (or at least Medicare for All Who Want it). That would fix our present health-care mess virtually overnight. Break up the monopolies - where are the Free Market economists when we really need them?