September 17, 2010

They call it the "world's greatest democracy," but the Washington political system runs on huge sums of corporate cash, reports Elizabeth Schulte .

YOU'RE INVITED.

Where: La Quinta Resort in Sunny Palm Springs, Calif.

What: 2010 Bighorn Open Golf Tournament

Make checks payable to: Friends of John Boehner, $5,000 for PACs, $2,400 for individuals.

FOR HOUSE Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio, this is just one of dozens of golf excursions or cocktail parties or other lucrative fundraising events for congressional Republicans across the country.

According to a report in the New York Times, Boehner's political action committee--called the "Freedom Project"--has, in the last 18 months, spent at least $67,000 at the Ritz-Carlton Naples in Florida, $20,000 at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Gainesville, Va., and $29,000 at the Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio, all for fundraising events.

And when he's not on the green collecting the green, Boehner is meeting with industry lobbyists in Washington to find out what he can do for them. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, R.J. Reynolds, MillerCoors, UPS--they're all getting a little face time with Boehner, who is positioning himself to be House Speaker if the Republicans win a majority of representatives in the November elections.

In the run-up to the vote, Democrats are trying to make Boehner the bogeyman for the corrupting role that corporate money plays in political process. President Obama invoked his name nine times in a recent speech.

And Boehner certainly fits the bill. The Republican best known for handing out checks from tobacco lobbyists to fellow Republicans on the House floor in 1996 is still getting things done the old-fashioned way.

According to the twisted logic of Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele, Boehner's unbending fealty to Corporate America and Wall Street aren't weaknesses, but strong suits. "Like the American people, Boehner--a former small businessman--is most concerned right now about the issue of jobs," Steele said. "So he often speaks with employers, rather than, for example, labor unions or environmentalists who support job-killing policies."

The Republicans have big plans for November and are stepping up their fundraising. Republican consultant and White House puppet-master during the Bush era Karl Rove and former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie have gotten together to create "American Crossroads," a 527 group that has vowed to raise $52 million for House and Senate elections.

BUT DESPITE what Obama and the Democrats say, the Republicans don't have the you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours market cornered in Washington.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom Boehner hopes to replace in November, is no stranger to lobbyist money. For the 2009-10 election cycle, she has already collected $71,000 from lobbyists, according to the Center for Responsive Politics--more than Boehner has. And while labor unions are majority on her list, among the top 10 biggest political action committee contributors to Pelosi's political career is none other than JPMorgan Chase, with $113,200.

It's hardly unusual for the same bosses to back the Democrats and the Republicans at the same time. A June report from the Center for Public Integrity, "Who bankrolls Congress?" found that the "single top career backer" of Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, "was the same: telecom giant AT&T."

The report continued:

Between just these three politicians, AT&T's PACs contributed more than $525,000 in campaign cash. This bipartisan investment has paid dividends over the years as the trio has backed the firm's priorities on telecommunications legislation and played key roles in granting the company immunity for its participation in the George W. Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program. The financial services industry has also been a bipartisan player of significant heft: banking behemoth JPMorgan Chase's affiliated PACs appeared on the top 10 lists of three of the four leaders, rival Bank of America appears on two, and the industry's American Bankers Association also appears on two of the four lists. All four of the leaders backed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, the controversial government bailout of the financial sector.

They're all bought and paid for. During the worse economic recession in decades, Democratic and Republican politicians aren't letting things like record long-term unemployment and fast-rising poverty rates get in the way of letting the corporate bosses get away with murder--for a price.

All of this illustrates just how out of touch lawmakers are compared to the rest of the population. The rules don't apply to them. And when rules come along that might hinder making the big bucks, there are ways around them.

A recent report in the New York Times described charities, started by politicians and funded by corporations, that want to do business with those politicians. Reviewing federal tax records and House and Senate disclosure reports, the Times found at least two dozen charities that accepted millions in donations from corporations that included AT&T, Chevron, General Dynamics, Morgan Stanley and Eli Lilly. The Times reported:

Since 2009, businesses have sent lobbyists and executives to the plush Boulders resort in Scottsdale, Ariz., for a fundraiser for the scholarship fund of Representative Steve Buyer, Republican of Indiana; sponsored a skeet-shooting competition in Florida to help the favorite food bank of Representative Allen Boyd, Democrat of Florida; and subsidized a spa and speedway outing in Las Vegas to aid the charity of Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada.

Campaign finance rules put restrictions on the amounts that businesses can contribute to political campaigns. There aren't, however, restrictions on what they can donate to charities. So corporations let their charitable donations do the talking. And it's clear that they want something in return. According to the Times:

Tom Williams, a spokesman for Duke Energy, acknowledged that the company participates in lawmakers' charitable events in part to get access to them and push its agenda. "We are not apologetic about it at all: it is part of our overall effort to work with policymakers," he said. "Social settings are always a good way to get to know people."

Of course, many politicians don't have to reach out very far to get campaign money--because they are the money.

For instance, California's Republican candidate for governor Meg Whitman has already spend $119 million of her own fortune on the campaign--that beats out New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's personal campaign spending last year by $11 million.

According to Dave Levinthal, writing for the OpenSecrets blog, spending by Whitman, the former CEO of eBay, dwarfs anything imagined by federal candidates. The closest was Texas wing-nut independent Ross Perot, who spent "just" $63.5 million of his own money to run for president in 1992.

If Whitman wins, it will be a real "riches to riches" story, because she's already super-rich. But that's true of many people holding public office, particularly in Washington. A report released in November 2009 by the Center for Responsive Politics showed that 237 members of Congress were millionaires--about 44 percent of the federal government's legislative branch, compared to 1 percent of people in the U.S. as a whole.

And with all their ties to lobbyists and corporate power, most politicians find it easy to travel between the halls of government and the corporate boardroom during their lifetimes. Dick Cheney, for instance, transitioned seamlessly from George H.W. Bush's defense secretary, to the successful CEO of defense contractor Halliburton, and then back again to oversee Bush Jr.'s war on Iraq.

BUT EVEN when the politicians aren't wealthy themselves, they represent the wealthy first and foremost.

While every high school government class extols the virtues of our political system, and how our government and its elected officials stand separate and neutral from the demands of corporations and the ruling elite, the truth is they don't at all.

While they may differ over specific policies, the Democrats and Republicans agree on much more than they do not--because they both committed to maintaining the status quo. Karl Marx's collaborator Frederick Engels described the U.S. political system more than 100 years ago as:

two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt means and for the most corrupt ends--and the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians, who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality exploit and plunder it.

While there is an illusion that real democracy--of the people, by the people, for the people--is being served every time there is an election, the interests of those in power come first. The ruling class has two parties to represent it in the U.S. political system. Workers and the poor have none.

Our power is in exposing the lies they us tell about American democracy--a system rooted in money and influence--and building independent struggles and organizations that fight for our demands. As the late historian and activist Howard Zinn put it: