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While Americans appear to be heavily divided on political issues, there is one area where there is consensus. Nearly 85 percent of the citizenry agree that there is too much money infused into politics, and two-thirds agree that the rich have too much influence. Not only do 77 percent of the populace feel campaign spending by candidates must be limited, but also spending by so-called “unaffiliated” groups. Moreover, 85 percent of Americans feel the way the electoral system is funded must be either fundamentally changed or completely scrapped and rebuilt. [2]

With the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission decision by the U.S. Supreme court, the concept that political contributions constitute “free speech” was made the law of the land, opening the floodgates for billionaires’ money to flow freely into the electoral process. With no restrictions upon unaffiliated or independent groups, billionaires simply hide behind these organizations and pump money into the campaign coffers of their chosen candidates by coercing their wealthy friends to donate. Of course, regulations preclude consulting or coordinating with the candidate being supported, but even if we are so naive as to believe such regulations are observed, the candidates running for office undoubtedly feel pressured to please their deep-pocketed donors. [3]

In the current election cycle, for example, billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros and billionaire media moguls Haim and Cheryl Saban are backing candidate Hillary Clinton. Using the preferred method of giving from the donor’s personal foundation to the candidate’s personal foundation, the Sabans have contributed an estimated $10 to $25 million to the Clinton campaign. [4] For his part, Soros is behind a number of political action committees, including Priorities USA Action, Ready PAC and American Bridge 21st Century, which lists 546 individual contributors alone and has generated some $9 million since January 2015. [5] Soros himself has contributed over $8 million in so-called “soft” money to these three PACs. [6]

Donors to political campaigns buy “access” to the candidate with their contributions, with access most likely directly proportional to the dollar amount given. A 2015 study concluded that citizens who donated to a politician’s campaign had a threefold better chance of scheduling a meeting with that person over someone who was merely a constituent. [7] But statistics show that only one-tenth of one percent of Americans donate to federal campaigns, [8] and from among this one-tenth of one percent, 158 families, either directly or through organizations they control, so far have contributed $176 million to the 2016 American campaign cycle. [9] In fact, one individual, Sheldon Adelson, donated $98 million during the 2012 election cycle, and this figure does not include “dark money” given to groups not required to disclose donors. [10] For the other 99.8 percent of the population who are unable to afford lavish political campaign contributions access to elected officials effectively is denied as is any meaningful voice during the campaigns.

Yet more than mere access, the huge political donations buy influence. This stems from two separate factors. Firstly, there is a correlation between wealth, access and influence. Simply put, the wealthier the individual, the more easily he/she has access to legislators and the more likely it is that the person’s opinion will be considered. Larry Bartels, Professor of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, writes, “In almost every instance, senators appear to be considerably more responsive to the opinions of affluent constituents than to the opinions of middle-class constituents, while the opinions of constituents in the bottom third of the income distribution have no apparent statistical effect on their senators’ roll call votes.” [11]

Secondly, the Citizens United decision made unconstitutional virtually all attempts at regulating campaign financing except outright quid pro quo exchanges of money for policy consideration. This has opened up new possibilities for influence-buying by the rich due to the U.S. Supreme Court’s apparent sentiment that “independent campaign expenditures, where there is no coordination between the donors and the candidate, cannot corrupt elected officials.” Oddly enough, the Supreme Court is at odds with itself, for in another case, Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., Inc., the majority ruled that the same independent campaign expenditures could indeed influence a judge. Pointing out the obvious, Nicholas Almendares of Tulane Law School and Catherine Hafer of New York University write, “Citizens United also seems at odds with a large body of social science research demonstrating that policymakers are sensitive to political spending and their responsiveness to it that highlights the subtle effects of money in politics.” [12]

With their aggregate wealth and constitutional personhood, corporations, through lobbying activities, threatening and engaging in litigation, buying media air time, making charitable donations and political campaign contributions, have capabilities to influence policy that parallels those of wealthy individuals. As a result, outright corruption in the corporate world appears to be rare, not because of its nonexistence; rather, simply because such brute force tactics as bribes and graft are seldom needed to achieve the desired policy results from politicians and governmental agencies. Sanford C. Gordon, also of New York University, and Catherine Hafer explain that “if political expenditures can be used to extract concessions from an agency, then firms have less reason to pursue these more drastic measures, making blatant quid pro quos rare.” [13] Lynda W. Powell of the University of Rochester has put it succinctly, “The myriad ways that donations can influence policy seldom leave an observable data trail.” [14]

In contrast to wealthy donors, ordinary citizens attempting to engage in the political process are deliberately excluded. Contacting U.S. politicians by e-mail or phone usually results in responses that are nothing but sound bites or well-rehearsed scripts. Over the last 10 years that I have been an activist, I cannot recall receiving a single thoughtful reply from a U.S. politician.

As a case in point, after the barbaric beheading by Saudi Arabia of Ayatollah Nimr and 46 others, I wrote to several U.S. officials urging an appropriate diplomatic response. Almost two months later, I received a reply from one congresswoman, not on the matter of Saudi atrocities, but rather on the issue of gun control, suggesting that the staffer assigned to reply did not even bother to read, or, worse yet, did not comprehend, what I had written about this barbarism involving the so-called U.S. ally. Moreover, the composer of the boilerplate reply failed to proofread it judging by the salutation, which read, “Dear Barbaric Saudi Executions Weiler.” [15]

Realizing the futility of pursuing the issue given that I was not a campaign contributor to this politician, I nevertheless decided to request an explanation of the bizarre salutation as well as to point out the obvious oversight in the subject matter of the response. I explained that, while I certainly support legislation to make gun ownership at least as difficult and complicated as obtaining health care in this allegedly civilized country, my original message concerned beheadings in Saudi Arabia and not gun control. Specifically, I asked the congresswoman how can the U.S. continue to support such a backward, barbaric regime, which not only carries out mass beheadings, but also contributes to the destabilization of the entire Middle East by its aggressions in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain as well as its support for Wahhabi terrorist organizations such as ISIL (ISIS or DAESH) and Jabhat al-Nusra? [16]

A few days later, I received another prefab e-mail from the same U.S. representative, [17] this time, on the subject of the Equal Protection in Travel Act of 2016, H.R. 4380, [18] which, if passed, would negate some restrictions imposed on travelers to Iran, Iraq, Sudan or Syria by the recently enacted Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015. [19] Likewise, I certainly would support removal of such restrictions imposed by the U.S. on travel to Iran and other countries; however, it would seem pointless to pursue this matter with the congresswoman any further in hopes of obtaining a rational, reasoned and coherent response.

Simply put, the political system in the United States is broken beyond repair. I cannot imagine how anything short of an armed uprising could cause the fundamental changes needed to purge the American system of the corrupting influence of aggregate wealth.

Endnotes

[1] Jack Rasmus, “Money and the 2016 US Presidential Elections: The $10 Billion Contest,” Truthout, March 5, 2016, accessed March 7, 2016, http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/35071-money-and-the-2016-us-presidential-elections-the-10-billion-contest.

[2] “Americans’ Views on Money in Politics,” New York Times/CBS News Poll, June 2, 2015, accessed March 7, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/02/us/politics/money-in-politics-poll.html.

[3] John Sides, Daron Shaw, Matt Grossmann and Keena Lipsitz, Campaigns and Elections (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2011), accessed March 7, 2016, http://www.wwnorton.com/college/polisci/campaignsandelections/ch/04/outline.aspx.

[4] Jack Rasmus, ibid.

[5] “American Bridge 21st Century: Individuals Who Gave To This Committee,” Federal Election Commission, accessed March 7, 2016, http://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/com_ind/C00492140/.

[6] “Contributions to Super PACs, Hybrid PACs and Historical Soft Money Party Accounts,” Federal Election Commission, accessed March 7, 2016, http://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/qind/.

[7] John Wihbey, “Money and access to meetings with politicians: New evidence from a field experiment,” Journalist’s Resource, June 2, 2015, accessed March 7, 2016, http://journalistsresource.org/studies/politics/finance-lobbying/money-access-meetings-politicians-new-evidence-field-experiment.

[8] “Money in politics: the sad state of affairs,” Green Party website, accessed March 8, 2016, http://www.gp.org/fix_our_broken_system.

[9] Nicholas Confessore, Sarah Cohen and Karen Yourish, “The Families Funding the 2016 Presidential Election,” New York Times, October 15, 2015, accessed March 8, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/11/us/politics/2016-presidential-election-super-pac-donors.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0.

[10] Theodoric Meyer, “How Much Did Sheldon Adelson Really Spend on Campaign 2012?” ProPublica, December 20, 2012, accessed March 8, 2016, https://www.propublica.org/article/how-much-did-sheldon-adelson-really-spend-on-campaign-2012.

[11] Larry M. Bartels, “Economic Inequality and Political Representation,” Princeton University, August 2005, accessed March 7, 2016, https://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/economic.pdf.

[12] Nicholas Almendares and Catherine Hafer, “Beyond Citizens United,” Fordham Law Review, Forthcoming, accessed March 7, 2016, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2701402.

[13] Sanford C. Gordon and Catherine Hafer, “Flexing Muscle: Corporate Political Expenditures as Signals to the Bureaucracy,” American Political Science Review, 99-2 (2005): 247, accessed March 7, 2016, http://www.nyu.edu/projects/gordon/flexingmuscle.pdf.

[14] Lynda Powell, “The Influence of Campaign Contributions on Legislative Policy,” The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics, 11- 3 (2013):8, accessed March 7, 2016, http://www.cfinst.org/pdf/papers/02_Powell_Influence.pdf.

[15] Michelle Lujan Grisham, e-mail message to author, February 25, 2016.

[16] Yuram Abdullah Weiler, e-mail message to Arturo Lemos, February 25, 2016.

[17] Michelle Lujan Grisham, e-mail message to author, March 2, 2016.

[18] “Text of the Equal Protection in Travel Act of 2016,” Govtrack.us website, accessed March 3, 2016, https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/hr4380/text.

[19] “United States Begins Implementation of Changes to the Visa Waiver Program,” U.S. Department of State, January 21, 2016, accessed March 3, 2016, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2016/01/251577.htm.