We’ll take your support. But not your money?
Yesterday in Chicago our Democratic Presidential hopefuls spoke to 17,000 rank-and-file union members. Seeking support for their campaigns, all candidates vowed to protect workers, while they clashed over foreign policy and campaign finance.
Now, here’s what I don’t get. Most, if not all, unions employ lobbyists to assist in the promotion and passage of labor-friendly legislation. Two candidates, Senator Barack Obama and Senator John Edwards have sworn off lobbyist contributions. So, does this mean union members contributions will be returned by the campaigns?
I expect the Obama and Edwards supporters will jump on me about this but I am totally serious in my question. And, please note that I have not yet selected a candidate to support – and believe that any of the Democratic candidates would make outstanding Presidents and will be proud to support whomever prevails in the primary.
17 Responses to Riddle me this.
Help Daniel
Edwards doesn’t need union lobbyist money because he’s out with the rank-and-file on strikes and such. Union members aren’t exactly what I’d call Washington-connected.
Actually, dealing with the lobbyist meme, here’s a topic for discussion: Is there a good way to balance wealth and numbers in the system? In other words, in the lobbyist-based field, it makes it easier to say “well, one group is for this and another is against.” Now, if you take that layer of abstraction away and you see “well, one wealthy family in Colorado is for this and 50,000 citizens are against,” does this help reframe things for you at all?
I don’t necessarily think politicians are too dumb to open the box and see who is involved in what special interest group. But it also makes it a lot easier for them to defend unpopular choices by saying, “Well, I had this group on this side and this group on the other, so I compromised.”
I should also note that there seems to be a lot of human psychology that is susceptible to this false balance, and is played to a *lot* in the mainstream media hunting for a story of conflict.
See global warming, intelligent design, and other issues where people on the wrong side should be laughed off the stage preemptively when it comes to the relative weights of their claims.
I don’t know about all the readers out there, but I certainly don’t have time to keep up with all the legislation that effects me, my business, my community, and my family. I count on and support a number of organizations that employ lobbyists to “have my back” on some of these things. The ACLU, Planned Parenthood, People for the American Way, among others.
The problem is not with the lobbyists, in my opinion. The problem is with elected officials who allow themselves to be influenced. I believe that when we pronounce all lobbyists “bad” we are saying more about our confidence in our elected officials than about our distaste for lobbyists.
The way I understand it, Senator Edwards would not return rank and file labor member contributions any more than he would return contributions from individuals who are members of other important groups such as the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, etc. However, he is not taking contributions from any group’s lobbyists or PACS. Keep in mind that Labor is outspent by corporate America 18 to 1. By taking this stand, Sen. Edwards is leveling the playing field. Otherwise, you have to pick and choose from among thousands and thousands of people and pacs-an impossible task. Just this week, it was Sen. Edwards who is on the picket line while the company owner unfurls a Clinton banner. I am proud to be a Labor supporter and this is one of the reasons I also support Sen. Edwards.
Another missive from the Lobbyist Anti-Defamation League.
As always, the answer is simple: if you like that a few multimillionaires have as many lobbyists as tens of millions of working Americans, and if you like the one-dollar, one-vote philosophy it represents, then please, continue to support Hillary et. al. for their defense of it, and continue to attack John Edwards and Barack Obama for their opposition to it.
But at least be honest with your support. Say you prefer the one-dollar, one-vote philosophy embodied by the current system of lobbyists and PACs. Don’t pretend that you’re defending everday Americans when you defend that system.
Really, the fact that millions of everyday Americans can scrape together a few pennies each and compete with one – one! – of the wealthy does not mean that the lobbyist they hire, or the PAC they create, to tip the scale ever so slightly in their favor is an endorsement of the system itself.
It’s not. And I say this as one of those Americans.
And I’m glad that there are a few politicians, at least, who seem to see it the same way I do.
Lobbyists can’t give any more money than anyone else to a campaign. Their affiliation with an organization is just a convenient way to organize the information. Candidates, like all other humans, need to compartmentalize things in order to make sense of them.
People want to have THEIR OWN point of view heard, but so does everybody else. A candidate or elected official would have to organize the input they receive anyway, and lobbyists and PACs and any other group that hopes to express itself politically are just doing that organizing for them.
I think that those who oppose lobbyists in principle and PACs as well are painting with way too broad a brush.
Perhaps it’s about competition. Some organizations get, well, organized, and therefore are able to increase their influence. Other groups can’t get as well organized and therefore want to restrain the ability of the other groups. But as I said before, candidates and officials can’t really respond effectively to thousands of individual voices. It’s too chaotic. Some sort of organizing principle is necessary, and lobbyists and PACs are a pretty simple and obvious way to do that. If a person doesn’t have money, they can still volunteer, and they could consider volunteering for the Sierra Club just as well as for a candidate. If the problem is the money in politics, then we should talk about that, but that does not automatically require prevention of groups organizing themselves to deliver their message.
I’m not sure where that 18 to 1 number comes from. I can go to open secrets and look at the top 20 PACs and about half of them are labor. What am I missing?
Also, Hillary Clinton, the darling of the business world, gets 99% of her donations from individuals. How can that other 1% need to be “balanced” even further?
Heh. Stewart picked up something I was a little too slow to:
So, according to Hillary, lobbyists represent real people with real issues, and their money helps support her while supporting them.
By the way, she doesn’t actually listen to them when she takes their blood money.
I just can’t process inconsistancy that rapidly, so good on you, Jon.
What should be more interesting to brainstorm, though, is how to deal with the whole messy network of people that have infinitely more to offer than normal folks do. We can’t give an official a lifetime of conservative welfare inside think tanks, lobby groups, rolodex corporate gigs or any of this.
We have to assent to voting these people in for the perks to be available, and we have to do it for long enough for these people’s seniority to be high enough that they are worth owning.
So, the question always begged is – how do we keep the system from putting these chumps in office in the first place?
Odin. I resent my money being called “blood money”. I support The ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and other lobbying organizations.
And, if you’re going to refer to a Jon Stewart “something” please provide a link.
Thanks.
The link part’s going to be kind of hard because of Comedy Central’s player, but it’s currently in their Stewart videos section under “recent headlines.”
It’s also on the Kos, though. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/8/13816/16667
Okay, so blood money went a little far. It was kind of flavoring the “But I don’t listen to them anyway” part of the paraphrase.
In general, though, I think taking on this whole “pay to play” concept is a good move.
Also, I think Drew makes a good point – just because we *can* hire people to represent our interests (wait, weren’t these supposed to be the Congresspeople in the first place?) doesn’t mean that is a good system, or even that it is built in our favor.
Democracy will ultimately be served by construct that emphasize bodies rather than dollars.
The problem is the influence of money – and that problem includes how money is collected – PACs – and how it is spent – lobbyists.
And yes, it is about competition. Working, working-class single parents are competing with wealthy, leisure-class CEOs. And losing.
Now, personally, I don’t want to “prevent” those CEOs from “organizing themselves” to “deliver their message,” but I would prefer it if those working, working-class single parents, and others similarly situated, had the same power, proportionate to their number, as the CEOs do.
They don’t, and they won’t, so long as money is the organizing principle behind our democracy.
Edwards is out with the rank-and-file for ten minute photo opps while having done nothing to stop NC’s right-to-work law.
I’m beginning to get the idea that “evil corporate DC lobbyists” are the Dem equivalent of the Repugs.. 911..boogie man
Just how freaking hard is it to say, “I’ll review every contribution made by a DC lobbyist on it’s organization’s issues, legistaive priorites and advantages; if they are consistant with mine I’ll accept the money”… Do we need everything always black and white, all or nothing, good vs evil?
How. Freaking. Hard
making it black and white plays with emotion.
think about what sounds stronger: Ill take no money from PACs or I’ll review every contribution made by a DC lobbyist on it’s organization’s issues, legistaive priorites and advantages; if they are consistant with mine I’ll accept the money
To quote Micheal Douglas in The American President..
“Everybody knows American isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship.”
~snip~
“We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious men to solve them. And whatever your articular problem is,
friend, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: Making you afraid of it and telling you who’s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle-aged, middle-class, middle-
income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family and American
values and personal character.”
Still rings true after 12 years.
Actually, I think it is that money is to Democrats as sex is to Republicans, if you want to be totally flip. Of course, I doubt I’ll ever be able to sleep around enough to change national policy, but there was a point there somewhere.
I’m not sure how we are comparing the built-up infrastructure of lobbying, which after all adds another layer of abstraction and removal between pols and the open public, and blaming the nation’s problems on … sleeping with a lobbyist? (Actually, I can’t remember if they slept together or not by the end of the film.)
But why dollar democracy? I understand the special interest groups (protecting my Constitution is *quite* a special interest, I would say) have an important purpose in representation. They allow us to splinter down into groups much finer than a single, geographic representative will allow. But why can’t the groups simply wield their member lists as pursuasion enough?
One final thing – new ethics rules keep lobbyists from buying so much as a hamburger for a targeted pol. And somehow handing over up to $2000 directly is okay?
I think we may be losing the forest for the trees here, folks. I personally don’t mind the $2000 contributions so much as I am appalled at the sex-tourism trips to Saipan disguised as “fact-finding missions”, the “nonprofit organizations” that conveniently hire legislators’ spouses for $200K a year, the huge conglomerates that offer Board seats to retiring legislators, etc.
No, those pretty much all suck too. We’ve got to start somewhere, though. I mean, heck, the $2000 is already seeming to be shaking the very foundation of political discourse. I’d hate to see what the other changes do.
The most egregious is that “set for life” opportunity that presents itself if you sell out to the big people. I mean check out Rumsfeld and Cheney – they didn’t even have to be good at their jobs, just keep the regulators at bay and bring in the sweet insider contracts. You can take Duke Cunningham for an example of not even having to wait … just “borrow” the rich friend’s toys for a while.
We’ll never be able to ban this kind of behavior, though (unfortunately, it’s pretty un-American to regulate who you socialize with). The best we could hope for is super sunshine there. Make the Congressionals submit to data mining and having to wear a wire 24 / 7. I mean, we’re all being watched for our security right now – why do the cameras only point one way?
At least when they bleat “my private life is none of your business,” we can reply “damn skippy, same as mine.”