A one dollar-one vote world
Your editorial of Nov. 17 opines that Occupy Wall Street has made its point and that the encampments themselves are now the issue. It then recommends that the occupiers work for change by supporting candidates and voting. OK, but voting ain’t what it used to be.
Regardless of vote counts, elected officials still will be obligated to the special interests that fund their campaigns.
Voters can be manipulated by constant streams of ads, whether truthful or not, bought by the ultra-rich. This was how private wealth turned North Carolina from blue to red as documented by Jean Mayer in the New Yorker, Oct. 10, 2011.
The revolving door between government and industry is largely beyond voter influence and even knowledge. It is evident that reporter Ian Urbana took years to unravel how the natural gas industry worked its way on the EPA for the purpose of unregulated hydrofracking. His reports in the March New York Times issues are worth reading.
True reformers are driven out of government. Recall the case of Elizabeth Warren. Additionally, Donald Berwick, M.D., the top Medicare official, has resigned per the Washington Post and New York Times (11/24). Like Warren in the financial world, Berwick was working to correct fundamental obstacles to equitable health care delivery. Both were opposed by the GOP while not effectively supported by the Democrats.
It is worth noting the health insurance and banking industries are the two largest campaign contributors in D.C. per Yves Smith, financial analyst interviewed on “Newshour” Nov. 24. These industries like things the way they are.
Lawrence Lessig, Harvard law professor, is the most recent scholar to develop this theme in his 2011 book, “Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress — and a Plan to Stop It.”
So while the message of the 99 percent has been heard, the profound corruption of government by money is still not recognized. Tinkering with votes is ineffective if the root problem is not challenged. If Occupy Wall Street can drive those last points home and the movement decides a constant, physical presence is necessary, then looking at unsightly tents is a trivial concern. Corruption is uglier still.
Mary M. Zhu
Davis
Short URL: http://www.davisenterprise.com/?p=109811
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on Dec 1 2011.
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Really important points. Thanks Mary.
“… voting ain’t what it used to be. Regardless of vote counts, elected officials still will be obligated to the special interests that fund their campaigns.”
Much of the power in the American political system, going back to our first elections and ever since, has been in the hands of those who fund political campaigns. Ms. Zhu would appear to have been born yesterday, if she were to think this is anything new.
A great example of campaign funders controlling political outcomes is how the public employee unions punished our own state senator, Lois Wolk, when in 2009 she stood up to them and voted against the bankruptcy bill written by the firefighters (and officially co-authored by Mariko Yamada). Sen. Wolk understood that what the firefighters were trying to do–make municipal bankruptcy impossibly expensive and time-consuming–was bad public policy. Wolk knew that the bankruptcy process at times was helpful to local governments which had mounting debts and bad labor deals (themselves usually the result of the public employee unions buying influence). So in the local government committee, where Wolk, who had served a long time on the Davis City Council and the Yolo County Board of Supervisors, was the chairwoman, she joined two Republicans and voted no on the firefighters’ union’s bankruptcy bill. For a time, that killed their lousy legislation.
What did the firefighters do in response? They threatened the supposed leader of the state senate, Darrell Steinberg. They told him he had to get rid of Wolk. They knew they had the power because the public employee unions fund all the Democratic campaigns.
And what did Sen Steinberg do? He not only removed Wolk as the chair of the local government committee; he removed her from all but one of her committee assignments, including local government.
And what do we have today? The firefighters successfully passed their terrible bankruptcy bill through the Assembly, through the Senate and got Jerry Brown, who was also funded by the public employee unions, to sign that bill.
But for the power of the unions in financing the campaigns of all Democrats, our cities and counties would have a reasonable option in a crisis to declare Chapter 9 bankruptcy. That option is no longer viable. It will mean that when cities like Davis go bust, the firefighters will still get their $3.5 million (in NPV) retirement packages. But the poor who depend on city services will go without.
http://www.loansafe.org/jerry-brown-signs-bankruptcy-bill-into-law
One thing I need to add about when Wolk was removed from the local government committee: Darrell Steinberg’s office put out a big lie to cover it up. They had loyal Democratic news reporters falsely report that Wolk was taken off of her committee assignments, including local government, because she and Steinberg disagreed over the Delta water bill and the possible peripheral canal.
It’s laughable that anyone fell for this ruse, because when Steinberg took away all of Lois’s power, he left her on the Natural Resources and Water committee, where she supposedly disagreed with him.
Here is an example of one of those bogus stories which Steinberg put out to take reporters off of the scent that it was the firefighters who were fighting to snuff out Wolk from the local government committee:
http://sacramentofordemocracy.org/node/34722
One person=one vote
Why what you think is any more important than my views that you want encampments to try and change political outcomes?