In defense of campaign finance reform.

In defense of  campaign finance reform.

So this article is in response to: http://red-party.com/beyond-money-in-politics/ by a friend of mine. First I want you to read this:

“I’m not saying campaign finance or lobbying reform is bad or that it wouldn’t help us at all, but the transformative effects touted by organizations like Move to Amend and Represent.Us is totally unfounded. It starts from a false premise – that if we restrict big corporations’ ability to buy elections or legally bribe elected officials, we’ll open up space for politicians to be more representative to their voters. But the people who would be doing the regulating are the very same people who serve the ruling class of this country – the capitalist class, the 1%. This is why the Federal Elections Commission is such a toothless body. Our national politics were dominated by corporate interests before the 2010 Citizens United ruling. With strict financing and lobbying laws, these interests would turn their attention to court challenges, watering down enforcement or simply flouting the law altogether. Then there are the other, more traditional mechanisms of ruling class control.

They would still have their parties, the Democrats and Republicans. They would still have control over the economy, able to threaten capital flight in the face of any reforms that threaten their interests. Entire countries have been brought to their knees this way.

And of course we would still have a situation where ninety percent of American media is owned by just six companies – GE, Disney, News Corp of Fox News fame, Viacom, Time-Warner (think CNN) and CBS. With or without clean election reform, that’s a powerful arsenal. And then there is the most entrenched obstacle of all: the U.S. Constitution.”

In effect what the author is saying here is correct, the power of the media, CEO’s and the rest of the powerful bourgeoisie is immense and that getting campaign finance reform won’t do a whole lot. Not on it’s own. The article then launches into a myriad of fixes that would fix this situation or at least do so in part, which is really good and I encourage you to read the rest of the article as it does have some quite good points. However these are all things that today need to pass the political process. One part I want to focus in on is this:

“There is no silver bullet here. Single-issue campaigns aren’t fit for purpose. They limit themselves to one core reform in the name of being broad enough to attract as many people as possible in the short term, but this robs them of the perspective needed to actually develop and sustain a mass movement. We need a holistic approach – anything less is lying to ourselves, lying to those we say we want to empower. In the Marxist tradition we call this a democratic-republican program.”

But recalling back to the previous Quote about the power of the media, we know that the power of the media is strong. It is in fact to the level of brain washing, it can drown out a message to the point that creating that holistic approach is impossible.

But lets assume for a minute that it is not. Let us assume for a minute that roughly half of the largest demographic of americans are socialists (this is actually roughly true) and Americans are ready to accept socialism…. Now what? Well Marxism is an economic system but the people lack the first tool at the negotiation table, capital and money, to buy out their mastes. We’ve long relied on government to regulate business capital but as we’ve already established that’s near impossible. So what then? I have already spoken on the nature of leverage once before but for those that have not read it I will briefly quote the relavant parts.

“It is easy to understand why the democrats haven been unable to affect change, they are the reserve army of the upper class. what is less easy to understand, however, is the inability of the people and their champions to affect any change. To understand this one must first understand the nature of people and change. To get someone to do something requires leverage. This can be societal pressure, threat of force, money, position, or any number of things. The important part is that the party you wish to persuade either has something to gain by obeying you, or lose in not.

The Inability of the people to affect change, stems from the loss of their leverage. They have lost their first form of leverage in the vote, due in part to the wealthy using their monetary leverage to influence the process. The proletariat simply cannot keep up with the bourgeoisie in disposable income per capita and therefore the bourgeoisie win. Now, I know you know this and it's been said a hundred times before. The real question is why do we continue to play these games, to fight on an uneven playing field against a team that uses dirty tricks on their homefield? Remember gaining votes with money is the bread and butter of CEO's and boardmembers, it's what they do everyday. We aren't just fighting an opponent that has more resources but more experience using those resources. So why play their game? Why do we submit to playing the game on their terms?”

You see in order to change anything, we are going to need leverage. We don’t have money, we have the vote and force. So we start by getting the vote to mean something again. I’m not saying it is the end all be all but that it is the first step and an very high hurdle to clear in a battle that will last a long, long time. It is a crack in the foundations of the system that lets future victories happen. We get this passed and someday we will be able to pass laws that clean up campaign oversight, and maybe someday end the electoral college after that. Starting with small things and using a workers movement to keep people engaged in the political process and informed. But you start that by making them feel their vote counts again. People are not going to be inclined to give a shit if they think it won’t matter, but give them a reason to believe that and you get them involved again, which starts a snowball effect.

But without this, without this critical cornerstone, everything we can possibly do will be blackballed and shutdown by the media, the government and economic power the bourgeoisie hold. “but wait” I hear you say “the bourgeoisie will use the other powers to block any change even after this is done!”

Yes, yes they will, or they will try. But the American people woken from their hopelessness won’t give two shits. First of all with campaign finance reform they cannot stop the influx of non approved ideas. They have no legal way of doing so, if the money is good, and being from the government, it will be. So they will HAVE to let Stewart Alexander and Alan Moore onto the ballot box, they will HAVE to let them on the air at least in commercials, and given equal screen time and budgets, who wins the guy lying through his teeth or the guy who’s in it for the people? The guy who’s for the people. Sure they can refuse to interview them but even bernies getting press time because he’s no longer ignorable because he has the fame and money to challenge them.

“but this process is fragile and will take many many years” I hear you say. Yes. Yes it will, The alternative is what? I’ve searched for one but all I can find is picking up a rifle and sticking it to the bourgeoisie, which frankly doesn’t win you a lot of friends. But hey, force has been used to great effect before in history, just keep in mind it’s been used to great detriment on behalf of the instigators as well. 

The Quiet Coup

"Thank a soldier" An utterly ridiculous statement if ever there was one. At least, it is today. We are told "thank a soldier, because they protect our freedoms", and there was a time when that was true. 75 years ago our nation fought a war to save mankind from the clutches of madmen hellbent on world domination and near enslavement of all mankind. The story of the next 70 years, however, is one that, should they look at it objectively, will turn the stomach of anyone with a thinking brain. For the sons and daughters of the ones that saved the world from tyranny, are the very ones that goose stepped us quietly back into it.




This story, like many, begins with a prologue, Ours takes place in may of 1886 when a court reporter slipped in a few innocuous lines as a headnote to the decision of a Santa Clara Count V. Southern Pacific Railroad, they read as such:




"One of the points made and discussed at length in the brief of counsel for defendants in error was that 'corporations are persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.' Before argument, Mr. Chief Justice Waite said: The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."


Poof! with the wave of his hand, a lowly court reporter had effectively signed into law that corporations were people, and thus the stage was set for our tale of betrayal and corruption.


Little was done with this decison at first, but in 1971 a man by the name of Lewis Powell wrote a memo entitled "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System.", to a man named Richard Nixon, prior to his acceptance of his nomination as associate justice of the supreme court. In this memo powell wrote "The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism came from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians." In the memorandum, Powell advocated "constant surveillance" of textbook and television content, as well as a purge of left-wing elements. He named consumer advocate Ralph Nader as the chief antagonist of American business.


Notably this memo foreshadowed the decision of "First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti" in which it was ruled that corporations have a First Amendment right to make contributions to ballot initiative campaigns.


And thus the first salvo had been fired in the greatest coup in world history. Nobody really paid any attention to it, at least not your average person. Your neighbor probably didn't even know, it passed under the radar of the military, it didn't even enter into the lively chit chat at the barbers or coffee house. But to corporations and the wealthy it was like a dog whistle. suddenly the flood gates had begun to crack and being the clever shrewd businessmen they were they seized the opportunity to succeed where their fathers had failed in the 1930s with the business plot (but that's a tale for another time).


What followed from there was a mockery of democracy, bribery that was once, underhanded, illegal and done under the table, was now open and legal. where once corporations had to obey the EPA and financial regulations, they now had the power to, In the befitting words of emperor palpatine, "make it legal"




In effect what this meant was that, on a national scale at least, you could not expect to get elected without big businesses blessing. Thus we got Reagon, Bush, and most telling, the center right democrat, Bill Clinton. Reagan and bush were par for the course as far as republicans go, corrupt, business friendly, didn't give two shits about the little guy. But the proverbial canary in the coal mine was Bill clinton. Here's a man who claims to be a progressive, who claims to be a liberal and yet he does something no thinking progressive in their right minds would do, something that would in 8 years collapse the economy, he repeals glass-Stegall, or important parts of it at least. This repeal opened the flood gates to the speculative housing derivatives trading that led to the 2008 financial meltdown. Yes Bush gets blamed a lot for that, but it was mostly Clintons doing.




Following Glass-Stegall's repeal we also had a slew of legal bribery fueled supreme court decisions further eliminating the barrier between money and politics. Today people are starting to notice. But the damage has been done, far too little was done when we could have done something that now the power we have has been virtually eliminated, barring a miracle. At this point you are not a viable candidate unless you kiss big businesses ring. And it all began back in 1978, in the quietest, and most effective coup the world has ever known. Slowly by big businesses hand democracy was slain, and your neighbors went on with their lives, the military stood silent, and we all just sat in our lay-z-boy's watching Seinfeld and eating potato chips.




There are many lies we tell ourselves to make us believe this hasn't happened, that this is okay. The most damnable however are the ones that see the writing on the wall, that pretend they can get ahead of the curve, that their children will be spared the horrors that this path will lead to if only they do so much. They are all wrong, the means by which one becomes successful are becoming exponentially harder. The well off today those in the top brackets have a chance of sending their kids to a decent future, but those not in the ruling class have only misery and failure to look forward to as the economy collapses under the immense weight of the rich. Because in their haste the rich have set up a system by which they reap more and more from the poor, and while they are clever in not taking too much as to rouse the peoples anger, inevitably one will over reach, someone will fuck up, and all the gains of the middle class will be wiped from the face of the earth as if it never existed, and the lies we tell ourselves will become apparent, undeniable, and the consequences unavoidable.




I cannot say i will take pity on any of you, or even myself, when the time comes. After all, we all stood by and did nothing, and I am as guilty of that as any of you.