The trend continues for America to be controlled more and more by big business—who want everything to go according to what is in their interests—meaning their profits.
For a long time this was accomplished by lobbyists. Many industries have their trade associations who maintain offices in Washington because their chief activity is to marshal lobbyists who try to persuade Congressmen and Senators to vote their way. They do this with persuasion, which is completely legal; but also with favors to Congressmen like gifts, trips, and entertainment, which is not legal. Or with promising campaign contributions, which has become legal since the recent Supreme Court decision known as Citizens United.
Here is an article on how industry influence has prevailed over the interests of the public in the case of the Toxic Substances Control Act.
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/10/13/reform-of-toxic-chemicals-law-collapses-as-industry-flexes-its-m/
Here is a bit of the history of efforts to rein in industry influence on federal governmental regulation and law-making. Some progress to reduce the influence of corporate contributions to politicians was made by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, often referred to as the McCain–Feingold Act.
McCain-Feingold was upheld by the courts in a 2003 case known as McConnell v. Federal Elections Commission.
A later ruling (2007), known as Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc., created a very big exemption—but the consequences of this supposedly are still up in the air.
Most recently (2010), Citizens United partly overturned McConnell. Now corporate contributions can once again have a great influence on our elections. The party or candidate who has the most money can buy the most TV commercials. That means more persuasion, which is likely to be effective with voters. And those corporate contributions go much more heavily to Republican candidates. (Maybe now some is going to Tea Party candidates, too; I don't have information on that.) Thus corporate money is achieving a more "business-friendly" America and will continue the process of turning our country toward the Right that got such a big boost when the likes of Scalia, Roberts, and Alito gained seats on the Supreme Court.
Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein
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Actually, the recent Supreme Court decision made the field a little more level. This year corporations are contributing nearly as much to political campaigns as unions. It would be nice to see more disclosure on both sides, however.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Public Citizen corporate offshoring of American jobs to low-wage countries has become one of the defining issues of the 2010 elections. Public Citizen suggests a few possibilities for who and what is to blame for our nations weak economy: 86% of Americans believe offshoring by US companies directly contributes to our sluggish economy, 7 out of 10 people say free trade agreements have cost jobs at home, 3/4 of Americans consider corporate profit-taking a factor in economic downturn. For more information on this matter visit Public Citizen's Trade Data Center online. Corporate power and big business is of course not something cofined to our borders anymore than economic woes which we've all been hearing about around the world. Corporations are global and so are corporate associated problems. Stiffer guidelines are needed in our country and elsewhere to protect us from corporate encroachment, worker abuse, environmental desecration, economic instability,and conflict of interest in public policy. Big business throwing big money into political races is by no means a problem in America only. Corporations aim to master the world and will unless stopped by concerned citizens who are up to speed with corporate greed and have the good sense to see beyond themselves to what is at stake for the things and people who matter most to them. In other words what kind of world do we want and intend to leave behind?
ReplyDeleteI thought I might also add that other dangers posed by corporate America in addition to imposed control would include manipulation of our society and shaping of our varied cultures. Recently Target and Best Buy as many know gave large sums of money to Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmers who openly supports favoritism to corporate America but also is open in his hate of gays. Here in Indy a cookie monster has emerged on the downtown scene who isn't sweet on gay pride and has an obvious aversion to putting rainbow colored sprinkles on special orders for gay business. Some people around here find the whole business funny but I have a particular problem with a business that claims to provide what is sweet but couldn't be further from that word when it comes to promoting their product at least to the whole community. From what I've heard about it what was being offered for digestion there was just more faith and values. For whatever it's worth faith and family values combined with a discriminatory twist don't go down well and most certainly aren't pleasing to everyones palate. I've been kind of wishing that a sister would emerge and visit the cookie monster, forgetting the rainbow sprinkles, and flinging heaps of sweet fairy dust on him in hopes of changing his monster image to one more sweet on serving the whole community. Come to think of it we might try the same thing on all republimonsters out there who seem to forget to mask themselves periodically and save their tricks and juvenile scare tactics for Halloween.
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