This is an age when corporations and very wealthy individuals can fund PACs (political action committees), Super PACs, and other types of entities that can indirectly support and fund candidates and even remain anonymous while doing so.
These funders generally support Republican candidates because the funders who are individuals have chiefly the objective of keeping taxes on themselves low. If they are corporations they may be concerned with corporate taxes but are perhaps more concerned with avoiding government regulation.
Thus both wealthy individuals and corporations mainly support Republican candidates--89% of corporate campaign spending goes to Republicans—because Republicans support these goals of theirs, and Republican-controlled houses of Congress will vote their way.
Pretty much as an aside, I want to get in the idea that political advertising—that is, campaign ads—make the implicit assertion that government regulations kill jobs. At the very least that is an exaggeration and overgeneralization and oversimplification. But then, whoever said that slogans—of any kind—contain qualifications or any nuances whatsoever?
But it's also alarming that these same monied political interests have been successfully influencing people's beliefs about what should be a matter of science—that is, the reality of global warming and the degree to which it is caused by human actions.
A report by the American Academy of Science said that 98 to 99% of scientists believe that global warming is real and is at least partly caused by human actions such as the burning of fossil fuels. The exact percentage of global warming which is the result of human action is difficult to determine, so there is room for disagreement about that, even among the scientists who accept both the reality of global warming and its causation by increased concentrations of so-called greenhouse gases, most notably carbon dioxide (CO2).
The anti–global warming forces muster scientists who support their position. Sometimes these scientists are of suspect objectivity because they receive funding from the people whose ideas they support. Or they are not experts in the field of climate. They have even taken data and manipulated it. (Example: You can take 10-year periods and show that global temperatures were actually slightly cooler at the end of the period than at the beginning. But if you look at a graph of the longer-term trend, the upward trend in global temperature is unmistakable.)
Their advertising slogans try to convince people that carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere is not harmful. Carbon dioxide is what plants breathe in. (True.) It is "plant food." Okay, you could say that, too; but that does not in any way refute the fact that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. (Another greenhouse gas is methane, which is added to our atmosphere in considerable quantities by our raising animals for food. To put it in everyday terms, methane is cow farts.) Greenhouse gases--just to remind you--trap solar radiation that hits the earth and turn it to heat.
The effect of the millions of dollars which have been spent on a public disinformation campaign is that they have convinced nearly half the American population that global warming is not real and is not a problem and is not anything we need to take action on.
Who is doing this, and why? Naturally we have to look for motivation, for self-interest. For one, the Koch brothers, who are or should be infamous to many Americans as they are huge donors to various right-wing causes. These two hugely wealthy brothers own very extensive oil and gas interests. Therefore, they want you and me to go on burning fossil fuels—it's money in their pockets—rather than "going green" and developing more wind and solar energy.
And corporate interests don't want to see any regulations on their factories' emissions of CO2. The House passed a plan known as "cap and trade" which would have the effect of a net reduction in CO2 emissions from industrial sources. But these interests, alarmed at their defeat in the House, have ensured that this bill will not pass in the Senate.
Update, November 1, 2012
Here is another example of money spent to influence public opinion--called public relations--that also has been successful yet detrimental to the general welfare. The sugar industry spent a lot of money to counteract a bad image that sugar had been getting--particularly its role in causing obesity and chronic diseases such as diabetes. Here is a quotation from an article in Mother Jones:
The [sugar] industry's PR campaign corresponded roughly with a significant rise in Americans' consumption of 'caloric sweeteners,' including table sugar (sucrose) and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). This increase was accompanied, in turn, by a surge in the chronic diseases increasingly linked to sugar. Since 1970, obesity rates in the United States have more than doubled, while the incidence of diabetes has more than tripled.Here is a link to the full article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/01/big-sugars-sweet-little-l_n_2056731.html
Of course free speech allows lobbying and public relations efforts; and hopefully they are not all evil. But, where they are, the only antidote is public education and public information, and these are usually not supported by the same kind of money.
So in both these cases--climate change and the harmfulness of sugar--the equation is, money to spend (or money spent) = persuasion (public relations) = change in public opinion. In this age of media, persuasion is a vast and very influential industry.
© 2012 by Richard Stein
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