PRIVATE MONEY MUST BE REMOVED FROM US DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS

 

The Libertarian leaning… Senator Rand Paul

 

.....and Senator Ted Cruz

 

Because of the Citizens-United decision, the Koch Bros. plan to spend $900 million to buy the 2016 election.

OK everybody, let’s get one thing straight.  In the 80’s and 90’s, due to the conservatives in Congress, the government went on a financial deregulation spree and the results are quite clear. Further future deregulation of private industry, as Republicans like the senate presidential candidates Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky suggest, is not the answer, but just more of the problem.

A democratic government is supposed to represent its people, not just the few with enough money that can pay, to play.

And it’s time for the average American to understand that the conservatives are totally wrong.  There is no such thing as their notion pure capitalism.  And in order to tame today’s crony-capitalism, capitalism itself must be tamed, not set free.

In today’s world, corporations rule everything.  In America, as regulations have become laxer over these past few decades, the corporations have grown even larger, especially in the finance industry.  When the largest corporations began merging after the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, they became the “too-big-to-fail” behemoth’s that we have today.

The solution provided by the so called  libertarian leaning individuals like Paul and Cruz is based on their false notion of what capitalism is today. They say that government is always the problem, and that it is the state’s fault for all of today’s crony-capitalism.

 

But it is not the state who has corrupted the corporations.  It’s the corporations who have corrupted the state.

First, one must understand where these bogus Libertarians are coming from.  It’s actually from a past concept that goes all the way back to the days of Adam Smith, which would make it around 1776.  (How’s that for their being modern and up to date?) 

The original idea of Libertarianism goes back to the original idea of how the then unfettered free market operated.  That idea back then was that, “when every person in the economy works to satisfy their own personal interests, the interests of all of society as a whole will be satisfied”.  This made total sense back in those pre-industrialized days. 

 

The overall concept was that in each town or community, with a large variety of different artisans, they would all be producing their various different goods.  Then these artisans would purchase goods from the other artisan’s in the town. Therefore, all of the artisans would be operating in their own self-interest, but they would still end up contributing to the material good of the whole community.  Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?  But as I said, that was before the industrialization age.  Unfortunately, this concept is still the foundation of today’s Libertarians like Cruz and Paul.

Today, many on the far-right have not given up on the romantic idea of those millions of producers that we now call “small business owners”.  These are not “artisans”, that are  supposedly working to satisfy their own self-interest in that false landscape of countless other producers.  These Libertarians apparently still think we are all still living in a global village of artisans.  That’s not even close to today’s reality.

Many economists refer to this thinking as believing in a child's “lemonade-stand capitalism”.  The idea is that in a completely free market society, the economy will operate as if millions of small producers in perfect competition would compete like a child’s lemonade stand.  The concept is, that as long as a person works hard and competes fairly, they will succeed; if they are lazy or corrupt, they will eventually fail.

And this is the foundation of why the far-right always wants to deregulate everything and everybody.

The reality is, the more “free” the market becomes, the more the competition becomes rigged and even corrupt.

In today’s capitalist system, the main goal is to grow indefinitely. In theory, competition is the way for driving innovation and efficiency. But in the real world, as businesses grow into large corporations and gain larger shares of the market, the smaller producers will no longer be able to compete.  The results are that the small producers must either go to work for the competition or they will have to leave the industry.  Doesn’t exactly fit the Libertarian’s concept of how the world is supposed to work, is it?

Today we see this at work in the major companies such as Walmart, Target and Amazon, who have managed to stack the deck overwhelmingly in their own favor.  This allows them to drive innumerable smaller competitors in towns across America out of business.  ( I was so amazed as we drove across middle-America some years ago where the small town’s main streets were full of deserted shops which had been replaced by big-box Walmart’s and Target’s just outside each rural town.)

This has now gotten even worse with the US Supreme Court’s passing of the Citizens-United case, which both Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have defended.  This decision has allowed major corporations to contribute unlimited funds to political action committees.  Since that case was settled, right-wing groups like the Koch Brothers have become deeply involved in political campaigns.  In fact, the Koch Brothers are planning to spend just under one billion dollars on the 2016 elections.  That money is not just for the Republicans in the presidential race, but will also go for Republican US Senate and House races, as well as GOP state governorships.

As stated, today the game is totally rigged. If a politician attempts to do their job and refuses to court the wealthy and the corporations, they will most likely lose their up-coming elections.  During the 2008 election, eight donors gave more than $1 million to groups like Super Political Action Committees. Two years after the Citizens-United court decision, the number increased to 126, million dollar donors for the 2012 election.

For the future, America must get private money out of national and state politics.  There must be a level playing field, where the politicians can honestly say what they believe without having to worry about whether or not they will be able to get the big campaign donations.

Unfortunately, I don’t see that removal of private money happening while I am still alive on this earth.

Copyright  G.Ater  2015