Get Money out of Politics

This is the fifth and final episode in our series on Actually Making America Great. We aren't Democrat or Republican, but we try to find some common ground as we analyze 5 policies that we believe would have the most impact on the lives of the average American. These are typically issues you won't see talked about on the news or by your Congresspeople, but they should. Our goal with this series is to make the case for these policies so that America can actually be Great. That only happens with your support. If you agree with this, please like, subscribe, and share this just about everywhere.

And if you really really liked it, call your Congressional representatives and make them get behind these five issues:

1. End the Drug War

2. End the Foreign Wars

3. Universal Healthcare

4. Hand the Economy Back to the People

5. Get Money Out of Politics

Thank you and hope you enjoy!

Thank you to Naser Al-Fawakhiri for his outstanding work in helping to research and craft the material you heard in this series.
Thank you to Oscar Gregg for crafting the wonderful music you hear for this intro and all the music for the intro and outro of this series. His new single Acrobats is out on all major platforms which you should all give a listen!
This podcast is associated with The New Millennia news organization. 

Transcript

Welcome to the fifth and final episode of our series called Actually Making America Great! Thank you so much for tuning in and I hope you enjoy listening to this as much as we enjoyed putting this series together. Before we begin, a few mentions need to be made. Thank you to Naser Al-Fawakhiri, who contributed greatly to the research and crafting of the content for these episodes you hear. Also my greatest appreciation needs to be given to my good friend Oscar Gregg, who crafted this intro music you’re hearing as well as the music at the end. His own single, Acrobats, which is absolutely phenomenal, is out everywhere which you should check out and will be linked in the podcast notes below. With that out of the way, our Final topic, Getting Money out of Politics to restore our democracy, is a final example of how the system isn’t set up for the average american to succeed. So without further adieu, let's get into it

For the last ten years, Congress’s approval rating has hovered around 20 percent, with few exceptions. That is to say that, even with Congressional elections every two years, the people we elect within our Democracy are overwhelmingly disliked, with only 20% percent or fewer taking their side. How can it be that in a democracy with only two parties, where it takes roughly 50% of the vote to win, that the approval rating still hovers at only 20%?

These must be terribly unlikeable people. Back in the 1800s, presidential election turnout was more than 80%. Now it's less than 50%. And it’s way lower in the midterm elections. And much lower in the primaries. People don’t like their options and don’t want to vote.

I’m not here to shame people who don’t vote. Our goal here is to understand why people don’t vote in a country that prides itself on being a democracy, and why our democratic institutions like Congress are so universally disliked. And the answer is a little shocking: it's because we aren’t a democracy.

WE ARE NOT A DEMOCRACY

A Princeton University study in 2014 came to the shocking conclusion that America is not a democracy, and hasn’t been one for decades. They looked at public policy questions between 1981 and 2002, in other words, they studied every question that came before Congress in those two decades and looked at how Congress voted. They then compared Congress’ vote with the opinions of the average American citizen, the economic elites, and interest groups. They found that public policy in those two decades correlated quite well with the interests of the monied elites and with the interests of strong lobbying groups. But there was near zero correlation between public policy and public opinion. If  60% of the American people were in favor of a policy, a huge majority, it had the same likelihood of passing Congress as something with only 20% popular approval. But if you were a billionaire, that policy would be twice as likely to pass. You and I had basically no say in whether or not Congress would approve or strike down a policy. But the rich and lobbyists did. In other words, we aren’t a democracy; we’re an oligarchy.

This tends to be a shocking revelation to most people. If you’ve listened to the previous four episodes, you shouldn’t be surprised at all. 26,000 Americans die every year because our government refuses to implement a basic policy of universal healthcare that nearly 60 other countries can afford, including small poor ones like Taiwan and Trinidad and Tobago. Why? Because Congress, both democrats and republicans take millions of dollars in campaign contributions from drug companies and health insurance companies, who vehemently oppose universal healthcare because it would cut into their profits. 

So our politicians have to explain to us: “Universal healthcare is too expensive. We have to spend over half of our discretionary budget on troop installations in 134 different countries, and 7 wars in countries that didn’t attack us, creating more terrorists than we had to begin with. The budget just HAS to be spent on a trillion dollar fighter jet that can’t even fly and on defense contracts where the money gets wasted on luxury hotels with no accountability. We can’t afford to cut any of that, so I’m sorry there’s no money for universal healthcare and I guess 26,000 Americans just have to die every year. Sorry” There’s frankly nothing you can do about it. The Democrats and Republicans get a huge amount of money from defense contractors and they need that money to get elected or re-elected. So 26,000 Americans die annually as we bomb 7 countries without the American people’s consent and our taxpayer dollars go towards endless wars and creating more terrorists.

Let’s take another example. “We just have to lock up more than a quarter of the world’s incarcerated population, with many of them being nonviolent drug offenders. If we decriminalized drugs that would cut into the profits of the alcohol and tobacco industries. We can’t create more competition for them. Besides, overcrowding our public prisons might be a huge waste of taxpayer dollars but it gives millions to the private prison industry which gets to profit off of our massive prison population. Who cares if a few black and brown people get locked up for nonviolent drug offenses? They never had any political power anyway.” That was always the goal. It should come as no surprise that Congress accepts millions in donations from the private prison industry, as well as the alcohol and tobacco industries, all of whom are very strongly against ending the Drug War.

So in summary, your taxpayer dollars go towards never-ending wars, planes that don’t fly, troop installations in 134 different countries for no reason, government waste, overcrowding prisons with innocent people, wasting resources on hounding people down for nonviolent drug use, and on bailing out corporations whenever the economy hits a road bump. Your taxpayer dollars do not go toward infrastructure, building new roads and schools, a universal basic income or subsidizing a higher minimum wage, or universal healthcare, or affordable housing to house our country’s homeless, or really anything that directly benefits you, or me.

And if there’s anything that does help the American people, like Social Security and Medicare, our politicians want to cut it, because it hurts the profits of their donors.

You shouldn’t be surprised at all that public policy has no correlation with public opinion. 70% of America wants universal healthcare. It won’t happen. 67% of the country wants treatment for drug addiction, not incarceration. The Drug War will still go on, and we will keep losing. Only 33% of the country supports staying in Iraq and Afghanistan. But we will continue to stay there, and create more terrorists. If it all seems like a waste of taxpayer dollars to you, you’re right. But your taxes make the people who donate to our politicians’ campaigns, rich. And that’s all that matters. It’s corruption. It’s not a democracy. It’s an oligarchy.

INSIDE THE CORRUPTION

So How does it really work? It’s really simple—in order to get elected in the United States, you need lots of money. You need to spend more than your opponent or you really have no chance of winning. In 91% of elections, the candidate that gets the most funding, wins. It doesn’t matter how popular you are or how good your ideas are. It’s about how much money you rake in from the top dollar donors.

And there aren’t really limits to how much money you can get. SuperPACs exist so that large corporations and extremely wealthy people can offer money to support a campaign while avoiding the few limits we have in place on campaign contributions. The more the big donors that like your policies, the more money you get, and there’s no limit.

This doesn’t prevent many donors from donating to both sides of the aisle. For example, health insurance companies know that no Democrat and no Republican would EVER pass universal healthcare, and so, just to make sure they pass legislation that favors them, they donate millions to both. That way, no matter who gets elected, their interests get represented. And, as the Princeton study says, their interests ALWAYS get represented.

So parties pick candidates that are good with the donors. It’s almost never someone *representative* of the American people, like you and me. It’s always some polished politician who won’t rock the boat and can smoothly land a bunch of money from the donors. The majority of Congress are millionaires. They won’t advocate policies that help you and me, unless, accidentally, those policies help win big donations or help their fellow millionaires. The candidates that win the primaries end up being the ones that best represent their donors, the rich, and since so few people, often other rich people, vote in the primaries, they get away with it. Once the actual election rolls around, both candidates have pretty low approval ratings, but, since they have the donors’ backing, whichever one of them has more money wins. The American people go home in disgust, and most of them don’t even vote.

So congratulations, a Republican or Democrat gets elected. They then offer government contracts to the defense contractors that elected them, and never hold them accountable for squandering billions of dollars, because that would put any future campaign contributions for their re-election at risk. They strike down any legislation that might import drugs from Canada at a cheaper cost, because the drug companies that got them elected really don’t want that. “sorry you can’t have affordable drugs.” Money goes toward the defense industry in the states on things like building planes that don’t fly and the politicians get to brag that they brought money back to their state in the form of military spending. The only cost was 26,000 American lives every year.

After the politicians do a good job representing their donors, they get rewarded with more funding on their re-election. Incumbents almost always win because they have a huge fundraising advantage. Remember, in 91% of elections, the candidate with the most funding wins. Then they go right back to doing it again. And they have no reason to listen to the American people because, well, the American people will elect them again, because name recognition, or the fact that no one ever primaries an incumbent. Or more than half the country will stay home and not vote because they don’t like their options. Bye bye democracy.

Eventually, the politician may want to retire. Luckily for them, they’ve served their donors well! They easily land hundreds of thousands of dollars in Wall Street speeches and, if they want a little extra cash, they go on to become lobbyists for the same donors that got them elected in the first place, so that the cycle continues and Congress only listens to lobbyists and rich donors, and not you and me. No wonder Congress has a 20% approval rating.

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

So How did our democracy get stolen? Well, a series of Supreme Court decisions. The most famous one is Citizens United. Without getting into the details, Citizens United allowed corporations to spend whatever they wanted on ads supporting or attacking any candidate at any time during the election, including just days before the election happens. The previous court wisdom was that “Corporate wealth can unfairly influence elections”, another word for money unfairly influencing elections is “corruption”; now that wasn’t true anymore. Corruption wasn’t a thing anymore. Or if it were, the first amendment suddenly guaranteed the right of corporations to use money as “speech”, even if that money unfairly influenced the election (*ahem* even if it was corrupt). The First Amendment protects the right of interest groups and corporations to rig the election. It’s as simple as that.

To illustrate how ridiculous it is that “money is speech”, a 30 second national TV ad costs AT LEAST 100,000 dollars. That’s more than the net worth of the average American household. That means, if you’re an interest group that can afford such an ad, your “speech” is worth more than the average American’s whole livelihood. Your ad represents so much speech, it can drown out an entire household. And that’s just one, thirty second TV ad.

But, to be completely fair, Citizens United was pretty late in the game. Previous court rulings had progressively undermined almost all restrictions on the monetary amount people could contribute to SuperPACs and other PACs, which meant that there were no holds barred if you really wanted to throw money at a candidate to get their ear. And trust me, if you give a candidate hundreds of thousands of dollars, helping them out-fundraise their opponent and giving them a 91% chance of winning, wouldn’t you expect them to listen to you first and foremost? And that’s how our democracy died.

BUT DOES THE CORRUPTION ACTUALLY HAPPEN?

Okay, let's take two potential examples. As conservatives know well, liberals are extremely likely to advocate for cuts to the military budget. If you listened to the segment on the War on Terrorism you might agree and if you don’t, I recommend listening again. And while the Democrats might *advocate* for this, will they do it?

In July , Democrats were calling for a 50% military budget cut. As happens in politics, the Republicans brought them down to a 10% cut and the budget went up for a vote in August. Now, did the Democrats, who had a majority, stand behind their position when it came down to the vote? Nope! They couldn’t even do a 10% cut, when they promised their base 50%. Why?

Well, the Democrats that opposed the measure all got an average of $200k in campaign contributions from the defense industry. They might talk a pretty game but when it comes to voting, they can’t go against their donors’ interests. That’s what I mean by a “strong correlation” between donor interests and Congressional votes. Doesn’t matter what their constituency actually wanted. If those same Democrats who took $200k in contributions had voted for the measure, the military budget would have been cut by 10%. It wasn’t cut because $200k is enough for the defense industry to buy a vote in Congress.

But Trump the billionaire is immune, right? No. Far from actually self-financing his campaigns he is quite dependent on big dollar donors. Take this particularly embarrassing story: Trump recently begged billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a famous Republican donor, to give more money to his campaign. In 2016, Adelson donated over $10 million to Trump’s SuperPACs (that’s enough to drown out 100 American households). This year he only gave $600,000 (or three Congressional votes if we want to make this a conversion factor). Why is Trump worried? He knows if he doesn’t have the support of Adelson, he’s going down in November. No Republican presidential candidate can win without Adelson. So naturally, they have to do his bidding. Welcome to the swamp, Trump. The one you promised to drain

ISN’T THIS THE ONLY WAY TO DO IT?

Absolutely not! The United States has an incredibly long election cycle. Candidates start building their presidential campaigns a year and a half in advance. Announcements typically run more than a year before election day. Then the campaigning begins in earnest, for almost a whole year.

In France, the average presidential campaign only lasts for 2 weeks. France may be smaller than the US but that doesn’t really fully explain the picture. Ads for various candidates might start a couple months in advance of the elections, but the official campaign, whose main role is organizing rallies and collecting donations, doesn’t start until 2 weeks before the election. In the US, it’s a year and a half of organizing rallies and collecting donations, with heavy, heavy emphasis on the latter. In 2015, the Clinton campaign’s second quarter fundraising topped $45 million. They had only been holding rallies for two weeks. Their main efforts weren’t organizing rallies, it was getting $45 million. In France, the election would have ended right there. Instead ours goes on, and on, and finally Clinton raised $1 billion for herself and the Democratic party. That wasn’t small dollar donations from you and me. That was corporations buying votes.

Also in France, no corporations are allowed to donate to candidates. Only political groups. And corporations can’t donate to those political groups. Directly or indirectly, it is illegal for corporations to finance any political candidate in France. To make up for the fact that candidates can’t get corporate donations, they have to get the support of individuals. Except, individual contributions are capped at roughly $5000 (4,600 euros). That’s all you can do to support a candidate financially. $5000.

In the US, you can give:

• $2,800* to each candidate or candidate committee per election;
• $5,000 to each political action committee (PAC)1;
• a combined total of $10,000 to state, district & local party committees per calendar year;
• $35,500* to national party committees per calendar year;
• $106,500* per account per year to additional national party committee accounts2.

That’s 160 thousand dollars. And that’s not even a limit! There are dozens of PACs that support any one candidate in an election! But $160k is already 32 times what is allowed in France. And naturally, France doesn’t have the problem where Parliamentary votes have no correlation with popular opinion. That’s because putting a low limit on campaign contributions, and shutting out corporate interests, levels the playing field. Corporations are not people. They do not have a vote in the election. So they cannot sway the outcome of the election in France. Most people can’t afford to contribute anywhere near $160 thousand, and so capping it at $5000 means that no one rich person can unfairly get the ear of a candidate and make them do their bidding. $5000 is pretty small compared to how much you need to run a campaign. If you called up your representative and said “Hey I gave you $5000 you need to vote this way”, they’d scoff! They wouldn’t even know your name. But if you’re Sheldon Adelson and gave $10 million, they come back to you begging for more and will do whatever you tell them in order to get it. Could it be that if your campaign is financed by the people, you’d actually have to do what the people want you to do, and not just what the elites tell you to do?

RESTORING DEMOCRACY

So how do we restore democracy? It’s a tough question.

The Supreme Court has, over and over again, struck down limitations on campaign contributions as protecting “free speech”, since money is speech. And since corporations are “people”, they are allowed to flood elections with money because “people” all have the right to free speech. All of this is pretty bad argumentation, but it’s been upheld and there’s now a long precedent for it. To you and me it may seem obvious that a corporation is not a person, and since they can’t vote, they certainly can’t sway the outcome of an election with money. And they don’t intrinsically have the right to free speech. And it should be fairly obvious that no one person should be able to donate millions of dollars to a candidate and then expect favors from them. That’s called corruption and the constitution allows us to pass laws to prevent corruption. Corruption is not protected under the First Amendment.

For those who love protecting the First Amendment at all costs, consider the following: if money truly is free speech, then a whole bunch of laws exist on the books that are unconstitutional. Banning prostitution is unconstitutional; a pimp is only using his speech to say that he would like to have intercourse with the prostitute. His speech should be protected. All drug purchases are legal. The drug buyer is only using his “speech” to tell the dealer that these drugs are really good. Any law that would prevent him from using his speech in this way is unconstitutional. Hiring a hitman is 100% legal. I am only using my speech to tell the hitman “I really wish this person were dead”. I am not responsible for the hitman killing the person, just like a billionaire donor is not responsible if a politician, after receiving millions from them, votes in favor of that donor’s interests. Which in the case of healthcare, once again leads to 26,000 Americans dead each year.  So technically, The purchase of a hit man within politics is completely constitutional and in accordance with the First Amendment.

Do you see how ridiculous this is? We shot democracy in the head and “money is speech” was the hitman and now we have a system where billionaires buy votes and corporations can get Congress to ignore the will of their constituencies for $200k. Our democracy died. The Constitution is in tatters. The very thing our Founding Fathers were proud of, a democracy of, by and for the people, perished. It is now an oligarchy of, by and for the rich. Congress is full of millionaires, who get campaign contributions from billionaires and corporations, to pass legislation that benefits billionaires and corporations, regardless of what the people want.

The Supreme Court case could be argued to overturn this laughable perversion of the Constitution. But that would be difficult. Congress is constitutionally allowed to pass legislation to force the Court to apply a certain standard to campaign finance cases which might force them to overturn these rulings. But why would Congress do that? They all benefit from this system! Half of them are millionaires, and many will leave office to take up a lucrative lobbyist job for a huge salary, but only if they serve their donors well.

The simple fact is, neither the Supreme Court nor Congress will do anything to end the corruption. We need a constitutional amendment that cuts out corporate and PAC donations and puts a cap on individual donations to parties and candidates. That’s what WolfPAC is for. Their amendment has passed in 5 states (ON SCREEN: Vermont, California, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Illinois), and needs to win 29 more. You can help save our democracy.

There are lives at stake. Without universal healthcare, 26,000 Americans die every year. With our War on Terrorism, billions of dollars get wasted and more terrorists get created. With the Drug War, lives get ruined and we foot the bill of a huge prison population. Our infrastructure is literally crumbling and gets a grade of D+. The US is not great right now. We need to make it great, and to get that we need Congress to actually be responsive to the people. That means calling their offices every day to demand action on these issues. That means protests, everywhere, demanding our voices, not the donors’ voices, be heard. That means taking back our democracy.

But more importantly, we’re supposed to be a representative democracy. Representative means we are governed by people like you and me, not millionaires. It means more average citizens have to run for office. And even if you don’t win at first, keep trying. Cori Bush just defeated a 10-term incumbent in the Democratic primary in Missouri. But first, she lost in 2018. She kept trying, and went out to make her case to the American people that she was going to actually represent them, unlike incumbent Lacy Clay who had no idea what their life was like. Bush lived in poverty for years, and largely has lived the life of a regular American, with all the hardships that brings. She’s a true representative. It is possible to win and beat the big incumbents with more fundraising. It’s just a huge, huge hurdle to cross. We need to take back our democracy. That would actually make America great again.

This is the fifth and final episode of our series called Actually Making America Great. We aren't Democrat or Republican, but we try to find some common ground as we analyze 5 policies that we believe would have the most impact on the lives of the average American. These are typically issues you won't see talked about on the news or by your Congresspeople, but they should.

Our goal with this series is to make the case for these policies so that America can actually be Great. That only happens with your support. If you agree with this, please like, subscribe and share this video just about everywhere. And if you really really liked it, call your Congressional representatives and make them get behind these five issues:

1. End the Drug War

2. End the Foreign Wars

3. Universal Healthcare

4. An Economy for America

5. Get Money Out of Politics 

Thank you.

A note for those of you who are currently listening and have listened to all 5 episodes, our sincerest thanks goes out to you. The hours upon hours researching and crafting the content for these episodes as well as even more hours recording and editing this together will all have been worth it if you walked away from this series learning something new, and feel empowered to fight to make our country a better place. If you may, please leave a rating in Apple Podcasts and give your thoughts! Now go out into the world and Actually Make America Great. Thank You.