Taking
on Big Money (Got
Change?)
by Ashish Vaidya
It’s
no secret that big money plays a huge role in American politics.
Elections are largely determined by the less than 0.1 percent
of Americans who donate thousands of dollars to candidates for
national and statewide office. By the end of the third quarter
of 2003, President Bush had amassed a campaign war chest of $70
million, putting him on track to break his own record for the
most money raised by a presidential candidate in history.
Much of this money comes from wealthy donors who attend $2,000-a-plate
fundraisers for Bush-Cheney ‘04. California Governor-elect
Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had pledged not to take money from
“big, powerful special interests” such as labor unions
and Indian gambling tribes, had no problem taking hundreds of
thousands of dollars from corporate contributors such as Emulex
and Castle & Cooke.
Big money is not limited to Republicans. In 2000, Goldman Sachs
Chairman Jon Corzine decided to spend $80 million of his own money
to get himself elected as a Democrat to New Jersey’s Senate
seat. Senator John Edwards (D-NC), who has championed a Patients’
Bill of Rights, which would allow patients to sue their insurance
companies for neglect, has raised millions of dollars from trial
lawyers for his presidential campaign. The result of all this
monetary influence is a modern oligarchy, a political system controlled
by a few rich fat cats, in which the vast majority of the people
have little or no power.
Yes, we all have the right to vote. But what good is this right
if we have no influence over which candidates flood the airwaves?
Most people don’t have the time to do intensive research
on candidates and issues and only know what they see on the news
or commercials.
Some apologists for corporate lobbyists argue that money has always
influenced politics in this country and that politics is actually
much “cleaner” than it was in the 19th century days
of Tammany Hall, but this argument is a fallacy. Just because
a wrong has existed for hundreds of years doesn’t make it
any less wrong.
One of the most egregious examples of corporate control of public
policy is the contract awarded to Kellog, Brown & Root (KBR),
a subsidiary of the oil megacorporation Halliburton, in which
Vice President Dick Cheney served as CEO from 1995 to 2000. During
the war in Iraq, KBR recieved a $7 billion no-bid contract for
rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure. No other company got so
much as a glance from the Bush administration. It is worth noting
that a congressional report released in September concluded that,
by federal ethics standards, Cheney still has financial interests
in Halliburton. I’m not trying to say that those of us who
would like to see change should just give up and go home. I’m
simply reminding all the progressive-minded people out there what
we are up against.
Our biggest problem in this struggle is ignorance. The more ignorant
people are, the better for Bush & Co. For example, when making
the case for the war in Iraq last year, members of the Bush administration
often used Saddam Hussein’s name and 9/11 in the same sentence,
despite the fact that there was no evidence whatsoever of any
link between the two. As a result, 69% of Americans believed in
March that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and the
terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.The answer to this problem
is simple. People need to educate themselves.
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