Got Any Change?

[skyhook77sfg]

In a big money town, 'change you can believe in'

ended up being just small change


It was just a lie.

For all the many good and earnest efforts of the Obama administration in its two-and-a-half years in office, there is one area in which the president has not only let the country down, he has embarrassed himself and his party.

He vowed to keep the corrupting influence of money and special interests out of politics. He campaigned on the idea. When he took office, he made a great show of banning lobbyists from appointed offices. It was a silly idea. Many of the most qualified people available for government jobs had to register as lobbyists. What's more, the people that hired the lobbyists, were not precluded from the jobs even though they were actually the ones directing lobbying efforts and footing the bill for them. Further, the approach rewarded people who probably should have registered as lobbyists but didn't. Finally, lawyers who represented and advised clients and industries were not precluded or bankers that financed them were not barred although they were every bit as compromised by association with special interests as were the people performing the narrowly defined functions that fell under the lobbying rubric. Overall, the approach did not work out very well and gradually the administration has let former lobbyists start to slip through the cracks.

Worse, the president has let monied interests infect his administration in an even more insidious way. First, having raised more money than any presidential candidate in history, he played a role in actually enhancing what was already the most corrupting influence in American politics -- the dependence of office holders on the rich. While the president often spoke of the small dollar donations to his campaign, you don't raise three quarters of a billion dollars without large aggregations of bigger checks.

Those checks, by definition can only come from the affluent. What's more, because campaign finance laws limit the amount individuals or families can donate, the big amounts must come from "bundlers" who work to get clusters of givers together and can deliver money in big chunks to the campaign. Naturally, those bundlers often turn to networks of colleagues at work or individuals they meet in the course of their business lives or who live in their affluent neighborhoods. Not surprisingly, these people represent only a thin slice of America's population and often they represent heavy concentrations of people from individual companies or industries.

No candidate in American history ever raised more money from Wall Street and we have seen where that got us -- toothless financial reforms, practically no prosecutions, programs that enabled Wall Street to recover while Main Street continued to suffer and, two years after a financial crisis in which America was threatened by institutions that were too big to fail, more too big to fail institutions than ever before.

What happens to these bundlers? Are they prohibited from serving because they are the direct points of contact with the money networks that have such a potential to be corrupting? Er … well … no, no not at all.

A terrific story at Politico, "Top Barack Obama donors net government jobs," pulls back the curtain on just how grievously the president has let down those of us who truly hoped he would bring change to a system in which money is the solvent that is literally eating away at American democracy. It should be required reading by anyone who cares about how this country works … or why it doesn't.

The most striking statistic in the story: Of those, the big dollar bundlers, folks who raised $500,000 or more, 80 percent ended up in senior government positions. Here's what Politico themselves might call the "money paragraph:"

More than two years after Obama took office vowing to banish "special interests" from his administration, nearly 200 of his biggest donors have landed plum government jobs and advisory posts, won federal contracts worth millions of dollars for their business interests or attended numerous elite White House meetings and social events …

It's appalling. The story reports that about a third of all bundlers or their spouses joined the administration in some role. Bundlers and their families account for more than 3,000 White House meetings and visits. The secret to getting a top job? Simple: raise more money. Only 20 percent of those who raise $50,000 got in the administration. But half of those who raise $200,000 got in. And you saw the number for the real big fish … or rather, fishermen.

The foreign policy impact? Of the one third of Obama ambassadorial appointments who have been political selections as opposed to career foreign service employees, 24 have been bundlers. The article notes that this record has disappointed the American Foreign Service Association. It should absolutely infuriate any Americans who think that our foreign policy should not be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

Of course, some will say, this is the way it has always been. There's thin comfort in that especially as it all takes place in an environment in which everything from the Citizens United Supreme Court decision to the costs of running a campaign is actually giving money a bigger and bigger role in U.S. politics -- even as recent events from the financial crises to the health care debate have demonstrated how all that money is perverting our political and regulatory processes.

Go read the Politico article. It demonstrates that "change you can believe in" at least in this important respect turned out to be very small change indeed in a big money world.


http://rothkopf.foreignpolicy.com/posts ... all_change

[skyhook77sfg]

not even a peep

not even from MR PEE

oh well gotta go

gotta date with an angel

au revoir muchachos.

[Mr. Perfect]

What do you want me to say?

I told you so?

Ok, I told you so.

[AzariLoveIran]

.

People who say

" He vowed to keep the corrupting influence of money and special interests out of politics "

do not understand America

" influence of money and special interests " is not corruption .. not in America

" influence of money and special interests " is essence of America

America is " influence of money and special interests "

" influence of money and special interests " is the main pillar of America

Americans know this and want this

thinking is

the big shots (with money), they smarter (than us), they know what they doin, they deserve to rule us

and

" special interest " are, in reality, the Americans .. we the people

So

folks

relax

the big guys running the show, and, we the people have our foot in the door step .. all OK

so

why bickering ?

In fairness,

Notion, Joe (6 pack) should have influence of what's cookin or even run the show, stupid .. not in America .. maybe in Switzerland, but not in America

politicians sayin they will fight " influence of money and special interests " lying .. foolin Joe



.

[skyhook77sfg]

the equal -opportunity-doctrine now requires an examination of a parallel thesis just published

for urgent contemplation by the other wing of the corporate money as free speech party





So on taxes today, a conservative should ask: what have we learned about the impact of lower rates over the last two decades - now the lowest as a percentage of GDP since the 1950s? In healthcare, what have we learned about the largely private system the GOP wants to preserve? A conservative would look at home and abroad for empirical answers, acknowledging no ultimate solution but the need for constant reform because society is always changing. On gay rights, a classic social change, he'd ask what a society should do in integrating the emergence of so many openly gay people, couples and families. On foreign policy, he'd move on a case by case basis, not by way of a "doctrine."

On these terms, today's GOP could not be less conservative. I'd insist it's less conservative than Obama. It does not present reality-based reform for emergent problems. It simply reiterates dogma and ruthlessly polices dissent or debate.

So no tax increases are allowed, period. Why? Because they "kill jobs". So why do we have record unemployment after a period of unprecedentedly low taxation? No answer. If lower taxes have led to stagnation, the answer must always be: lower taxes some more. Why not end them all together?

On gays, we hear actually nothing about gays, our existence or our lives. We hear a tautological irrelevance: "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman." What do they propose positively for this emergent social reality that men like Burke or Lincoln or Disraeli would have seen as an opportunity for conservative reform? Nothing. No civil unions, no civil marriage, no military service ... just nothing, but a piece of doctrine: gay is bad. On healthcare, have you yet heard a single practical proposal to help the uninsured? Or assist seniors with health needs in ways that don't break the bank? Nope. But in a society that won't let people die on the street, these are real and tough problems we cannot just wish away. The Ryan plan solves the problem the way leftists used to: by a radical ideological shift. It just cuts off aid at a certain level and says government is not responsible for the rest. This will never get past the public and would never actually cut costs. It simply places an arbitrary marker on when the government tells you you are on your own. Again, this works as dogma but not as politics.

Fareed is particularly sharp on this:

When considering health care, for example, Republicans confidently assert that their ideas will lower costs, when we simply do not have much evidence for this. What we do know is that of the world's richest countries, the U.S. has by far the greatest involvement of free markets and the private sector in health care. It also consumes the largest share of GDP, with no significant gains in health on any measurable outcome. We need more market mechanisms to cut medical costs, but Republicans don't bother to study existing health care systems anywhere else in the world. They resemble the old Marxists, who refused to look around at actual experience. "I know it works in practice," the old saw goes, "but does it work in theory?"

Back in the 1980s, conservatism was a thrilling empirical, reality-based challenge to overweening government power and omniscient liberal utopianism. Today, alas, it has become a victim of its own success, reliving past glories rather than tackling current problems. It is part secular dogma - no taxes, no debt, more war - and part religious dogma - no Muslims need apply; amend the federal constitution to keep gays in their place; no abortions even for rape and incest; more settlements on the West Bank to prepare for the End-Times. Although there were inklings back then - Stockman was right; Iran-Contra should have been a warning - they were still balanced by empiricism. Reagan raised taxes, withdrew from Lebanon, hated war, and tried to abolish all nuclear weapons on earth. The first Bush was an under-rated deficit-cutter and diplomat, a legacy doubly squandered by his son.

Now it's Levin-land: either total freedom or complete slavery and a rhetorical war based entirely on that binary ideological spectrum. In other words, ideological performance art: brain-dead, unaware of history, uninterested in policy detail, bored by empiricism, motivated primarily by sophistry, Manicheanism, and factional hatred. This is not without exceptions. Douthat, Brooks, Zakaria, Bacevich, Bartlett, Frum, Manzi, Salam, Lomborg, Mac Donald, et al. are still thinking. It's just that many of them are now deemed - absurdly - to be liberals. And none will have or does have any real impact on the base of the party.

Why? Because these thinkers are prepared to believe that the conservatism of the 1980s might have run its course, that new times might require new ideas, that we have been wrong in some areas, while right in others, that it is not a crime to reverse course when events encourage it, that we have to live in the world as it is, rather than as we would like it to be, that we can learn from mistakes and base policy on shifting reality.

In contrast, today's unconservative "conservatism" is a movement held together by cultural resentment and xenophobic panic. Until it wrests free of this trap, it deserves its Palinesque fate: an ideology wrapped in anachronism, and laced with venom.

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com ... -true.html

[Tinker]