MoneyOut/VotersIn # > $
“I’m against very wealthy people attempting to or influencing elections. Sheldon Adelson, Las Vegas casino billionaire,
The problem: Elections favor donors over voters, capital over labor. Despite a momentary SCOTUS majority, money isn’t speech & corporations aren’t people. There is widespread disgust at the growing power of big corporate money given Citizens United, S
uperPacs, and now the Wisconsin Recall funding disparities. According to “Reclaiming Democracy,” a paper commissioned by the Proteus Foundation in 2012, the current campaign reform community needs a strong unifying theme and a populist movement around money in politics and democracy. The problem: Elections favor donors over voters, capital over labor. RATIONALE:
A stronger democracy means replacing the corporate funding of elections by the 1% with the public funding of elections by the 99%…We've changed minds, now let's change the Constitution…existing campaign finance groups have excellent arguments but little mobilizing capacity in the home districts of Members of Congress…the public has to better connect worsening economic inequality with worsening political inequality. PROBLEM: Money Shouts
A democracy-for-sale is of course not new -- and several books have described its malign evolution. ^fn1 In a 1792 letter, Thomas Jefferson wrote President Washington urging him to create a political party "to defend democracy against the corrupt ambitions of monied interests." A century later, U.S. Senator Boies Penrose (R.–PA) told a room of his big donors, "You send us to Congress;
^fn1. Green, Who Runs Congress? (1972, 1978, 1982) & Losing Our Democracy (2004); Stern, The Best Congress Money Can Buy (1988); Lessig, Republic, Lost (2011)
we pass laws under which you make money...and out of your
profits, you further contribute to our campaign funds to send us back again to pass more laws to enable you to make more money." Then in 1912 Teddy Roosevelt concluded that "corporate expenditures for political elections have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs." Starting with the Tillman Act of1907 prohibiting corporate money in federal elections, a variety of federal/state laws have attempted to reduce the following corrosive costs of money on democracy:
*Special interests get special treatment -- the Evil of Access. "Who after all can seriously contend," said former Senator Alan Simpson, "that a $100,000 donation does not alter the way one thinks about -- and possibly vote on -- an issue?" Almost no sitting member admits such thoughts; almost every former member has.
*Fundraising is a time thief. It's hard to describe the physical and
psychological costs -- think Groundhog Day -- of spending hour after hour and month after month away from family, staff,
colleagues and actual constituents. It’s called Calling Time.
*Policy decisions tilt to donors not voters. There are large majorities for raising taxes on the rich, increasing the minimum wage, strengthening environmental protections, enacting universal health care and publicly financed elections -- yet the political system can't produce any of these things so long as .01% of Americans make 90% of the contributions. The pay-to-play system is a circuit breaker between popular will and public policy.
*The process creates "silent casualties" who never run. "Where's your $5 million?” asked a NYS party leader of a public interest lawyer asking about a potential state-wide candidacy. Women and men of talent who aren’t personally wealthy -- or don't have a network of wealthy friends – are often priced out of elective office because they can't afford the high entry fee.
*Wealth can either buy office or improve the odds. Of course, no amount of money can elect Pat Buchanan in Harlem or Hillary Clinton in Utah. But as the number of self-funded candidates increase, it's inevitable that even more elected officials will be multi-millionaires whose views on public policies somehow always tilt to big business and finance.
*If big money weighs the most on the scale of power, why bother voting? There is a debate why voting rates have fallen so sharply in the past 50 years but the decline has been coincident with the rising volume of money spent in elections. These costs may not be new but they are worsening. No other democracy on earth allows wealthy people to have such sway over elections and government. If Citizens United and Buckley v. Valeo aren’t reversed and laws enacted at the state and federal levels, a plutocracy will own and control our democracy. Then a regular feature of “elections” will be who the Koch Brothers, Adelson and Rove support with tens of millions in the final two weeks – and who visit grateful candidates shortly after. Then our “exceptional” democracy would have transformed from a system of checks and balances into one of checks and more checks. Since only incumbents by definition get to vote on changing the process that got them elected, reforms have required Sisyphean efforts -- plus scandals -- to be enacted. Watergate, for a prominent example, did famously lead to significant change in 1974 on donations, expenditures and public financing of presidential elections. Significant but fleeting. Since then, two Supreme Court decisions have returned our country to Gilded Age levels of "legal bribery." In 1976, Buckley v. Valeo overturned that part of the campaign finance law that limited self-financing candidates to spending no more than $25,000; and in the 2010 decision of Citizens United v. FEC, a 5-4 Court concluded that corporations and labor unions could make unlimited "independent" expenditures in elections. In essence, two legal fictions -- corporations are people and money is speech -- combined into the new reality that trillions of dollars of shareholders funds invested to make money in the private sector would now be available to make policy in the public sector. Justice Anthony Kennedy -- the swing vote and, like the other eight, a justice with no experience in the world of political fund-raising or quid pro quo politics -- simply asserted that "independent expenditures" by definition couldn't corrupt democracy because it was independent of the candidate. "The appearance of influence or access...will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy." This ex cathedra and tautological assertion has proven wrong – disastrously wrong. In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens called the majority opinion "a radical departure from what has been settled First Amendment [law]." Taking the unusual step of reading his opinion from the bench, the most senior justice, a Ford appointee, said: "The Framers took it as given that corporations could be comprehensively regulated in the service of public welfare. Unlike [my] colleagues, they had little trouble distinguishing corporations from human beings. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics." Because of this case, the "one person-one vote” standard of Baker v. Carr is becoming one dollar-one vote. And the foundational balance between capitalism and democracy -- one producing wealth, the other creating laws and safety nets – has all but disappeared as private wealth buys public government creating a cadre of purchased politicians. This reality has spurred a backlash: according to a poll by ABC News of those familiar with Citizens United, 80% of Americans oppose the ruling, with 65% "strongly opposed." In a March, 2012 Washington Post poll, 69% of the public wanted to ban Super Pacs altogether. Here's what Justice Kennedy and the majority ignored. First, as the Brennan Center’s founding legal director has written, it is an absurd fiction “that election winners will ignore huge debts owed wealthy supporters who have spent millions to get them elected.”
Second, while governments operate within national borders, multinational corporations are international, often beyond the reach of the laws of their host government. They are in effect private governments in terms of their financial and political power. But they are organizations lacking the attributes of human dignity anticipated by the word “persons” of the First Amendment. Because candidates need substantial sums to get elected -- or at least want to make sure that Super Pacs and billionaires don't finance opponents or run unlimited negative ads – corporate donors can either write laws or frame debates that lead to the same result. In the past decade, to take one example, the finance sector argued successfully for deregulation, then won a bail-out after deregulation allowed it to trigger a near economic collapse, then kept its exorbitant bonuses, yet now again insists on deregulation while complaining about presidential criticism. The only reason they don't get laughed out of Congress is that if you pay the piper, you call the tune. ^fn2
The difference between the 69% and 80% public disapproval of the current money game and the 12% favorable rating of
Congress creates an extraordinary opportunity to organize the public around a clean elections system. No one group can do that alone but an entity that’s more catalytic than comprehensive can add this often missing element. fn 2: Mintz and Cohen, America Inc (1973); Nader, Green, Seligman, Taming the Giant Corporation (1976); Hartmann, Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became People (2010); Clements, Corporations are not People (2012). III. GOALS: MoneyOut/VotersIn
There are several excellent organizations dedicated to clean
elections. But for years they have run into the brick wall of settled
opinion that people don't care about money in politics and Members don't want to change the rules that got them elected. MoneyOut/VotersIn won’t and can't duplicate the research capacity and rich history of a Public Citizen, Common Cause, Brennan Center, MoveOn, Free Speech for People, Demos, MovetoAmend and many labor unions, and community groups, religious groups,
But as an ally to, a synapse between, all of them, MoneyOut/VotersIn will contribute its special ability to focus grassroots support and social media behind a compelling cause. This new, small-budget organization spawned by OWS and its
Affinity Group will have three goals: a constitutional amendment, public funding of public elections, universal voter enrollment. Mr. Adelson said above that he thinks it wrong for billionaires to so significantly sway elections but “as long as it’s doable, I’m going to do it." Here’s how to make it “undoable”:
1. Overturn Buckley (1976) and Citizens United (2010). By striking down that part of the Watergate campaign finance law that limited candidates to spending no more than $25,000 of their own money, Buckley permitted super-wealthy people to spend in a city or state what presidential candidates used to spend in the entire country…while opponents are limited by federal and state laws in their own fund-raising. Some eloquent apologists for the status quo (George Will, David Brooks) argue that such candidates don't always win, which is true; but it’s also true that most gun owners don't rob banks, yet we still have laws requiring gun registration and prohibiting bank robbery. As more candidates of wealth run, more will win because of the simple math that, over time and with everything else being equal, a team with six outs an inning will defeat a team with three outs per inning. Citizens United is the Dred Scott of campaign finance. Only justices who think in metaphors and legalisms could for decades convince themselves that people were "property" or, more recently, that corporations, creatures of the state with the privileges of perpetual life and limited liability, were "people." Only brilliant lawyers looking for fig leaves could determine that, for purposes of the first amendment, ExxonMobil’s treasury of shareholders’ money was indistinguishable from the words of a human being Jane Dow. These two precedent-breaking constitutional law cases have turned out to be so poorly reasoned, so unrealistic, so unpopular that Guido Calabresi, the former Yale Law Dean and senior judge of the prestigious Second Circuit Court of Appeals, concluded in the recent decision of Ognibene v. Parkes that:
The ability to express one’s feelings with all the intensity that one has – and to be heard – is a central element of the right to speak freely. It is, I believe, something that is so fundamental that ooner or later it is going to be recognized. Whether this will happen through a constitutional amendment or through changes in Supreme Court doctrine, I do not know. But it will happen. But "the way the inevitable came to pass," wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. ,”was effort.” What are the efforts that average citizens can undertake to stop this judicial overthrow of our representative democracy? These decisions can be reversed by this or a future Court in a new case – or by a constitutional amendment as provided for under Article 5 of the U. S. Constitution. A new decision could be based on the provable reality -- either by studies or even a Resolution of Congress that would be hard for the Court to ignore – that “independent” expenditures are impossible to define and have a corrupting potential. Either a new decision or amendment could state that spending money in the election context can be regulated, like pollution or decibels that ruin neighborhoods. (There are several proposed constitutional amendments by Members of Congress -- most notably Schumer, Udall, Durbin, Sanders -- and a decision will be subsequently made in conjunction with partner groups about which is legally and politically preferable.) It goes without saying that enacting a constitutional amendment – obtaining the votes of two-thirds of Congress and then three-fourths of the states -- is both extraordinarily difficult...yet not enough. But there have been 17 amendments since the original Bill of Rights, usually when a large majority concurs on the solution to a large problem. Today, there are large majorities who want to fundamentally change the way we finance elections and government…at the same time, social media has shown its ability to drive issues and force institutional reform (as noted above, see influential viral campaigns against Bank of America, Netflix, Komen Foundation). According to Jeffrey Clements in his new book, Corporations are Not People, "at least six times Americans amended the Constitution to overturn Supreme Court decisions." He explains that even a failed effort -- e.g., the Equal Rights Amendment fell only three states short in the 1970s -- can "spur national conversations in times of crisis and doubt. They define our values and shape us as a people. They keep the Supreme Court honest and accountable to the people." Indeed, the ERA was just such a ‘successful failure’ since it inspired numerous state and federal laws that have since helped to shrink gender discrimination. Similarly, the push for a constitutional amendment to overturn Buckley and Citizens United can either result in enactment or deepen public opinion for a) a new case producing a different result, b) FEC and IRS decisions that disallow phony “independent” groups or c) new public funding laws in state capitals and Congress. As Abraham Lincoln wrote, “public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.”
The 99%Demcoracy will educate “public sentiment” about its disappearing democracy.
2. Enact Clean Elections Laws: Public Funding for Public Elections…and limitations on Super Pacs. Again, even a constitutional amendment, however difficult and monumental, would still be inadequate. A. Pass “Democracy Funding” – matching money for small gifts: To make campaigns competitive and the franchise meaningful, candidates need to have a financial floor under them and a strict expenditure ceiling over them. The states of Arizona, Maine, Connecticut and New Jersey – and New York City – provide for matching public funds for public elections on the condition that candidates opt in to campaign finance rules and limits. In NYC, for example, participating candidates receive public funds based on a 6-1 match for the first $175 of a donation. The99%Democracy would advocate for similar laws for federal and state legislatures. Today, there’s no congressional super majority to send an amendment to the states much less even a majority to enact such "democracy funding." But given the large majorities in polls noted above and the potential for local grassroots pressure, America is a mobilized electorate and a scandal away from enactment. Also, since this model is working around the country in several jurisdictions, there are real-world examples to show the feasibility and desirability of democracy funding. Given the stakes, variables and technology, no one’s smart enough to be a pessimist. B. Limit and Disclose Donations to Super Pacs. Short of a constitutional amendment and public funding of elections, what can be done to stop unlimited and undisclosed Super Pacs from picking presidents and legislators? As for their “independence”, Stephen Colbert’s now famous parody – PAC for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow -- has exposed the obvious: it’s a joke. According to the New York Times (2/26/2012), “In practice, Super Pacs have become a way for candidates to bypass [campaign contribution limits] by steering rich donors to these ostensibly independent groups, which function almost as adjuncts of the campaigns.” All the presidential Super Pacs are run by the former staff of the candidate; Mitt Romney attended the kick-off fundraiser for his Restore our Future; the person sustaining Rick Santorum’s Super Pac, billionaire Foster Freiss, stood behind the candidate on stage at his primary victory speech in Missouri. President Obama’s former communications director is now running his Super Pac.”
As for volume and scale, candidate-specific Super Pacs had spent more in the Republican presidential primaries as of March, 2012 than the candidates themselves. In some of the Super Tuesday southern primaries March 6, Newt Gingrich‘s benefactor, Sheldon Adelson, alone outspent the candidate’s campaign 70-1. What Standard Oil was to the Pennsylvania state legislature in the 1880s (which did “everything to the state legislature except refine it”), billionaires are becoming to candidates. They are also usually negative and anonymous. While 6% of all ads in the 2008 Democratic primaries were negative, 50% of GOP ads this year have been, comprising what New York Magazine calls “a tsunami of slime”. And they are given under sections of the IRS code that supposedly apply to charitable, non-political organizations. Outsourcing campaigns to secret, huge special interests while the winners know later exactly who paid their way does, contrary to Justice Kennedy's naivete, corrupt democracy. There are several feasible legislative responses: federally,
require that all gifts of over $10,000 be reported online within 24 hours (Rep. Van Hollen’s new version of the DISCLOSE Act, so long as labor’s associational rights are protected); require that ads financed by such funds reveal the largest donors who paid for them ("paid for by Dow Chemical"); and prohibit unlimited donations and reduce the maximum to $2400, the top permissible individual contribution. The FEC and IRS could issue regulations that redefine more narrowly “independent” expenditures and require timely disclosure of large gifts. Also, state incorporation laws, which create corporations, could require that before big contributions were paid out of shareholder funds, management would have to either get shareholder approval of donor guidelines/limitations or at least explain the “business purpose” of such expenditures, as European countries now do.
3. Enact Universal Voter Enrollment. The voter registration system in the United States was designed 150 years ago to make it more difficult for European immigrants to vote. So today we have one of the lowest voter turnout rates of any western democracy for a fundamental reason: we put the obligation on individual voters to find their way to a Board of Elections/Motor Vehicles Bureau to register and stay current rather than putting the burden on the government to register everyone, as routinely occurs in Europe. Hence their 70-80%+ turnouts versus our 50% in presidential contests (except for 2008), 35% in congressional races and 10% in local primaries. At the same time, many states, especially in the South, are now both enacting laws requiring Voter IDs and denying the franchise to ex-felons. The effect is a new Jim Crow, according to Rep. John Lewis: up to 5 million minority voters could be deterred from voting in 2012 (because minorities disproportionately lack government IDs) and a third of the black men in several southern states are ineligible to vote because of their felony records. The Brennan Center for Legal Justice is spearheading a national effort to get Congress to enact a system of "universal voter enrollment” which could add up to 50 million new voters and to persuade States to allow ex-felons who have paid their debt to society to be eligible to vote. But this excellent law reform group lacks the grassroots organizing capacity that a united Occupy/MoveOn/Labor campaign would have. IV. STRATEGY:
Actions and tactics would include, but not be limited to:
--organize a nation Democracy Day --This Day will have two components: a rally of thousands hearing from performers, speakers as well as a Democracy Street Fair with festive, creative elements such as art gallery booths, music, teach-ins, literature distribution, live-streaming.
--work with 99%Locals who in their communities would engage in non-violent street actions, vigils, rallies, petitions, social media viral campaigns, street theater and local art contests all designed to convince elected officials to reflect the views of the 99%, not just the 1% of big donors.
--include in all materials the personal impact of the pay-to-play money system rather than citing just numbers and bills. Getting money out and voters in is not a mere “process” issue – e.g., “campaign finance reform” -- but the key unlocking all other progressive reforms. So MoneyOut/VotersIn would vividly explain how banking expenditures affect laws regarding foreclosures and student loans, how oil and gas expenditures sway laws affecting pollution and children's health, how health insurance political expenditures influence mortality and morbidity rates, how defense contractor donations limit Pell Grants and food stamps, how corporate money largely to conservative candidates makes voter suppression laws more likely. And it would whenever possible links big money contributions to how the recipient voted.
--work in alliance with other leading campaign reform groups to concur on language for an amendment and to coordinate strategy.
--focus on the New York Leads campaign this Fall to push Albany to enact public funding for state elections. There is significant interest there on an approach that NYC now operates.
*continue with other creative actions and social media efforts to make sure that the 2014 elections elevate the issue of MoneyOut/VotersIn as the issue of big federal spending was in 2010.
