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Private Industries and Corruption in the US Government
Hexmage-PA
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enlightenedbum wrote: »override367 wrote: »I personally believe that anyone who thinks anything in regards to healthcare will improve isn't cynical enough. The US government is too paralyzed by people worried about their reelections to get anything of significant scale accomplished.
What features of the US system make American legislators' fears of losing office uniquely crippling? This is a real question; politicians in other countries no doubt desire reelection, yet other countries have managed to get sane healthcare systems off the ground.
Private donations and campaign contributions have become such an entrenched part of our political system that, combined with the steadily growing autonomy of private industry (well, I say "autonomy" but really corporations couldn't do nearly as well without crying to the Fed every other week) means that if you go against the status quo, or do anything that results in profit loss, your money for re-election dries up. Combine that with our disgrace of a media, which is also bought and sold and loves to pair the consequential with the inconsequential (specials on the Obamas' new puppy while Iran burns) and you have a seething mess of corruption that nobody notices or cares about.
Also, American politicians are incredibly easy to bribe for some reason. I saw a compare/contrast table a few years back and historically the big-name bribes in America have been maybe half what you'd see in Russia or England.
Here's an idea also taken from European political tradition: Ban campaign contributions. Here campaigns are funded with set allocations of public money, proportionally allocated according to performance in previous elections, plus mandatory free TV time and heavily limited individual dontations (capped to a few thousand per person).
Corruption still exists, but at least this specific variation on it doesn't. And, believe it or not, it makes campaigning much easier for smaller parties, since at least they get screen time for free.
Individual donations are limited to $2300 here for the Presidential race, I think they're the same for other races. It's just there are ways around that (like giving your employees convenient bonuses so you get janitors contributing $2300 to candidates). Also, political action committees can give more, and you can give more to the parties which then give their candidates money. There's also an entirely public funding option, but it's opt in, which became a "controversy" when Obama opted out for reasons of having $Texas from all his individual contributors.
It's a bigger problem the smaller the race gets, because fewer people donate. So the Senate is more corrupt than the executive and the House is full of crazy and/or corrupt people because that's how the House works. The biggest problem is the Senate (especially from smaller states that don't cost as much) is reasonably corrupt and small numbers of people have disproportionate influence due to the adoption of the de facto filibuster starting with the last Congress where Harry Reid decided that nothing should ever be passed without sixty votes, because he is a spineless coward.
To relate this back to healthcare though, it does cause things like Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), where something like 75% of health insurance in Arkansas is run by one company and they contribute heavily to her campaigns so she tends to side with them instead of supporting reform (in this case, the public option).
It is deplorable that corporations hold so much power over the decision making processes of the United States. Many of the greatest problems facing both the United States and the world at large today (such as climate change, pollution and obesity) could be mitigated if it weren't for the influence of corporations whose sales of harmful products keep them afloat.
The Food Lobby Goes to School
On the west side of Anniston, the poor side of Anniston, the people ate dirt. They called it "Alabama clay" and cooked it for extra flavor. They also grew berries in their gardens, raised hogs in their backyards, caught bass in the murky streams where their children swam and played and were baptized. They didn't know their dirt and yards and bass and kids -- along with the acrid air they breathed -- were all contaminated with chemicals. They didn't know they lived in one of the most polluted patches
of America.
Now they know. They also know that for nearly 40 years, while producing the now-banned industrial coolants known as PCBs at a local factory, Monsanto Co. routinely discharged toxic waste into a west Anniston creek and dumped millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing open-pit landfills. And thousands of pages of Monsanto documents -- many emblazoned with warnings such as "CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy" -- show that for decades, the corporate giant concealed what it did and what it knew.
Monsanto's luck with regulators held in 1983, when the federal Soil Conservation Service found PCBs in Choccolocco Creek, but took no action. In 1985, state authorities found PCB-tainted soils around Snow Creek, but a dispute over cleanup details lingered until a new attorney general named Donald Siegelman took office in 1988. In a letter that April, Monsanto's Anniston superintendent thanked Siegelman -- who is now the state's Democratic governor -- for addressing the Alabama Chemical Association, and meeting Monsanto's lobbyists for dinner. Then he got to the point: Monsanto wanted to go forward with its own cleanup plan, dredging just a few hundred yards of Snow Creek and its tributaries.
By 1996, state officials and plaintiffs' attorneys were finding astronomical PCB levels in the area: as high as 940 times the federal level of concern in yard soils, 200 times that level in dust inside people's homes, 2,000 times that level in Monsanto's drainage ditches. The PCB levels in the air were also too high. And in blood tests, nearly one-third of the residents of the working-class Sweet Valley and Cobbtown neighborhoods near the plant were found to have elevated PCB levels. The communities were declared public health hazards. Near Snow Creek, the state warned, "the increased risk of cancer is estimated to be high."
But no one has found a link between PCBs and any cancer as definitive as the link between, say, cigarettes and lung cancer. A recent GE-funded study -- conducted by the same toxicologist who originally discovered that PCBs cause cancer in rats -- found no link to cancer in humans. And some independent scientists remain skeptical of any serious health effects from real-world PCB exposure.
And they warn that Monsanto, which no longer produces chemicals, is now promising the world that its genetically engineered crops are safe for human consumption.
"For years, these guys said PCBs were safe, too," said Mike Casey of the Environmental Working Group, which has been compiling chemical industry documents on the Web. "But there's obviously a corporate culture of deceiving the public."
The general public of the US knows very little about the unpleasant details behind the companies whose products they buy. Not only are the actions undertaken by these companies heinous, but it is appalling that the media does not typically bring attention to these cases of corruption.
What can be done to reduce the amount of power that private industry has over the US legislative process?
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Whoa now, those are two wildly different ideas.
You definitely want people with experience in government, or else every four years it'll be a massive clusterfuck as a new group of people try and figure out how to turn ideas into actual policy, let alone the sheer complexity of trying to govern something properly without having worked with it before. All you need to do is look at the first two years of the Clinton administration, when there simply weren't Democrats available with executive branch experience to chose, to see how badly that can turn out.
The second part is a bit more valid, though I still wouldn't agree. First off lobbying is actually probably extremely good experience in understanding how government works, because besides actually working in the system the next best thing for learning how it works is being paid to manipulate the system. The more important point though is usually what those lobbyists did before becoming lobbyists and that's more often than not having worked in government. Once you've worked your way either up the ladder in an agency or been elected to a higher office in Washington, the only options where you can use your skills once you leave government are basically think tanks or lobbying, and besides the fact lobbying pays worlds better most government officials are skilled at governing (or at least making the desired actions happen in a government system) but less skilled at pure theoretical political thinking. The practical upshot of all this being once a party is out of power in Washington the majority of the people who are actually good at their jobs and have useful government experience move over to lobbying, where the next administration pulls them from.
All this isn't to say that the pendulum hasn't swung too far, with the legislative branch especially being unduly effected by narrow outside interests with the money and influence to get lobbyists into play, but it isn't some unmitigated evil that sane peopel should want to sweep off the face of the earth.
Would you care to elaborate?
I'd also like to be clear in that I don't think lobbying itself is a bad thing. What I do think is a bad thing is that powerful companies use it to pull the strings of government and fuck over ignorant yet innocent people in the process.
I mean, yeah, fuck monsanto etc. but...
They ate CLAY?
Indeed.
There ARE good lobbyists out there, like ASAN or ASHA.
Lobbyists aren't the issue here, it's how politicians allow themselves to be too easily influenced that is.
I don't find myself agreeing with Evander much, but this is true.
A lot of it also boils down to the fact that political campaigns are so depended on donated money, and the forces out to exploit people (certain business interests) often have disproportionately more funds than the side representing the interests of real people.
But saying "lobbyists r bad period" just ignores plenty of lobbies for good causes, and good legislation they have created.
And no, I'm not being facetious.
it's all a balance, though
the fact is, we DO need corporations. You can't be all consumer-positive, and corporate-negative, or else you get suppliers pulling out of markets, and every product is suddenly impossible to find, and extremely overpriced when you do find it, because only one company is bothering to supply anymore, so they can set whatever price they like.
Some companies ABSOLUTELY go too far, but I say that we need to hold the politicians who allow themselves to be influenced as accountable for what happens, NOT blame the corporations. After all, it's their job to look out for their own interests. I mean, you wouldn't voluntarily pay an extra dollar for a bottle of Pepsi just because you wanted to help them out, right? So why should Pepsi be looking out for YOUR interests, ratehr than their own?
We need better, enforcable regulations about what politicians are allowed to accept from lobbyists, and SERIOUS consequences for breaches of those regulations. We also need, as consumers, to hold the politicians who give in to the corporate interests over our own, as accountable for their behavior, rather than railing against the corporations, and leaving the politicians in office to give in to the NEXT corporate interest that comes along.
I always asumed it had to do with dirt floors
like, voting in an all new set of politicians. That IS within our powers, before we go and storm the the Capitol
The issue is that lobbies for good causes are rarely as profitable as lobbies for health insurance or corn, so if the two's interests ever collide (which is becoming increasingly often as private industry encroaches on more and more of society) then the Evil Corporate Overlords will always come out on top.
This is exactly the problem, and it's despicable. There are so many problems with the world that could be easily fixed if politicians weren't dependent on private industries for campaign contributions. If only we had a competent news media that wasn't also dependent on corporate funds then maybe these problems wouldn't have gotten so out of control.
The food industry and related industries are especially culpable for threats to public health. The corn lobby has enabled unhealthy foodstuffs to flood the market, has made healthful food more expensive and therefore less competitive, has encouraged monoculture that depletes soil quality and pollutes our water, and has even allowed e. coli to infect humans by feeding cows a corn-based diet (which makes the rumen more acidic, allowing e. coli to become resistant to human stomach acid).
Companies like Monsanto are responsible for creating persistent environmental hazards. Did you know that Monsanto is responsible for 50 of the EPA's Super Fund sites (areas of extreme pollution)? Did you know that Monsanto secretly and illegally dumped toxic waste in the UK in the 70's and that the evidence of groundwater pollution wasn't detected until 2003?
Personally, not only do I feel that these companies should be brought under the heel of a competent government, but that those responsible should be charged for crimes against humanity.
Exactly what I'm saying. It means that we need rules about what lobbyists can do so that we can level the playing field so the disparity in funds isn't as important.
not if you regulate so as to level the playing field.
The purpose of lobbyists should be to inform and negotiate, not to fund.
Regulation to provide some equality between lobbyists is a good idea, yes.
It's also a good idea that most lobbyists wouldn't like.
You see the catch there.
End of the day, you need the voters more than you need the lobbyists.
We get enough folks to come together and DEMAND the regulations, no ammount of money in the world would make a difference.
I'm not saying that'd be easy, but the fact is that lobbyists DON'T have complete control of the situation.
The problem is that the average voter is completely ignorant of the absolutely monstrous things that the government has allowed companies to get away with and that the news media is either unwilling or unable to bring these things to light. How can change come about if people don't know there is a problem?
use twitter to get the word out?
I'm not saying that it would be easy, but honestly, getting folks to openly revolt against the government would be EVEN MORE difficult.
Yeah, no you don't.
It's a wonderfully optimistic outlook you have there, but time and time again politicians get elected by misleading voters, and American voters in particular are all but begging to be misled. The odds of this country's electorate doing anything constructive on any subject that our abomination of a media doesn't hammer into their skulls three times a week is slim to none.
1) All elections/political parties are run on public financing (mandatory). Private companies or individuals may not contribute to these parties/candidates or run advertisements that even mention a candidate, party, or election.
Done.
EDIT: And if the corporatist dems fuck up healthcare reform, I'm all in favor of a bit of rioting and wrecking shit to wake these assholes up. They represent us, and if they fail to do so, eventually it will bite them in the ass.
The lobbyists wouldn't like that.
THIS IS KIND OF LIKE A HELLER NOVEL, AIN'T IT
How easy would that "easy fix" be to implement? How would the politicians that are used to taking corporate money be persuaded to vote for a level playing field?
Impossible. It is conceptually simple and easy to figure out though.
Yes. It would require a constitutional amendment, hence the impossibility part.
OBVIOUSLY, you do.
Otherwise Politicians wouldn't HAVE TO spend those resources on manipulating and misleading the voters.
It's fun to play "ultra-cynic" and declare that the world is fucked, but what good does all of that pouting actually do, other than make you feel superior?
Too fat and complacent. Our political process cannot properly function when the majority are disengaged and uninterested.
Don't play games. You're the one who tried to dismiss me as being "too wonderfully optimistic".
Cynicism being flip side of that, YOU'RE the one who opened the accusation box. Run off if you like, but don't pretend it's because of anything other than being given your own treatement.
It's unconstitutional for your political parties to be run on public financing? Up here in Canuckistan, while political parties are free to raise their own funds, they also receive an amount of money for each vote they receive as a partial way to implement the idea behind dots' plan.
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Difference being that I'm right and you're wrong, by virtue of having the political goings-on of the last twenty or thirty years behind me.
The last time your scenario happened was the civil rights movement, and that was before our media turned into a corporate loudspeaker and money-worship become as socially acceptable as it is today. The times have changed, the ones you want are done, probably forever, things are shit and will stay that way.
The only point of even discussing this is to examine why they turned to shit in the first place.
I think it would be easier (and the same ammount of informing, or less needed) to get the public to hold the government accountable.
Look at the rash of resignations in Britain right now, over the spending scandals out there. Really, the push that we need is for information on a variety of lobbyist "favors" to all come out at once, and on BOTH sides of the aisle, so it can't be taken as a partisan attack from one side or the other.
Of course, in Britain it's resulted in the BNP gaining in power, so who knows what kooky side-effects it could have here.