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Health & Fitness

Patch Blog: How Money in Politics is Killing America

How—and why—politicians are beholden to the wealthy and how the stranglehold of money in Washington is destroying the lives of millions of Americans.

Ever wonder why your vote has no effect on the candidate you elected?

There you are, voting for your candidate, hoping this time you’ll see some real change in government, who knows, maybe even actually representing You by voting for the programs promised in their stump speeches.

Really?

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Our politicians have to spend to become elected. Most of them enter office owing some serious money incurred running for office. The more money spent, the better the chance of being elected, as the chart below demonstrates.

President of the U.S. 2004 Election Costs:
George W. Bush (R) - $345,259,155
John Kerry (D) - $309,708,090
Ralph Nader - $4,549,032
Michael Badnarik - $1,073,940
Michael Peroutka - $708,221
David Cobb - $385,707

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Source: OpenSecrets.org

Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist who went to jail for three and a half years and was released on probation in 2010, said in a talk at Harvard Law School last month that the first thing newly elected members of Congress are told, even before they’re sworn in, by their party house leaders is that their Number One job for the coming term is to get re-elected—not pass bills, not make their constituents happy, but get re-elected. (Click this link to view a video of Abramoff’s lecture, filmed by C-Span.)

So there are our politicians, worrying about paying off the debt they have acquired running for office and worried about raising money—more money for the next election. In his Harvard lecture, Abramoff states that Washington lobbyists meet with politicians, donate money to them, help them pay off their debt and add to their re-election coffers.

In fact Abramoff, whose book, “Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth About Washington Corruption From America's Most Notorious Lobbyist,” was recently published, went so far as to say that there is nobody in office who has been in power for any appreciable length of time who hasn’t taken money from lobbyists.

It’s like that first date where the guy pays for dinner and expects a “kiss” at the end of the night. Or the boss brings in donuts and asks you to work overtime. The more money a corporate lobbyist gives to a politician, the larger the politician’s debt of gratitude—after all, they’ve been told their most important job is to get re-elected. Lobbyists, the wealthy, etc., donate money and get on the list of politicians’ supporters. The larger the contribution, the higher up on the list and the greater the access to the politician.

"I never had any real desire to work in politics, but if there was any ember burning in me, it was extinguished working in that job because of two things: one of them was the fact that 80 percent of the time I spent with the Senator, he was on the phone asking rich people for money. It just made me understand that the whole business was dirty. He had to compromise his entire being every day.”

Those are the words of Grammy-winning guitarist and Harvard graduate Tom Morello, speaking about working for the late Democratic Senator Alan Cranston during 1987-88.

Until this year, contributions from corporation had to be documented. This allowed the public to “follow the money.” Now corporations can donate to political parties without declaring whom they have donated to. These companies include financial firms, unions and nonprofits, i.e., Banking, Gas, Coal, Energy, Prison, Military, AARP, NRA, etc., etc., etc.

(Corporate personhood is the status conferred upon corporations under the law, which allows corporations to have rights and responsibilities similar to those of a natural person. There is a question about which subset of rights afforded to natural persons should also be afforded to corporations as legal persons. The Supreme Court of the United States (Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 1819), recognized corporations as having the same rights as natural persons to contract and to enforce contracts.)

And where does that leave you, me, our poor, our elderly, our mentally ill, our sick and homeless looking at a government that seems to be doing very little to help the 99 percent who are not making salaries in excess of $75k a year?

I don’t know about you. Perhaps you turn on the TV, have a drink—try not to think about what has happened to your standard of living in the past 15 years.

For me, I am willing to involve myself in something that honestly looks at the problems and is willing to address them. The Occupy Movement. 

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