||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sam Smith
Let's forget about the names and just think about the facts.
One of the two top candidates for president got his buddy nominated to
be head of Homeland Security - until stories about his seedy background
forced him to withdraw. He was indicted not long thereafter.
This candidate has a consulting firm that helped a confessed drug
smuggler get business with the federal government, aided the horse
racing industry recover from a betting scandal and advised a
pharmaceutical company that admitted misleading doctors and patients
about the addiction risks of Oxycontin. According to ABC News, Drug
Enforcement Administration officials say the candidate "personally met
with the head of the DEA when the DEA's drug diversion office began a
criminal investigation into the company."
Other law and lobbying clients of this candidate have included Saudi
Arabia, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and a chewing tobacco maker.
His firm has, according to a news report, "reported lobbying on various
issues the White House, the vice president's office, Congress and every
Cabinet agency except the Department of Veterans Affairs."
This man's opponent - the other leading candidate - joined him in
supporting the nomination of the now indicted Bernie Kerick to be
homeland security chief. Kerick probably didn't seem all that strange to
her since three of her close business partners had already gone to
prison, her major backers included two drug smugglers and her friends,
supporters and associates included at least five other prominent
individuals who became felons, including one who was on the FBI most
wanted list for almost two decades.
This candidate herself achieved a 530% return on a highly questionable
play in the cattle futures market, which one journalist described as
about as mathematically probable as finding the Dead Sea scrolls on the
steps of the Arkansas statehouse.
This candidate came close to being prosecuted - the independent counsel
even prepared a draft indictment. In the indictment of her law associate
and mentor, she is referred to 35 times, albeit only as his "billing
partner." She also said "I don't recall" or its equivalent 50 times in a
42 paragraph response to a congressional committee looking into her
dubious activities.
This, in short, is what American politics has become as we head into the
most mobbed up election in our history.
But Rudolph Giuliani and Hillary Clinton are not the cause of our
problems. They are merely exploiters of them, two remarkably corrupt
individuals rising to the top because of a politics driven by myth,
propaganda and a stunning lack of relevant information from the media.
Here is an example of the latter:
In the past month, Google finds 22,000 mentions of Hillary Clinton in
the news media, but only two mentions of Webster Hubbell in a mainstream
journal, both in one of the Washington Post's blogs. Similarly, there
are only three mentions of Jim McDougal, another criminal associate of
Hillary Clinton.
As noted here before, we all live in a Mafia neighborhood now. We are,
in fact, so accepting of this that we hardly notice offenses that once
would have easily disqualified a candidate. Here's how I discussed this
phenomenon six years ago in my book, "Why Bother?":
[][][] Underneath the sturm und drang of political debate, the American
establishment -- from corporate executive to media to politician --
reached a remarkable consensus that it no longer had to play by any
rules but its own. There is a phrase for this in some Latin American
countries: the culture of impunity. In such places it has led to death
squads, to the live bodies of dissidents being thrown out of military
helicopters, to routine false imprisonment and baroque financial fraud.
We are not there yet but are certainly moving in the same direction.
In a culture of impunity, rules serve the internal logic of the system
rather than whatever values typically guide a country, such as those of
its constitution, church or tradition. The culture of impunity
encourages coups and cruelty, at best practices only titular democracy,
and puts itself at the service of what Hong Kong, borrowing from fascist
Germany and Italy, refers to as "functional constituencies," which is
mainly to say major corporations.
A culture of impunity varies from ordinary political corruption in that
the latter represents deviance from the culture while the former becomes
the culture. Such a culture does not announce itself. It creeps up day
by day, deal by deal, euphemism by euphemism. The intellectual
achievement, technocratic pyrotechnics and calm rationality that serves
as a patina for the culture of impunity can be dangerously misleading.
In a culture of impunity, what replaces constitution, precedent,
values, tradition, fairness, consensus, debate and all that sort of
arcane stuff? Mainly greed. As Michael Douglas put it in Wall Street:
"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed
works."
Of course, there has always been an overabundance of greed in America's
political and economic system. But a number of things have changed. As
activist attorney George LaRoche points out, "Once, I think, we knew our
greedy were greedy but they were obligated to justify their greed by
reference to some of the other values in which all of us could
participate. Thus, maybe 'old Joe' was a crook but he was also a 'pillar
of the business community' or 'a member of the Lodge' or a 'good
husband' and these things mattered. Now the pretense of justification is
gone and greed is its own justification."
The result is a stunning lack of restraint. We find ourselves without
heroism, without debate over right and wrong, with little but an endless
narcissistic struggle by the powerful to get more money, more power and
more press than the next person. In the chase, anything goes and the
only standard is whether you win, lose or get caught.
The major political struggle has become not between conservative and
liberal but between ourselves and our political, economic, social and
media elites. Between the toxic and the natural, the corporate and the
communal, the technocratic and the human, the competitive and the
cooperative, the efficient and the just, meaningless data and meaningful
understanding, the destructive and the decent." [][][]
The culture of impunity is not just a national phenomenon. We have
politicians without borders at every level. For example, in recent
months - following the election of a thirty something supposedly
reformist mayor - the city of Washington has been treated to a stunning
blend of arrogance, corruption and contempt towards citizens, all
smoothly melded without hardly a peep from either media or victims.
In less than a year, Mayor Adrian Fenty has:
- Effectively dismantled the elected school board, replacing its powers
with an autocratic superintendent selected by the local business lobby,
whose developer members are cheerfully eying the availability of soon to
be closed schools.
- Fined anti-war demonstrators for putting up protest notices.
- Ended a taxi fare system that for decades has given DC more cabs per
capita than any place in the country and provided the city with some
rare upward economic mobility for the less wealthy - replacing it with
a system that will allow a few corporations to seize control of the
industry and reduce the number of drivers.
- Announced plans to destroy government e-mails after six months,
greatly reducing available evidence against criminal elements within the
government. The mayor was forced to retreat from this one.
- Announced plans to deny car owners the right to make personal
appearance on parking ticket cases, which would greatly reduce their
chances of appeal.
- Tripled the number of key aides earning over $175k a year.
Writes local independent journalist Gary Imhoff about the school
takeover: "'I signed on for reform; I didn't sign on for autocracy,'
said Councilmember Jim Graham at the angry city council breakfast with
Mayor Fenty today. But autocracy is what he got. Councilmembers were
warned not to give Fenty the limitless power he asked for over the
school system, but they didn't listen. Now they are reaping the results
of their folly. . . They haven't talked to parents, or residents of the
city, or even councilmembers, because they don't think they have
anything to learn from them and don't believe they need to. The plans
have been made; they have been announced; and councilmembers and
citizens will hear and obey.
"Citizens voted for Fenty, and that's the last say they'll have over
school governance. Councilmembers voted for Fenty's school takeover, and
that's the last say they'll have. All the inconveniences of democracy
are behind us now, and we are graced with the efficiency of autocracy.
There was an old joke. . . that communism was a system of "one man, one
vote -- one time only."
While the school takeover is more significant, another example gnaws
almost as much: the treatment of public libraries. In a couple of cases,
the city plans to bury neighborhood libraries (and in one case a fire
station as well) in high rise commercial developments. Worse, in the
case of the central library named after Martin Luther King Jr, there
have been discussions with Bloomingdales to take over the building.
Where the books will go has yet to be decided. The scheme - which
couldn't be more insulting and emblematic of the effects of
gentrification on DC - would replace the first great local tribute to
the black civil rights leader with a store catering to white consumerist
culture. . . from "I have a dream" to "I want it all."
One high library official even suggested that maybe to they didn't need
such a large building downtown. Perhaps a smaller reading center would
do, with books brought in from elsewhere as needed. As one city council
member put it, downtown land is too valuable for such public buildings.
The library made it onto the DC Preservation League's list of the city's
most endangered places, which described it like this:
"The only example in Washington, DC of the mature style of pre-eminent
Modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the Martin Luther King,
Jr. Memorial Library has stood as the only monument to Dr. King in the
nation's capital for the past 30 years. It holds special significance to
the millions of Washingtonians who have come to the library over the
past decades to participate in a wide variety of programs and
activities, and is a center of community life in the District."
Admittedly, the library's interior was not well designed and a case can
be made for replacing it with something better. But no case can be made
for replacing it with something worse,
Even the most corrupt local officials in the past have been careful to
respect the culture and icons of their community. A James Michael
Curley, Richard Daley or Marion Barry, for all their faults, honored and
often exemplified the cities they ruled. They understood that things
like libraries, fire stations and recreation centers were symbols of a
community's identity and values. They brought communities together; they
served as a neighborhood's display window; they helped define the "we"
in a place.
But in a city where campaigns are won with dollars rather than votes -
which is to say in much of modern urban America - soon or later the
politicians start to lose touch with, and interest in, such matters. It
never even occurs to them that stuffing a library into the high rise to
benefit one of their campaign contributors reveals them to be as vacuous
and soulless as the building itself.
In yet another example, a few days ago the city demolished a federally
owned Sears mail order house built of some 10,000 parts in the 1920s.
According to a report on the action:
"For nearly four years, Palisades residents and others around the city
have flocked to support the home's preservation and return to the
private sector. Over 1,450 people signed letters to the city asking for
the house to be saved from demolition and put back into the hands of a
new owner who would restore it in place and put it back on the tax rolls
from which it had been absent for 50 years. Advisory Neighborhood
Commission 3D voted overwhelmingly in 2006 to adopt a three-page
resolution calling for the property's return to private ownership and
restoration in place. The Jesse Baltimore House became a symbol for
Palisades' residents who wished to preserve their community's rapidly
disappearing early 20th century homes and their community's historic
origins as a working class streetcar suburb of Washington DC."
What is striking about this is not the city ultimately decided to get
rid of the house, but that it did so before it had met its legal
responsibilities under the National Historic Preservation Act;" without
notice; over a Thanksgiving holiday when its advocates were otherwise
involved; and in contempt of letters by 1,450 people and the local
advisory neighborhood council. A good politician from an earlier era -
good or bad - would never have handled the situation in such a high
handed, arrogant manner. Now it's standard operating procedure.
The unspoken message of such actions - ones that treat communities not
unlike George Bush has treated the world - is that citizens no longer
matter. With enough cash and good airtime, they simply become
irrelevant, whether it's Clinton and Giuliani or a mayor like Adrian
Fenty. The one advantage of the local version is that the politicians'
disdain for the citizen is harder to hide.
The single most important factor creating politicians without borders is
the source of their money. As long as the thing that allows them to win
is not the public choice of the voter but the private funds of a small
number of contributors, the system is doomed. At a rally on the steps of
the Capitol in 1999, I spoke to this:
[][][] I have three objections to our current system of campaign
financing.
The first is literary. Being a writer I try to show respect for words,
to leave their meanings untwisted and unobscured. . .
For example, for centuries ordinary people have known exactly what a
bribe was. The Oxford English Dictionary found it described in 1528 as
meaning to "to influence corruptly, by a consideration." Another 16th
century definition describes bribery as "a reward given to pervert the
judgment or corrupt the conduct" of someone.
In more modern times, the Meat Inspection Act of 1917 prohibits giving
"money or other thing of value, with intent to influence" to a
government official. Simple and wise.
But that was before the lawyers and the politicians got around to
rewriting the meaning of bribery. And so we came to a time not so many
months ago when the Supreme Court actually ruled that a law prohibiting
the giving of gifts to a public official "for or because of an official
act" didn't mean anything unless you knew exactly what the official act
was. In other words, bribery was only illegal if the bribee was dumb
enough to give you a receipt.
The media has gone along with the scam, virtually dropping the word from
its vocabulary in favor of phrases like "inappropriate gift," "the
appearance of a conflict of interest," or the phrase which brings us
here today: "campaign contribution."
Another example is the remarkable redefinition of money to mean speech.
You can test this one out by making a deal with a prostitute and if a
cop comes along, simply say, "Officer, I wasn't giving her money, I was
just giving her a speech." If that doesn't work, you can try giving more
of that speech to the cop. Or try telling the IRS next April that "I
have the right to remain silent." And so forth. I wouldn't advise it. .
.
My second objection to our system of campaign financing is economic.
It's just too damn expensive for the taxpayer. The real cost is not the
campaign contributions themselves. The real cost is what is subsequently
paid in return out of public funds.
A case in point: Public Campaign recently reported that in 1996, when
Congress voted to lift the minimum wage 90 cents an hour, business
interests extracted $21 billion in custom-designed tax benefits. These
business interests gave only about $36 million in campaign contributions
so they got out of the public treasury nearly 600 times what they put
in. And you helped pay for it. . .
This is repeated over and over. For example, the oil industry in one
recent year gave $23 million in campaign contributions and got nearly $9
billion in tax breaks.
The bottom line is this: if you want to save public money, support
public campaign financing.
My final objection is biologic. Elections are for and between human
beings. How do you tell when you're dealing with a person? Well, they
bleed, burp, wiggle their toes and have sex. They register for the
draft. They register to vote. They watch MTV. They go to prison and they
have babies and cancer. Eventually they die and are buried or cremated.
Now this may seem obvious to you, but there are tens of thousands of
lawyers and judges and politicians who simply don't believe it. They
will tell you that a corporation is a person, based on a corrupt Supreme
Court interpretation of the 14th Amendment from back in the robber baron
era of the late 19th century -- a time in many ways not unlike our own.
. .
Corporations say they just want to be treated like people, but that's
not true. Test it out. Try to exercise your free speech on the property
of a corporation just like they exercise theirs in your election. You'll
find out quickly who is more of a person. We can take care of this
biologic problem by applying a simple literary solution: tell the truth.
A corporation is not a person and should not be allowed to be called one
under the law. . .
At root, dear friends, our problem is that politicians have come to have
more fear of their campaign contributors than they have of the voters.
We have to teach politicians to be afraid of us again. And nothing will
do it better than a coming together of a righteously outraged and
unified constituency demanding an end to bribery of politicians, whether
it occurs before, during, or after a campaign. [][][]
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sam Smith
Let's forget about the names and just think about the facts.
One of the two top candidates for president got his buddy nominated to
be head of Homeland Security - until stories about his seedy background
forced him to withdraw. He was indicted not long thereafter.
This candidate has a consulting firm that helped a confessed drug
smuggler get business with the federal government, aided the horse
racing industry recover from a betting scandal and advised a
pharmaceutical company that admitted misleading doctors and patients
about the addiction risks of Oxycontin. According to ABC News, Drug
Enforcement Administration officials say the candidate "personally met
with the head of the DEA when the DEA's drug diversion office began a
criminal investigation into the company."
Other law and lobbying clients of this candidate have included Saudi
Arabia, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and a chewing tobacco maker.
His firm has, according to a news report, "reported lobbying on various
issues the White House, the vice president's office, Congress and every
Cabinet agency except the Department of Veterans Affairs."
This man's opponent - the other leading candidate - joined him in
supporting the nomination of the now indicted Bernie Kerick to be
homeland security chief. Kerick probably didn't seem all that strange to
her since three of her close business partners had already gone to
prison, her major backers included two drug smugglers and her friends,
supporters and associates included at least five other prominent
individuals who became felons, including one who was on the FBI most
wanted list for almost two decades.
This candidate herself achieved a 530% return on a highly questionable
play in the cattle futures market, which one journalist described as
about as mathematically probable as finding the Dead Sea scrolls on the
steps of the Arkansas statehouse.
This candidate came close to being prosecuted - the independent counsel
even prepared a draft indictment. In the indictment of her law associate
and mentor, she is referred to 35 times, albeit only as his "billing
partner." She also said "I don't recall" or its equivalent 50 times in a
42 paragraph response to a congressional committee looking into her
dubious activities.
This, in short, is what American politics has become as we head into the
most mobbed up election in our history.
But Rudolph Giuliani and Hillary Clinton are not the cause of our
problems. They are merely exploiters of them, two remarkably corrupt
individuals rising to the top because of a politics driven by myth,
propaganda and a stunning lack of relevant information from the media.
Here is an example of the latter:
In the past month, Google finds 22,000 mentions of Hillary Clinton in
the news media, but only two mentions of Webster Hubbell in a mainstream
journal, both in one of the Washington Post's blogs. Similarly, there
are only three mentions of Jim McDougal, another criminal associate of
Hillary Clinton.
As noted here before, we all live in a Mafia neighborhood now. We are,
in fact, so accepting of this that we hardly notice offenses that once
would have easily disqualified a candidate. Here's how I discussed this
phenomenon six years ago in my book, "Why Bother?":
[][][] Underneath the sturm und drang of political debate, the American
establishment -- from corporate executive to media to politician --
reached a remarkable consensus that it no longer had to play by any
rules but its own. There is a phrase for this in some Latin American
countries: the culture of impunity. In such places it has led to death
squads, to the live bodies of dissidents being thrown out of military
helicopters, to routine false imprisonment and baroque financial fraud.
We are not there yet but are certainly moving in the same direction.
In a culture of impunity, rules serve the internal logic of the system
rather than whatever values typically guide a country, such as those of
its constitution, church or tradition. The culture of impunity
encourages coups and cruelty, at best practices only titular democracy,
and puts itself at the service of what Hong Kong, borrowing from fascist
Germany and Italy, refers to as "functional constituencies," which is
mainly to say major corporations.
A culture of impunity varies from ordinary political corruption in that
the latter represents deviance from the culture while the former becomes
the culture. Such a culture does not announce itself. It creeps up day
by day, deal by deal, euphemism by euphemism. The intellectual
achievement, technocratic pyrotechnics and calm rationality that serves
as a patina for the culture of impunity can be dangerously misleading.
In a culture of impunity, what replaces constitution, precedent,
values, tradition, fairness, consensus, debate and all that sort of
arcane stuff? Mainly greed. As Michael Douglas put it in Wall Street:
"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed
works."
Of course, there has always been an overabundance of greed in America's
political and economic system. But a number of things have changed. As
activist attorney George LaRoche points out, "Once, I think, we knew our
greedy were greedy but they were obligated to justify their greed by
reference to some of the other values in which all of us could
participate. Thus, maybe 'old Joe' was a crook but he was also a 'pillar
of the business community' or 'a member of the Lodge' or a 'good
husband' and these things mattered. Now the pretense of justification is
gone and greed is its own justification."
The result is a stunning lack of restraint. We find ourselves without
heroism, without debate over right and wrong, with little but an endless
narcissistic struggle by the powerful to get more money, more power and
more press than the next person. In the chase, anything goes and the
only standard is whether you win, lose or get caught.
The major political struggle has become not between conservative and
liberal but between ourselves and our political, economic, social and
media elites. Between the toxic and the natural, the corporate and the
communal, the technocratic and the human, the competitive and the
cooperative, the efficient and the just, meaningless data and meaningful
understanding, the destructive and the decent." [][][]
The culture of impunity is not just a national phenomenon. We have
politicians without borders at every level. For example, in recent
months - following the election of a thirty something supposedly
reformist mayor - the city of Washington has been treated to a stunning
blend of arrogance, corruption and contempt towards citizens, all
smoothly melded without hardly a peep from either media or victims.
In less than a year, Mayor Adrian Fenty has:
- Effectively dismantled the elected school board, replacing its powers
with an autocratic superintendent selected by the local business lobby,
whose developer members are cheerfully eying the availability of soon to
be closed schools.
- Fined anti-war demonstrators for putting up protest notices.
- Ended a taxi fare system that for decades has given DC more cabs per
capita than any place in the country and provided the city with some
rare upward economic mobility for the less wealthy - replacing it with
a system that will allow a few corporations to seize control of the
industry and reduce the number of drivers.
- Announced plans to destroy government e-mails after six months,
greatly reducing available evidence against criminal elements within the
government. The mayor was forced to retreat from this one.
- Announced plans to deny car owners the right to make personal
appearance on parking ticket cases, which would greatly reduce their
chances of appeal.
- Tripled the number of key aides earning over $175k a year.
Writes local independent journalist Gary Imhoff about the school
takeover: "'I signed on for reform; I didn't sign on for autocracy,'
said Councilmember Jim Graham at the angry city council breakfast with
Mayor Fenty today. But autocracy is what he got. Councilmembers were
warned not to give Fenty the limitless power he asked for over the
school system, but they didn't listen. Now they are reaping the results
of their folly. . . They haven't talked to parents, or residents of the
city, or even councilmembers, because they don't think they have
anything to learn from them and don't believe they need to. The plans
have been made; they have been announced; and councilmembers and
citizens will hear and obey.
"Citizens voted for Fenty, and that's the last say they'll have over
school governance. Councilmembers voted for Fenty's school takeover, and
that's the last say they'll have. All the inconveniences of democracy
are behind us now, and we are graced with the efficiency of autocracy.
There was an old joke. . . that communism was a system of "one man, one
vote -- one time only."
While the school takeover is more significant, another example gnaws
almost as much: the treatment of public libraries. In a couple of cases,
the city plans to bury neighborhood libraries (and in one case a fire
station as well) in high rise commercial developments. Worse, in the
case of the central library named after Martin Luther King Jr, there
have been discussions with Bloomingdales to take over the building.
Where the books will go has yet to be decided. The scheme - which
couldn't be more insulting and emblematic of the effects of
gentrification on DC - would replace the first great local tribute to
the black civil rights leader with a store catering to white consumerist
culture. . . from "I have a dream" to "I want it all."
One high library official even suggested that maybe to they didn't need
such a large building downtown. Perhaps a smaller reading center would
do, with books brought in from elsewhere as needed. As one city council
member put it, downtown land is too valuable for such public buildings.
The library made it onto the DC Preservation League's list of the city's
most endangered places, which described it like this:
"The only example in Washington, DC of the mature style of pre-eminent
Modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the Martin Luther King,
Jr. Memorial Library has stood as the only monument to Dr. King in the
nation's capital for the past 30 years. It holds special significance to
the millions of Washingtonians who have come to the library over the
past decades to participate in a wide variety of programs and
activities, and is a center of community life in the District."
Admittedly, the library's interior was not well designed and a case can
be made for replacing it with something better. But no case can be made
for replacing it with something worse,
Even the most corrupt local officials in the past have been careful to
respect the culture and icons of their community. A James Michael
Curley, Richard Daley or Marion Barry, for all their faults, honored and
often exemplified the cities they ruled. They understood that things
like libraries, fire stations and recreation centers were symbols of a
community's identity and values. They brought communities together; they
served as a neighborhood's display window; they helped define the "we"
in a place.
But in a city where campaigns are won with dollars rather than votes -
which is to say in much of modern urban America - soon or later the
politicians start to lose touch with, and interest in, such matters. It
never even occurs to them that stuffing a library into the high rise to
benefit one of their campaign contributors reveals them to be as vacuous
and soulless as the building itself.
In yet another example, a few days ago the city demolished a federally
owned Sears mail order house built of some 10,000 parts in the 1920s.
According to a report on the action:
"For nearly four years, Palisades residents and others around the city
have flocked to support the home's preservation and return to the
private sector. Over 1,450 people signed letters to the city asking for
the house to be saved from demolition and put back into the hands of a
new owner who would restore it in place and put it back on the tax rolls
from which it had been absent for 50 years. Advisory Neighborhood
Commission 3D voted overwhelmingly in 2006 to adopt a three-page
resolution calling for the property's return to private ownership and
restoration in place. The Jesse Baltimore House became a symbol for
Palisades' residents who wished to preserve their community's rapidly
disappearing early 20th century homes and their community's historic
origins as a working class streetcar suburb of Washington DC."
What is striking about this is not the city ultimately decided to get
rid of the house, but that it did so before it had met its legal
responsibilities under the National Historic Preservation Act;" without
notice; over a Thanksgiving holiday when its advocates were otherwise
involved; and in contempt of letters by 1,450 people and the local
advisory neighborhood council. A good politician from an earlier era -
good or bad - would never have handled the situation in such a high
handed, arrogant manner. Now it's standard operating procedure.
The unspoken message of such actions - ones that treat communities not
unlike George Bush has treated the world - is that citizens no longer
matter. With enough cash and good airtime, they simply become
irrelevant, whether it's Clinton and Giuliani or a mayor like Adrian
Fenty. The one advantage of the local version is that the politicians'
disdain for the citizen is harder to hide.
The single most important factor creating politicians without borders is
the source of their money. As long as the thing that allows them to win
is not the public choice of the voter but the private funds of a small
number of contributors, the system is doomed. At a rally on the steps of
the Capitol in 1999, I spoke to this:
[][][] I have three objections to our current system of campaign
financing.
The first is literary. Being a writer I try to show respect for words,
to leave their meanings untwisted and unobscured. . .
For example, for centuries ordinary people have known exactly what a
bribe was. The Oxford English Dictionary found it described in 1528 as
meaning to "to influence corruptly, by a consideration." Another 16th
century definition describes bribery as "a reward given to pervert the
judgment or corrupt the conduct" of someone.
In more modern times, the Meat Inspection Act of 1917 prohibits giving
"money or other thing of value, with intent to influence" to a
government official. Simple and wise.
But that was before the lawyers and the politicians got around to
rewriting the meaning of bribery. And so we came to a time not so many
months ago when the Supreme Court actually ruled that a law prohibiting
the giving of gifts to a public official "for or because of an official
act" didn't mean anything unless you knew exactly what the official act
was. In other words, bribery was only illegal if the bribee was dumb
enough to give you a receipt.
The media has gone along with the scam, virtually dropping the word from
its vocabulary in favor of phrases like "inappropriate gift," "the
appearance of a conflict of interest," or the phrase which brings us
here today: "campaign contribution."
Another example is the remarkable redefinition of money to mean speech.
You can test this one out by making a deal with a prostitute and if a
cop comes along, simply say, "Officer, I wasn't giving her money, I was
just giving her a speech." If that doesn't work, you can try giving more
of that speech to the cop. Or try telling the IRS next April that "I
have the right to remain silent." And so forth. I wouldn't advise it. .
.
My second objection to our system of campaign financing is economic.
It's just too damn expensive for the taxpayer. The real cost is not the
campaign contributions themselves. The real cost is what is subsequently
paid in return out of public funds.
A case in point: Public Campaign recently reported that in 1996, when
Congress voted to lift the minimum wage 90 cents an hour, business
interests extracted $21 billion in custom-designed tax benefits. These
business interests gave only about $36 million in campaign contributions
so they got out of the public treasury nearly 600 times what they put
in. And you helped pay for it. . .
This is repeated over and over. For example, the oil industry in one
recent year gave $23 million in campaign contributions and got nearly $9
billion in tax breaks.
The bottom line is this: if you want to save public money, support
public campaign financing.
My final objection is biologic. Elections are for and between human
beings. How do you tell when you're dealing with a person? Well, they
bleed, burp, wiggle their toes and have sex. They register for the
draft. They register to vote. They watch MTV. They go to prison and they
have babies and cancer. Eventually they die and are buried or cremated.
Now this may seem obvious to you, but there are tens of thousands of
lawyers and judges and politicians who simply don't believe it. They
will tell you that a corporation is a person, based on a corrupt Supreme
Court interpretation of the 14th Amendment from back in the robber baron
era of the late 19th century -- a time in many ways not unlike our own.
. .
Corporations say they just want to be treated like people, but that's
not true. Test it out. Try to exercise your free speech on the property
of a corporation just like they exercise theirs in your election. You'll
find out quickly who is more of a person. We can take care of this
biologic problem by applying a simple literary solution: tell the truth.
A corporation is not a person and should not be allowed to be called one
under the law. . .
At root, dear friends, our problem is that politicians have come to have
more fear of their campaign contributors than they have of the voters.
We have to teach politicians to be afraid of us again. And nothing will
do it better than a coming together of a righteously outraged and
unified constituency demanding an end to bribery of politicians, whether
it occurs before, during, or after a campaign. [][][]
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