flacaltenn
Diamond Member
Leftists, Libertarians and MOST Conservatives agree.. There is an increasing amount of corporate/govt collusion. And the one demand that we're hearing from the OWS "officials" is to get the corporate money out of Washington..
But there's are 2 sides to the collusion. There's the increasing ability and propensity for Washington to meddle in market details. And the power to pick winners and stomp on losers. Then there is the money that comes from corporate interests to fund or reward politicians to bend influence their way. But which is the CAUSE -- and which is the EFFECT?
That -- we can't agree on. Seems obvious that even if all corporate cash were banished tomorrow that any number of proxy methods could be used to obtain GOVT power and influence. As in the Solyndra case, the influence came from individuals and investors -- not the corporation. And it's clear to me in that case that the POWER and abuse of position in GOVT was the CAUSE of that collusion..
There isn't even much PROOF that corporate cash has the influence that our leftist buds believe that it does.
Does Corporate Money Lead to Political Corruption? - NYTimes.com
It's ENTIRELY possible that politicians ARE the ones doing the shakedown -- isn't it? Looking for opportunities to stir the pot with their long powerful reach and troll for campaign bucks. Not CLEAR that the envelope with the money in it shows up first..
Campaign finance: Corporate money and elections | The Economist
Like I said it's not really CLEAR that the campaign cash is the CAUSE of the GOVT/CORP collusion.
Lots of other arguments why I STRONGLY feel this way. One is that if the govt is gonna insist on writing DETAILED energy policy or DETAILED healthcare policy -- that is a CLEAR indication of cause and effect. The GOVT assumes the power and influence to meddle and then cannot accomplish their policy goal without fornicating with industry to learn how it works, what it's plans are, and get the research and data required to write even a reasonable approximation of energy or health policy. It is GOVT initiation of collusion.
There's another fact that backs up the theory..
Does Corporate Money Taint Opera (and Other Arts)? - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine
Corporate money sponsoring public organizations and events IS ALWAY suspect of influence. Rather than simple brand recognition and public outreach. But when GOVT places it's massive cash into the public sphere -- folks always tend to give their "speech money" a pass. Even when there are obnoxious messages attached to the Govt money.
Keep GOVT within the bounds of TRADITIONAL regulation, limit it's power to meddle in picking winners/losers, seek out and PUNISH the politicians who shakedown corporations for money --- and I believe you'd see HUGE decreases in GOVT/CORP collusion..
But there's are 2 sides to the collusion. There's the increasing ability and propensity for Washington to meddle in market details. And the power to pick winners and stomp on losers. Then there is the money that comes from corporate interests to fund or reward politicians to bend influence their way. But which is the CAUSE -- and which is the EFFECT?
That -- we can't agree on. Seems obvious that even if all corporate cash were banished tomorrow that any number of proxy methods could be used to obtain GOVT power and influence. As in the Solyndra case, the influence came from individuals and investors -- not the corporation. And it's clear to me in that case that the POWER and abuse of position in GOVT was the CAUSE of that collusion..
There isn't even much PROOF that corporate cash has the influence that our leftist buds believe that it does.
Does Corporate Money Lead to Political Corruption? - NYTimes.com
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy noted in his opinion that no evidence was marshaled in 100,000 pages of legal briefs to show that unrestricted campaign money ever bought a lawmaker’s vote. And even after Congress further tightened the rules with the landmark McCain-Feingold law in 2002, banning hundreds of millions of dollars in unlimited contributions to the political parties, public trust in government fell to new lows, according to polls.
And what about the corporations that contributed so much of that money? A review of the biggest corporate donors found that their stock prices were unaffected after they stopped giving to the parties. The results suggest that those companies did not lose their influence and may have been giving “because they were shaken down by politicians,” said Nathaniel Persily, a professor at Columbia Law School who has studied the law’s impact.
But some politicians say reformers like Mr. Wertheimer are unrealistic about how money and politicians mix. They cite an old political maxim, attributed in a more vulgar form to the onetime California kingpin Jesse Unruh: If you can’t take their money and vote against them, you don’t belong in politics.
It's ENTIRELY possible that politicians ARE the ones doing the shakedown -- isn't it? Looking for opportunities to stir the pot with their long powerful reach and troll for campaign bucks. Not CLEAR that the envelope with the money in it shows up first..
Campaign finance: Corporate money and elections | The Economist
This brings us back to the question my colleague raised last week of how much campaign spending by private parties influences political outcomes. My colleague cites a 2002 paper by three MIT political scientists that finds that campaign contributions have little influence on candidates' political actions, which are overwhelmingly determined by party and by the convictions of voters in their districts. (They restate a provocative 1972 question by political scientist Gordon Tullock: "Why is there so little money in political campaigns?"...given that an investment of a few million dollars could, one imagines, affect billions of dollars in government spending.) They argue that political giving is not a form of vote-buying, but a form of political participation.
Still, the question remains: what are the mechanisms through which rich people's political opinions influence politicians' policy decisions? It's not a simple matter of BP giving boatloads of campaign cash to politicians who then vote for more offshore drilling, or creating ads themselves that say "Vote for Candidate X"! Or not usually, anyway. With members of congress constantly complaining that they spend at least half of their time flying home to fundraise, I find it hard to believe that campaign contributions aren't a big part of the story. Every political science paper I read on the subject says "more research is needed". But the thing is, one thing Citizens United seems to have done, so far, is eliminate much of the data we would need to do that research. Massive anonymous campaign spending makes it impossible for neutral researchers to figure out who's spending the money that influences campaigns. We don't know how money affects our electoral system, and, unless Congress passes some new electoral-transparency laws that this Supreme Court can uphold, we probably never will.
Like I said it's not really CLEAR that the campaign cash is the CAUSE of the GOVT/CORP collusion.
Lots of other arguments why I STRONGLY feel this way. One is that if the govt is gonna insist on writing DETAILED energy policy or DETAILED healthcare policy -- that is a CLEAR indication of cause and effect. The GOVT assumes the power and influence to meddle and then cannot accomplish their policy goal without fornicating with industry to learn how it works, what it's plans are, and get the research and data required to write even a reasonable approximation of energy or health policy. It is GOVT initiation of collusion.
There's another fact that backs up the theory..
Does Corporate Money Taint Opera (and Other Arts)? - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine
It seems the guerrilla arts activists haven't thought that far. But there is at least an underlying presumption in these campaigns that corporate money is tainted, impure and hides a sinister agenda, while public funding is benign and harmless. Recent history tells us otherwise.
During the New Labour years, state funding for the arts in Britain was relatively plentiful, but so were the conditions tacked on to it. This legacy lives on, as arts practitioners and institutions seeking state funding are still compelled to prove that they can meet a range of targets that have nothing to do with creating and presenting high-quality art and everything to do with fulfilling various political agendas. The price of state funding is all too often turning art into an instrument for tackling everything from racism and bullying to obesity and crime.
Rothschild of course notes that by supporting opera, museums, and so forth, companies like BP are trying to buy good PR. However, corporations rarely try to dictate the "message" of the arts they support. Their hope is that the better and more popular the art, the better the PR they garner. In contrast, it is rare that government-supported art goes untainted by politics, e.g., National Endowment for the Arts support for "Appalachian Voices" performances against strip mining or New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani Sen. Jesse Helm's attempt to censor "Piss Christ."
Corporate support arts message: Please buy our products. Government support arts message: Do this or don't do that.
Corporate money sponsoring public organizations and events IS ALWAY suspect of influence. Rather than simple brand recognition and public outreach. But when GOVT places it's massive cash into the public sphere -- folks always tend to give their "speech money" a pass. Even when there are obnoxious messages attached to the Govt money.
Keep GOVT within the bounds of TRADITIONAL regulation, limit it's power to meddle in picking winners/losers, seek out and PUNISH the politicians who shakedown corporations for money --- and I believe you'd see HUGE decreases in GOVT/CORP collusion..
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