Reminder: “Yes, We’re Corrupt”: A List of Politicians Admitting That Money Controls Politics

[Jefferson23]

*Vote for Bernie Sanders in the primary and end the true cause of gridlock in DC.
This is a fight that will take years but is doable and a worthy fight for all Americans.
When you are the recipient of said monies you are NOT best placed to fight back against
them. We are governed by a TWO PARTY system, and neutralizing everyone is essential
not only our own. Hillary Clinton's connections are a solid reason to vote for Sanders in
the primaries, she is not best placed for this most important fight..a fight for our democracy
..the Sanders campaign is not about "free stuff".

From 2015:

One of the most embarrassing aspects of U.S. politics is politicians who deny that money has any impact on what they do. For instance, Tom Corbett, Pennsylvania’s notoriously fracking-friendly former governor, got $1.7 million from oil and gas companies but assured voters that “The contributions don’t affect my decisions.” If you’re trying to get people to vote for you, you can’t tell them that what they want doesn’t matter.

This pose is also popular with a certain prominent breed of pundits, who love to tell us “Don’t Follow the Money” (New York Times columnist David Brooks), or “Money does not buy elections” (Freakonomics co-author Stephen Dubner on public radio’s Marketplace), or “Money won’t buy you votes” (Yale Law School professor Peter H. Schuck in the Los Angeles Times).

Meanwhile, 85 percent of Americans say we need to either “completely rebuild” or make “fundamental changes” to the campaign finance system. Just 13 percent think “only minor changes are necessary,” less than the 18 percent of Americans who believe they’ve been in the presence of a ghost.

So we’ve decided that it would be useful to collect examples of actual politicians acknowledging the glaringly obvious reality. Here’s a start; I’m sure there must be many others, so if you have suggestions, please leave them in the comments or email me. I’d also love to speak directly to current or former politicians who have an opinion about it.

• “I gave to many people, before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And do you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me. And that’s a broken system.” — Donald Trump in 2015.

• “This is what’s wrong. [Donald Trump] buys and sells politicians of all stripes … he’s used to buying politicians.” — Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., in 2015.

“Now [the United States is] just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and congressmembers. … So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors …” — Jimmy Carter, former president, in 2015. (Thanks to Sam Sacks.)

• “The millionaire class and the billionaire class increasingly own the political process, and they own the politicians that go to them for money. … we are moving very, very quickly from a democratic society, one person, one vote, to an oligarchic form of society, where billionaires would be determining who the elected officials of this country are.” — Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in 2015. (Thanks to Robert Wilson in comments below.) Sanders has also said many similar things, such as “I think many people have the mistaken impression that Congress regulates Wall Street. … The real truth is that Wall Street regulates the Congress.” (Thanks to ND, via email.)

• “You have to go where the money is. Now where the money is, there’s almost always implicitly some string attached. … It’s awful hard to take a whole lot of money from a group you know has a particular position then you conclude they’re wrong [and] vote no.” — Vice President Joe Biden in 2015.

• “Today’s whole political game, run by an absurdist’s nightmare of moneyed elites, is ridiculous – a game in which corporations are people and money is magically empowered to speak; candidates trek to the corporate suites and secret retreats of the rich, shamelessly selling their political souls.” – Jim Hightower, former Democratic agricultural commissioner of Texas, 2015. (Thanks to CS, via email.)

• “People tell me all the time that our politics in Washington are broken and that multimillionaires, billionaires and big corporations are calling all the shots … it’s hard not to agree.” — Russ Feingold, three-term Democratic senator from Wisconsin, in 2015 announcing he’s running for the Senate again. (Thanks to CS, via email.)

LAS VEGAS, NV - APRIL 25: Republican presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) speaks during the Republican Jewish Coalition spring leadership meeting at The Venetian Las Vegas on April 25, 2015 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Republican Jewish Coalition's annual meeting featured potential Republican presidential candidates in attendance, along with Republican super donor Sheldon Adelson. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas

• “Lobbyists and career politicians today make up what I call the Washington Cartel. … [They] on a daily basis are conspiring against the American people. … [C]areer politicians’ ears and wallets are open to the highest bidder.” — Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in 2015.

• “I can legally accept gifts from lobbyists unlimited in number and in value … As you might guess, what results is a corruption of the institution of Missouri government, a corruption driven by big money in politics.” — Missouri State Sen. Rob Schaaf, 2015. (Thanks to DK, via email.)

• “When you start to connect the actual access to money, and the access involves law enforcement officials, you have clearly crossed a line. What is going on is shocking, terrible.” – James E. Tierney, former attorney general of Maine, in 2014.

• “Allowing people and corporate interest groups and others to spend an unlimited amount of unidentified money has enabled certain individuals to swing any and all elections, whether they are congressional, federal, local, state … Unfortunately and rarely are these people having goals which are in line with those of the general public. History well shows that there is a very selfish game that’s going on and that our government has largely been put up for sale.” – John Dingell, 29-term Democratic congressman from Michigan, in 2014 just before he retired.

• “When some think tank comes up with the legislation and tells you not to fool with it, why are you even a legislator anymore? You just sit there and take votes and you’re kind of a feudal serf for folks with a lot of money.” — Dale Schultz, 32-year Republican state legislator in Wisconsin and former state Senate Majority Leader, in 2013 before retiring rather than face a primary challenger backed by Americans for Prosperity. Several months later Schultz said: “I firmly believe that we are beginning in this country to look like a Russian-style oligarchy where a couple of dozen billionaires have basically bought the government.”

in full: https://theintercept.com/2015/07/30/politicians-admitting-obvious-fact-money-affects-vote/

[kristopher]

1. Awesome content. Let's keep it bumped and see if we can add to it.

I'm going to start looking into the American Legislative Exchange Council.

[Jefferson23]

2. Thanks, I would appreciate that, excellent idea. n/t

[AzDar]

3. K & R

[Skwmom]

4. Government corruption goes far beyond campaign finance. n/t

[Jefferson23]

5. No one would deny that, yet if we do nothing to dial it back we'll remain a non

functioning democracy.

[Jefferson23]

6. President Obama Sides with U.S. Corporate Tax Cheats

William K. Black
February 16, 2016 Bloomington, MN

I have been planning to respond to a January 26, 2016 article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Washington’s Corporate Purge” that begins with the claim that “Bernie and Hillary compete to drive more U.S. companies overseas.” My title was going to be: “WSJ Shills for Tax Cheats and Cheers Race to the Bottom.” The context was a typical WSJ claim that it was “moral” to do a tax inversion deal with Ireland to cut a U.S. company’s corporate tax rate dramatically. Murdoch’s minions’ explanation of this “moral” concept is as follows: “A CEO obliged to act in the best interests of shareholders cannot ignore this competitive reality.” The idea that CEOs “act in the best interests of shareholders” as opposed to the best interests of the CEO is contrary to economic logic and reality, but let’s focus on the claim that as soon as any competitor engages in the race to the bottom on taxes all U.S. CEOs have a “moral” duty to race to the bottom by avoiding paying U.S. taxes. If that is true, then it is essential to either impose a new form of taxation that corporations cannot evade through such inversion scams ( a point that Donald Trump, of all people, made in the most recent debate) or for governments to cooperate to prohibit such a race to the bottom.

If a CEO owes a “duty” to evade taxation, surely all couples and parents owe a duty to their spouse/partner and their children to evade taxation. We can destroy almost any civilization under this “logic” in which tax cheats are the new “normal” and “new moral” exemplars.

But as I was preparing to write that article I read with shock (OK, I admit that I was naïve to be shocked at this late date) that the Obama administration is siding with the massive corporate tax cheats. Instead of cooperating with other governments to end the suicidal race to the bottom or imposing other taxes and penalties on the tax evaders, the administration is demanding that the EU cease cracking down on tax evasion scams by U.S. corporations. The same Wall Street Journal reported on February 11, 2016 that “U.S. Treasury’s Lew Challenges EU on Corporate Tax Investigations.” And yes, I understand money, but I also understand that engaging in a race to the bottom distorts commerce and produces a Gresham’s dynamic in which the most unethical CEOs will drive the most ethical CEOs from the C-suites and produce serious job losses.

Watching the Obama administration join Murdoch in shilling for U.S. corporate tax evaders and demanding that the EU not attempt to stop the race to the bottom on corporate taxation rather than supporting that EU effort is painful, but no longer surprising. Hillary Clinton says that we must not point these facts out because doing so is “disloyal” to Obama. Obama is being disloyal to the American people and the stated principles of his Party when he shills for wealthy corporate tax evaders. We do any official our greatest service as citizens when we hold them accountable, not when we self-censor.The President is an elected official, not a saint, and he or she needs us to always speak truth to power.

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2016/02/president-obama-sides-u-s-corporate-tax-cheats.html#more-10074

[bbgrunt]

7. K n R!!

[Jefferson23]

8. Hillary Clinton's 2001 vote and the reasoning she gave for it:

snip* But in the endnotes of Warren’s book, she was dismissive of Clinton’s argument that she had improved the bill.

“While this amendment may have provided some political cover, it offers virtually no financial help to single mothers, since the overwhelming majority of ex-husbands don’t pay anything in distributions during bankruptcy,” Warren wrote. “Of far more importance was the fact that the bill would permit credit card companies to compete with women after bankruptcy for their ex-husbands’ limited income, and this provision remained unchanged in the 1998 and 2001 versions of the bill. Senator Clinton claimed that the bill improved circumstances for single mothers, but her view was not shared by any women’s groups or consumer groups.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/02/09/elizabeth-warrens-critique-of-hillary-clintons-2001-bankruptcy-vote/

“You will not find that I ever changed a view or a vote because of any donation that I ever received.”

–Hillary Clinton, in the fifth Democratic debate, Feb. 4, 2016

[Jefferson23]

9. Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf

Study: US Congress Literally Doesn’t Care What You Think

Have you ever felt like the government doesn’t really care what you think?

Professors Martin Gilens (Princeton University) and Benjamin I. Page (Northwestern University) looked at more than 20 years worth of data to answer a simple question: Does the government represent the people?

Their study took data from nearly 2000 public opinion surveys and compared it to the policies that ended up becoming law. In other words, they compared what the public wanted to what the government actually did. What they found was extremely unsettling: The opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at all.

This video gives a quick rundown of their findings — it all boils down to one simple graph:

Princeton University study: Public opinion has “near-zero” impact on U.S. law.

Gilens & Page found that the number of Americans for or against any idea has no impact on the likelihood that Congress will make it law.

“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

One thing that does have an influence? Money. While the opinions of the bottom 90% of income earners in America have a “statistically non-significant impact,” Economic elites, business interests, and people who can afford lobbyists still carry major influence.

Nearly every issue we face as a nation is caught in the grip of corruption.



in full: http://www.globalresearch.ca/study-congress-literally-doesnt-care-what-you-think/5466723

[Jefferson23]

10. kick.