The campaigns for the 2012 contest to see which part of the Republican/Democrat Uniparty will pocket the most bribes as they sell out their fellow citizens had begun. The thing that will be different this time is the effect of the horrid Citizen’s United decision on a General Election. But how does the public fight back against that much Manufactured Consent?
In January 2010, Chief Justice John Roberts directly violated his promise to the Senate and the people not to engage in judicial activism and excreted the Citizen’s United Decision on the American Electorate. This resulted in the funds being spent to influence elections by outside groups, meaning not directly by campaigns, being increased to a ridiculous extreme. The Center for Responsive Politics estimates that the top 10 Special Interest Groups in the 2010 Election Cycle, 8 of which are Conservative (Chamber of Commerce, Club for Growth, NRA and American Future Fund among them), spent 160 Million on this Mid Term Election. The total amount for all groups was over $481 million spent on running ads, making phone calls, distributing literature and other activities.
I’m writing this from Nevada, one of the worst hit states during the recession. Outside groups spent $1,659,583 to support Democrats (mainly Harry Reid) and $6,573,603 to defeat Democrats in the 2010 mid terms.
And the ads coming directly from the campaigns were horrendous enough to begin with. You know the ones, they start with “ I’m a bought and paid for stooge of corporate interests and I approved this message”. Indeed, Sharon Angle looked a camera in the eye and claimed that she never said there was a need to “phase Medicare and Social Security out” when we could look at a clip of her saying exactly that 2 commercials later. The irony of living in a society which claims to have to cut state’s budgets for misguided notions of austerity but can still spend over 8 million dollars to influence an election in a single state while real unemployment is at Depression era levels and direct lies are being flung around is not lost on me.
And there was another relevant issue regarding these horrible outside campaigns. In no small sense they are really outside campaigns! Foreign corporations are being allowed influence in our elections because of the Citizen’s United decisions. Although there is a section of the law 2 US Code 441e that prohibits foreign nationals from contributing to election efforts, there is also a loophole in the law. There is nothing stopping a foreign national from coming here and starting a corporation (which because it was organized in the US is a domestic corporation) and using his financial power against the interests of the American people in our own elections.
And if you think that this ownership and influence from outside the US is a trivial matter please consider that not only is the BP oil spill still a recent memory we are not over, but…
The embarrassment to the state of Wisconsin we all know as Scott Walker recently had a cozy relationship with a foreign security firm, Wackenhut. Wackenhut, by the way is the same company that was caught red handed with homosexual hazing while guarding our embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. While in charge of the Milwaukee County Court House, Scott Walker decided to fire the public employees represented by a union and replace them with UK owned Wakenhut non-union employees (one supervisor was an ex-felon) because of a “budget emergency”. The whole thing was a mess which cost the taxpayers more money after the decision was reversed and the guards replaced and it didn’t save the taxpayer anywhere near what was being claimed. It actually cost them $430,000!
And if we allow this trend to continue, things will only get worse. The 2012 estimates for continuing this trend are enough to make any US Citizen/Voter/Taxpayer nauseous. The lowball estimates are close to $500 million. What can do in the face of this evil? What course of action do We, the People have against $500 million dollars spent to usurp our elections and extract the wealth of this country legally and legitimately by domestic and foreign corporations?
The answer I would like to propose is easier than we might think. It is along the lines of something we are doing naturally. It involves avoiding advertising. Think of how natural it is to switch channels during an election when you hear the words “I’m a pawn of private tyrants and I approved this message.” Specifically, I’m talking about BOYCOTTING not only as many lying political advertisements but all advertisements (as much as humanly possible).
What advertisers do whether it is a good product, bad product, or sleazy politician is try to expose them to as many eyeballs as possible. If we were to just simply not look at these ads, they don’t get our eyeballs. But if we punish the regular advertisers who are right beside the sleazy campaign liars, we could possibly bring market pressure to ending the monstrous political status quo which has been evolving since Jan 24,2010. It’s like the holy wraiths at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. If we refuse to look at them, they can’t hurt us!
Now to be sure, the candidate or side that spends the most does not always win. Although these outside groups spent $2.8 million to defeat Blanche Lincoln and she lost, they spent $6.7 million to defeat Harry Reid and he won. Although it can be demonstrated that the spending does not cause the win (This has been demonstrated by Freakanomics Stephen Levitt http://liberation.typepad.com/liberation/2007/05/freakonomics_th.html) candidates that spend the most often do win. One of the bigger reasons that accusations of Obama being a Socialist are laughable is the large amount of corporate donors whom contributed to Obama for America http://www.nndb.com/org/684/000167183/. Scroll down that list and see how many CEOs and CFOs you find. The main reason that he needs to solicit their help is the cost of running a Presidential campaign! And rest assured, they expect payback for their investment!
And campaigns are indeed expensive. Here in Nevada, Sue Lowden, the woman whom Sharon Angle defeated to win the Republican nomination, is still trying to pay for her failed campaign. She has debts in excess of $1,000,000. http://www.lvrj.com/news/campaign-debts-dogging-lowden-117390293.html?ref=293 She is worth somewhere between $50 and $200 million, but is hoping the people she owes money to will accept one of her chickens in barter. Had she won and was a sworn in as a Senator right now, do you think she would have any trouble finding some organization in Washington that would take care of those campaign debts for her? If some corporation, foreign owned or not, would donate towards American Action Networks $26 million dollar financing of sleazy attack ads, then they would cough up some money to help out a new Senator.
I think that it would be a great thing if all of it was wasted money and an educated informed citizenry capable of critical thinking decided elections!
The beauty of a boycott of advertisement until the General Election is over is that it can turn all of that into wasted money. And the purveyors of this harmful intellectual sludge are often the same people responsible for stuff like “Where’s the Beef?”, the Old Spice Guy, and Geico Caveman. If we can bring down the percentage of eyeballs that turn into customers, then those advertisers are naturally going to put pressure on their sleazier peers to stay out of our elections.
The fact that so many candidates require a hard sell to convince the electorate that they are not bought and paid for cronies of behind-the-scenes well-financed power players is very telling in and of itself. Whether it is a cruddy used car, a heart clogging fast food meal, or a politician who is a prostitute to tyrannical private power, the crappier the product the harder the sell is required to get people to buy it. All we need to do to thwart this is turn the TV off, switch the channel, leave the room or in the case of internet video, shrink the window and turn the sound off until the commercial is over!
But we also have let advertisers know that these merchants attempting to sell us a foul and putrid product are costing them and the good products our eyeballs!
Couch Potatoes of the World Unite, we have nothing to lose but the Old Spice Guy!
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