The North Coast times-eagle., July 01, 2006, Page 3, Image 3

NORTH COAST TIMES EAGLE, J U L Y 2006
PAGE 3
The influence of Big Money on U.S. elections cannot be
underestimated. (See Greg Palast's “Jim Crow in Cyberspace" in
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, the work on election fraud ’
by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman [NCTE, Marpril 2006],
and the recent articles by Warren Stewart, “Do You Know How
Your Vote Will Be Counted?" and Fred Grimm “Election Official
Hammered for Telling the Truth ") The problem with the role of
money in a supposedly democratic country is not restricted to the
many and all-too regular scandals — such as the Abramoff affair
or the conviction of Randy ‘Duke' Cunningham — nor is the
problem restricted to the corruption that has ensnared elected
officials and exposed lobbyists as little more than bribes-makers
and bagmen. (See Geov Parrish, “That Old Fashioned Corrupt­
ion,” and Katrina vanden Huevel’s “Annals of Outrage I, II & III.")
It is, rather, that money, as John McCain famously said, “is the
mother’s milk of politics" (at least in the U.S. political system).
The need to raise money at every level, from city to state to
federal offices, pollutes and perverts the democratic process.
The corruption is bipartisan; at present, the Republican
Party enjoys greater favor with the corporate paymasters than
the Democratic Party, but both parties are “on the take." It does
little to assuage one’s concern for democracy that one party gets
55%-60% of the paymasters’ money and the other only 45%-
50%. In a country that prides itself on being democratic, private
money peddles its influence across the political spectrum.
To cite one illustrative example, Tyson Slocum of Public
Citizen, an energy industry watchdog, reports that Big Oil & Gas
doled out $55 million to various campaigns for legislative and
executive seats since 2001. And why not, ExxonMobil alone
made a profit of $36.1 billion in 2005, the most profit ever
recorded by a U.S. corporation in a year, and a rate of return
on investment of 46%-59%. And what did these donations buy
the industry? Among other things, when the executives of the top
five oil and gas companies were called before Congress to testify
about possible price-gouging and the prospect of a windfall
profits tax, the five company representatives were not required
to testify under oath!
I suspect that everything I have just recounted is entirely
by design of Big Money interests.The role of money ensures that
only the wealthy and well-connected have any chance of influen­
cing the political process or holding elected office at a significant
level. In the 2004 election campaign, 549 people each raised
$100,000 for Bush's re-election, and John Keny, too, relied on
big donors on his side of the political equation. Thus, it was not
by sheer coincidence that, in the 2000 presidential campaign,
voters were given a choice between a Yale graduate, whose
father had been President and grandfather a Senator, and a
Harvard graduate whose father was a Senator. And in the 2004
presidential contest, the choice was even more narrow, between
a multi-millionaire Yale 'Skull & Bones’ man and a billionaire
Yale Skull & Bones’ man. Nepotism, like corruption, discourages
most good Americans from participating in elections, to say
nothing of running for office!
In 1968, I hung a poster on my bedroom wall that read
Wanna Be President of the United States? First Find $25 Million!
Today, that wouldn’t buy a Senate seat or even a New York City
Mayor’s job. I was shocked when John Corzine spent $63 million
for a New Jersey Senate seat, but I was aghast when Michael
Bloomberg spent $70 million to become the Mayor of New York
City. Corporations give money to both parties in staggering
amounts, and what they do not give directly to their favorites,
they spend on advertising to shape the public mind. The result
is a net loss both for the public good and for democracy. It costs
the corporations only a small fraction in contributions for what
they gain through their wheel-greasing (which they are able to
deduct from their taxes). I wonder how much the oil and natural
gas lobby paid to secure that $9 billion in windfall profits they
stand to gain from the Bush administration’s plan for “royalty
relief.” And that million dollar donation by the UAE to the Bush
Library in Crawford, Texas was surely just a down-payment for
the ports deal they hoped to get!
It seems quaint nowadays to reflect back on the corpo­
rate culture of the 1960s. John Kenneth Galbraith (who died April
29 at age 97) wrote the following description in his 1967 book,
The New Industrial State, as quoted by Paul Krugman in his
excellent October 20, 2002 New York Times Magazine article,
“For Richer":
“Management does not go out ruthlessly to reward itself
— a sound management is expected to exercise restraint...With
the power of decision goes opportunity for making money... Were
everyone to seek to do so...the corporation would be a chaos
of competitive avarice. But these are not the sort of thing a good
company man does; a remarkably effective code bans such
behavior. Group decision-making insures, moreover, that almost
everyone’s actions and even thoughts are known to others. This
acts to enforce the code and, more than incidentally, a high stan­
dard of personal honesty as well.”
Does anyone believe such a self-policing culture exists
today? If the corporate scandals of the 1990s taught us anything
it is that corporations no longer even aim to stay in business, a
goal that used to temper their penchant for excess and bridge-
“These three cornered fellowships coupled hungry
defense contractors, ambitious military officers whose
promotions rested on husbanding new defense systems,
and members of Congress eager to steer new funds and job
opportunities to their district.”
Eisenhower might have added “educational institutions"
to the list, since universities conducted research for the Manhat­
tan Project, and institutions such as University of California at
Berkeley, which managed the Los Alamos laboratory (which
produced the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki) from its inception until last year, when the university
put Los Alamos on the auction bldck and Bechtel secured the
management contract. President Eisenhower’s speechwriter —
whom Professor Wenk revealed to be Malcom Moos — recalled
that Eisenhower feared a “pathological influence of the military-
industrial coalition beyond a healthy arm’s-length relationship,
especially if the national psyche was prodded artificially by fear.
A future chief executive might exploit political energies o f the
coalition to further a narrow and dangerous agenda " (Italics
mine.)
Professor Wenk, who served in the administrations of
Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, and who was the first
incumbent in the post of science advisor to Congress during the
Eisenhower administration, draws this conclusion in his March 7
article, “Ike’s Warning Reverberates Today" by saying: “I see
coalitions increasingly entrenched. Failed weapons systems
are seldom canceled. Auditing is cursory for moving and feeding
troops; malperformance is accepted in the fog of war, and penal­
ties for fraud uncollected. . . Influence of coalitions also has grown
with the cost of political campaigns. Members spend half their
time raising funds, rather than forging policy...In the absence of
strong vigilance, their concern about a corporate state hatched
by stealth might yet happen."
Indeed, it may have already taken place.
It appears glaringly obvious these days that Congress
has failed miserably in oversight, appropriation and war-
declaration functions. This lack of oversight is apparent not
only with respect to the Administration's reckless adventure
in Iraq, but also with regard to the passage of the Patriot Act
(and its renewal), the muted response against policies condoning
torture, suspension of Habeas Corpus, the practice of “extra­
ordinary rendition,” the warrantless wiretapping of American
citizens, and the insuring of free and fair elections with verifiable
ballot-counting. What we have now is a military-industrial-
Congressional complex, indeed!
OHLSSON
burning. The cases of Enron, Tyco, Adelphia, WorldCom,
Global Crossing, and many more perpetrators, should have
made abundantly clear that there’s no limit to corporate excess
or insatiable greed, and, in the absence of federal and inter­
national regulations, it is usually the stockholders and the public
at large who end up underwriting the thefts, cleaning up the
pollution, and dealing with the displaced workforce. Most of
this is not new. In fact, the seeds of corporate rule over America
were sown by the 1971 Powell Memorandum. And we need
only to think back to the Savings & Loan scandal of the 1980s,
to recall qnother half a trillion dollar boondoggle that taxpayers
had to underwrite. There have been plenty of books written
about such scandals (William S. Grieder, Who Will Tell the
People?, Arianna Huffington, Pigs at the Trough, Jim Hightower,
Thieves in High Places, and David K. Johnston, Perfectly Legal,
for starters). Yet despite the recurrent malfeasance, little has
been done to curb corporate excesses and outright frauds.
What is more, transnational corporations need have no
allegiance to the United States of America. They have offices in
many countries and on many continents, and most of them have
already shipped their profits offshore to avoid the patriotic duty
of paying their fair share of U.S. taxes.
Several commentators have recently reminded us of
President Dwight D. Eisenhower's January 17, 1961 farewell
address, warning of the threat posed by the “military-industrial
complex.” Usually omitted from Eisenhower’s warning is the not
very well known fact that, until the final version of the speech,
he used the phrase, “military-industrial-congressional complex."
He is said to have deleted the reference to Congress from his
final version to avoid offending legislators. But Eisenhower
regularly referred to “the triangle” and even to “the Iron triangle"
consisting of the military, the industries that profit from war, and
the Congress, which is charged with declaring war, appropriating
funding for wars (and everything else the federal government
spends money on), and for exercising oversight functions of
various kinds. According to University of Washington Emeritus
Professor of engineering, public affairs, and social management,
Edward Ward Wenk, Jr.:
I nonetheless believe that most public officials begin
their careers with a desire to serve the people and to make
America better. I do not believe that members of Congress,
or members of state legislatures, for that matter, run for office
merely to enrich themselves. No, I think that most of them begin
their political careers as genuine and sincere people. But the
systemic role of money, as I have said, pollutes and perverts
processes and people. It is a bit like boiling a frog. If you drop
the frog in boiling water, it will immediately jump out of the kettle;
but if you drop the frog in lukewarm water and slowly increase
the temperature, the frog will never jump out of the kettle nor
croak anymore.
And that is just what happens to far too many of our
public servants and to the citizenry as a whole. It is ironic that
Big Business tries to insure that government stays on the side­
lines and pursues laissez faire policies, until Big Business needs
the government (usually aided by the U.S. military) to make
some country or region “safe" for its business interests. From
making Cuba safe for the United Fruit Company, to securing
access to Persian Gulf oil and South Asian gas, Big Business
is always ready to have the government protecting its interests.
One notes again and again, however, that such security is paid
for by taxpayers, while the profits go straight into the corporate
coffers. But beware, Big Business; for as Bigioni warns: “Just as
monopoly is the ruin of the free market, fascism is the ultimate
degradation of liberal capitalism.”
Dr. Gary Alan Scott is an associate professor of philos­
ophy at Loyola College in Maryland and he is currently director
o f Loyola’s International Study Abroad Program in Leuven,
Belgium His article is reprinted from Common Dreams.org.
SONS OF LIBERTY
ASTORIA, OREGON r
Two hundred and thirty years ago, on July 2, 1776,
a small group of terrorists betrayed their country and voted
to commit any and all acts of terror and treason which they
claimed would be necessary to separate from their govern­
ment Two days later, on July 4, they publicly declared their
intention of betrayal and categorically stated their reasons
for turning against their country— and threatened to murder
or otherwise terrorize all who did not join with them.
They began their terrorist acts several years earlier
They burned, looted, tortured, murdered, kidnapped and
held hostage representatives and supporters of their
government They ambushed and killed soldiers and
policemen
Several attempts at negotiations only increased
their demands and brutality, until finally the previous year,
in April 1775, they committed open rebellion by attacking
government forces that had been sent to protect loyal
citizens from their terrorism
The terrorists cloaked their atrocities and treachery
with a specious document that claimed the sanction of God
and the sympathy of humanity They named their perfidious
document a Declaration of Independence
CANNON BEACH (503) 436-0549
-MICHAEL McCUSKER
325-2362
»
1287 COMMERCIAL ST.
ASTORIA 325-5221