Money talks

This is the column headline in the New York Times, the Valley News, and I'm sure many newpapers and blogs across the nation. I think that all Americans, even those of us who are not political junkies, knew that there would be changes in the law of the land when Bush’s appointees Samuel Alito and John Roberts ascended to the Supreme Court bench.

But the idea of oveturning legal precedents that reach back over a hundred years, and giving corporations many of the same Bill-of-Rights rights as citizens is beyond astonishing. The long history of legislation and lawsuits concerning corporate money funneled to political campaigns stems from repeated evidence showing that such money bought elections.

I attended Northwestern University from 1961-1965. Chicago politics was run by Richard J. Daley’s Democratic party machine, funded largely by Chicago businesses and some multi-national corporations and Big Business leaders across the land. “Vote early and often” was an accepted fact in Chicago elections.

In 1965, at my first job with AT&T, I was covered by a union contract, and in local and federal election years money was always deducted from our paychecks to contribute to the candidate that the union backed, whether individuals (me, for instance) backed that candidate or not. After some bad press of some sort, the union membership was finally able to put a stop to this practice. Still, it was not until sometime in the 1970s that most state legislatures passed laws against automatically taking campaign “donations” out of the paychecks of state and local government employees, to support the party in power.

The difference between the politics of those days and today is the Internet. Information flows freely and quickly, and I can only hope that bloggers and news reporters (the few that remain) will keep tabs on the rivers of money that flow and will flow from corporations and lobbyists to state capitals and Washington. There is not a snowball’s chance in hell that any state legislature, or Congress, will pass any more laws that really require thorough financial reporting – the laws on the books now are evaded or ignored. In fact, we should be concerned that the Supreme Court ruling will render many state campaign-finance laws invalid.

President Obama has learned the hard way that national politics requires presidential involvement, direction and leadership. But the Democratic party has been equally ignorant: see how full the news was of Massachusetts going Republican "after electing Democrats for 40 years." Hey, stupid Dem party officials, Massachusetts elected Ted Kennedy time after time, not just some Democrat. Massachusetts found it had a senator who was effective. As time went on, Kennedy's party affiliation meant little. People weren’t voting for Democrats. They were voting for Teddy.

There has been so much Congressional wrangling, name-calling and unsavory deal-making over the health care business that the public has turned against the Obama administration. Those of us who hoped for a President who could influence Congressional leaders or legislation have suffered crushing disappointment. The public has watched its government unable to stem horrific job losses; allow bank bailouts to be followed by big bonuses; and totally fail to make meaningful changes in health care costs and delivery. Many people of various political persuasions and I are shaking our heads. We see the US government as inept, disconnected from the public it serves, or close to corrupt.

Now uncontrolled money will be thrown into the mix. We should be even more concerned that only the wealthy and well-connected will be able or willing to run for office. The public confidence and trust in government that is so low today will drop even lower when money begins to influence election outcomes even more.