It is surprisingly refreshing to recognize that actions taken by Congress and the Supreme Court catch me off guard. Perhaps, I am not as much a cynic as I sometimes think I am. For instance, the recent decision by the Supreme Court to make money an even bigger part of the electoral process truly caught be by surprise. After the asinine ruling on the Citizens United case a few years ago and the emergence of the super-PAC, I thought it was clear that the electoral process was becoming more and more broken as unlimited dollars from wealthy individuals and corporations flowed into the super-PACs, which flooded the airwaves with half-truths and outright fabrications all meant to deceive voters. It makes it a full-time job to be an informed voter these days, wading through the endless attacks on candidates, most of which do not stand up to serious scrutiny. Of course, that is not to say that some don’t. Case in point, Virginia’s former governor and the “perks” of the job, most would consider bribes.
While we cannot say that the amount of money a candidate spends on a race ALWAYS correlates with success, it almost always does. Have a look at the data compiled on https://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/elec_stats.php?cycle=2012 from the Center for Responsive Politics.
If money were not important to who gets elected, candidates and their fundraisers would not work as hard as they do to raise the ridiculous amount of money required to get elected. The effect money has had on our electoral process is that our elected officials spend the overwhelming majority of their time fundraising and only a fraction of their time legislating or doing what they were actually elected to do. If the supreme court ruling means that their will be added pressure for legislators to raise funds, then I can only imagine the time they commit to legislating and doing the people’s business, as they say, will shrink even more. The current congress is already labeled the “do nothing” congress. Can we really afford for their work habits to get any more abysmal?
Let’s ignore the productivity of legislators for a moment and think about the effect of money on our political system. It is probably a fair statement to say that the majority of our legislation is not written by the elected officials, but is written predominantly by lobbyists who “buy access.” Legislation is often written to benefit corporations and profit margins and not to benefit workers or the environment. I recognize this as a generalization, and there is always a danger in generalizing, but I think there is a lot of truth in this statement. This leaves me wondering where is the representation of the average voter in this system?
I’m afraid it is already hard to find. We can see the lack of representation in the willingness of this congress to stymie every effort to move ahead with actions that would help the average worker and attempt to raise the standard of living in this country. A standard of living, which for the middle class and working poor has taken an absolute beating over the last thirty years in spite of huge gains in productivity. I’m confounded by the arguments against raising the minimum wage, spending money on a jobs program (at a time when the infrastructure is reaching an age when it badly needs replaced, refurbished, or expanded), and the need for universal health care. If the average voter is already lacking any evident representation in our political system, how could the supreme court make a ruling that will clearly favor the wealthiest Americans? Unfortunately, the data clearly demonstrates that money correlates with election victories. While the justices who voted in favor of this ruling argue that they are strictly interpreting the first amendment, the reality is that they have chosen unequal representation that favors the wealthy. Even if this is an unintended consequence, I do not think that is how they or we the people want to view our democracy.
Here we go: Ruling Spurs Rush for Cash in Both Parties
The Hillbilly Astrophysicist 