Why I Won’t Give Money To A Campaign.

Let me just say up front, I’ve got no problem if you support a candidate financially. As a matter of fact I know many people who contribute to campaigns and these people are quite nice. And they believe, for good reason, that their contributions play a viable roll in the political process.

However, as for me and my house . . . well that’s another story. I write this because I’ve been so very close on 3 different occasions to being lured in to give small amounts to a candidate that I like. And each time I’ve had to remind myself of why I had committed not to give, even when it felt like it was something I should do.

To me (and I could be wrong) the problem with America is that there is a growing disconnect between citizens and our government. I’m beginning to learn that this disconnect is not necessarily all the government’s (or big business) fault. That in many ways, we – the citizen, are complicit in what goes on by our blind indifference and lack of radical action. But the problem of this growing disconnect is that many citizens are growing more and more disillusioned with the government and political process.

Long story short, everyday people feel like their best interests as citizens (globally and nationally) are being ignored. Power has been centralized in the hands of the “few”. And these “few” are being influenced by people other than your average, everyday citizen.

For example, getting elected these days is no longer about whose ideas are the most progressive (Kucinich & Paul respectively for each party). Getting elected these days is more like king of the hill with the hill being made up of money. Take a look at the charts below (courtesy of OpenSecrets.org) and you can see very quickly just how the front runners because of their cash flow.

No longer are ideas, ingenuity, or your average citizen what gets you elected. But it’s how much money you have and how fast you can raise it. If history is always told from the perspective of the side that wins, what does that say about our election process? These exorbitant dollar figures that are raised and consequently spent effectively box out the average man from running for a government position. Only those with deep pockets to begin with are even allowed to get the ball rolling in that direction. The day when a man like me could step up and represent his community, be the voice for his context . . . that day is over. Bigger is better. And bigger has won.

Now to be fair, some candidates, Obama and Paul for example, have raised a good majority of their support from small donations from small donors while others have chosen to take large chunks of change from lobbyists and big donors. So at least these campaigns are more representative of the average citizen.

But it’s the process that’s broken. Even if the money is raised from average citizens, what does it say about our average citizens when their candidate has raised over $80 million dollars and already spent $44 million not even a month into the official race?

$80 million dollars for Obama. $90 million for Clinton. $62 million for Romney. $47 million for Giuliani.

You’re looking at a half a billion dollars being sucked out of the average citizen so that we can change the letterhead in the White House? To replace one man with another (or woman)? The process is broken.

Even if I were to give a small donation of $25 to my guy . . . and even if that donation was more representative of the average citizen instead of the big corporation or large donor . . . is this process even sustainable?

In a world where people die from something as simple as clean water to drink, is a half a billion dollars 1 month into an election sustainable?

I can’t imagine this model is replicated in other countries. Only in America would something balloon to this size and most people not bat an eye.

As much as I love Kucinich, I don’t want to help him buy his way into the White House. And as much as I love Barack, I don’t want to help him buy his way into the White House.

You should be able to become a Senator or a President without having to have the biggest pile of money.

I’m tired of being complicit. I might vote for Barack. But he’s not getting a dime of mine. Is that a contradiction?

Perhaps I’m being too critical so I’d love your feedback. Have you donated? Why or why not? What kind of hang-ups with giving money to a campaign do you have? What strengths do you see in giving money?

Book Share: Supercapitalism by Robert Reich – Part 2.

Here are some more excerpts from Supercapitalism by Robert Reich (previous excerpts here). This sums up my tension with our current two options better than anything else. It is such a rich excerpt. And if you have even a mild interest in economics, you can probably resonate with this weird tension that Reich describes. This book is so good and you need to go out and buy it (or join my library craze).

In recent years, the cheerleaders of American capitalism – denizens of Wall Street, lobbyists on Washington’s K Street, the inhabitants of top executive suites and New York penthouses, most Republicans, many economists, editorial writers for the Wall Street Journal, free-marketers around the world – have had difficulty containing their enthusiasm about the economy. America’s gross national product has virtually tripled since the 1970s! The Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen from 1,000 to over 13,000 today! Behold the wondrous innovations and inventions, and the plethora of new products and services! The cheerleaders disdain what they consider to be constraints on further capitalist exuberance – taxes and regulations, labor unions, “Old Europe’s” inefficiencies, anything that retards consumer well-being and investor gain.

But other trends have worried labor leaders, community activists, most Democrats, some economists, many sociologists, editorial writers for the New York Times, trade protectionists, and left-wing populists. Look at all the workers who are falling behind! The widening inequalities of income and wealth! The instability of jobs! The loss of communities! The destruction of the environment! The trampling of human rights abroad! Conservatives will sometimes join this chorus, especially with regard to the so-called coarsening of American culture and the entertainment industry’s seeming obsession with lurid and titillating sex and violence. For these critics, the villains are often greedy CEOs, immoral corporations, and a cabal of wealthy global elites.

The two stories – Oh the wonder of it! Oh the shame of it! – both describe aspects of twenty-first-century supercapitalism. But considered separately, each is seriously misleading. Each leaves out the other, which is actually its flip side. Each disdains or blames imaginary forces in opposition when the qualms are actually inside almost every one of us.

The awkward truth is that most of us are of two minds: As consumers and investors we want the great deals. As citizens we don’t like many of the social consequences that flow from them. The system of democratic capitalism in the Not Quite Golden Age (1940s-1970s) struck a very different balance. Then as consumers and investors we didn’t do nearly as well; as citizens we fared better.

What’s the right balance? Are our gains as consumers and investors worth the price we’re now paying for them? We have no real way to tell. The old institutions of democratic capitalism, and the negotiations that took place within them, are gone. But no new institutions have emerged to replace them. We have no means of balancing. Our desires as consumers and investors usually win out because our values as citizens have virtually no effective means of expression – other than in heated rhetoric directed against the wrong targets. This is the real crisis of democracy in the age of supercapitalism.

These issues of economic security, social equity, community, our shared environment, and common decency were central to democratic capitalism as we knew it in the Not Quite Golden Age. They were – and still are – concerns to us in our capacity as citizens. But as power has shifted to us as consumers and investors, these issues have been eclipsed. We’ve entered into a Faustian bargain. Today’s economy can give us great deals largely because it punishes us in other ways. We can blame big corporations, but we’ve mostly made this bargain with ourselves.

After all, where do we suppose the great deals come from? In part they come from lower payrolls – from workers who have to settle for lower wages and benefits, or have to get new jobs that often pay less. They also come from big-box retailers that kill off Main Street because they understand prices charged by independent retailers there. They come from companies that shed their loyalties to particular communities and morph into global supply chains paying pennies to twelve-year olds in Indonesia. They come from CEOs who are paid exorbitantly; from companies all over the world who wreak havoc on the environment; and, in some instances, from companies that pump out violence or porn or nutritionless foods and beverages.

You and I are complicit. As consumers and investors, we make the whole world run. Markets have become extraordinarily responsive to our wishes – more so all the time. Yet most of us are of two minds, and it is the citizen in us that has become relatively powerless. Supercapitalism is triumphant. Democratic capitalism is not.

Book Share: Supercapitalism by Robert Reich.

Instead of just bulk reviewing books like I did in the previous year, I hope to start sharing some weekly excerpts from the books I’m reading in hopes that it might encourage others to pick them up and give them a read. Currently I’m reading Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life by Robert B. Reich. As a frame of reference, Reich’s supercapitalism is what I’ve been referring to as hyper-capitalism. So here are a few excerpts from the first couple of chapters:

“The kind of economic organization that provides economic freedom directly, namely, competitive capitalism, also promotes political freedom because it separates economic power from political power and in this way enables the one to offset the other.” – Milton Friedman as quoted in Capitalism and Freedom (1962)

“The last several decades have involved a shift of power away from us in our capacities as citizens and toward us as consumers and investors.”

“In this transformation, we in our capacities as consumers and investors have done significantly better. In our capacities as citizens seeking the common good, however we have lost ground. As a result, consumers and investors had access to more choices and better deals. But the institutions that had negotiated to spread the wealth and protect what the citizes valued in common began to disappear. Giant firms that dominated entire industries retreated, and labor unions shrank. Regulatory agencies faded. CEOs could no longer be corporate statesman. And as the intensifying competition among companies spilled over into politics, elected officials became less concerned about the Main Streets and communities in their districts and more concerned with attracting money for their campagins. Lobbyists swarmed Washington and other capital cities seeking laws and rules that would give them a competitive advantage relative to their rivals, wielding greater and greater influence over decision making. Thus did supercapitalism replace democratic capitalism.”

“Stories about heroic or villainous CEOs and financiers, brilliant or corrupt politicians, or diabolically powerful merchants of ideas, however gratifying they may be, should be surrendered to reality. Although a few of these figures have been especially insightful or particularly unscrupulous, in terms of the big picture their deeds are almost completely beside the point. The changes at issue here are structural, not personal. Similar assumptions about immoral and economically powerful corporations conspiring against the public also need to be abandoned because they are too simplistic. Companies are neither moral or immoral. Any such explanation is a convenient diversion, assigns credit or blame incorrectly, and thereby imperils meaningful reform of capitalism and democracy.”