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Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Money talks... oh, and more money talks more!

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Urgently Needed: Reform of the Broken American Political System
By Frank Vogl, July 26, 2013

The American political system is damaged goods. Public confidence in the U.S. Congress is at an all-time low of just 10 percent, according to a recent Gallup Poll. Then, according to a brand new poll, 85 percent of U.S. business leaders see major problems with the U.S. campaign finance system, indeed 42 percent say the system is completely broken.

The evident concerns about our political system, from the rising roles of cash in elections through to Congressional dysfunction, cry for a response. But, politicians, seemingly trapped in the political quagmire are mostly silent. Unless there is action the situation will only get worse. The new poll of business attitudes, sponsored by the Committee for Economic Development (CED), a respected business think tank, needs to be a wake up call.

There is no shortage of pundits in the U.S. and abroad, that argue that President Obama has failed to live up to the expectations that were so widespread and so high when he was first elected in 2008. Some assert he is not chummy enough with political rivals, others say he is cold and arrogant and unable to communicate well, and still others bemoan that he lacks Lyndon Johnson's arm-twisting skills.

Doubtless there are grains of truth in such assertions, but I doubt if anyone sitting in the White House today could enjoy greater success. The problem is that the American political system, especially that part of which that concerns the election of public office holders, is broken.

Gridlock in Washington, D.C. is a daily newspaper headline, be it about healthcare reform, gun control, immigration laws, the budget, or support for farmers. Corruption is widely seen as the villain. A year ago, a Gallup/USA Today poll found that Americans were more concerned about corruption in government than everything else except job creation.

New Business Survey

Efforts to objectively capture the concerns of American business leaders are significant, because public spokesmen for business, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers are highly partisan on these issues. The new poll has been completed by the Democratic Party- leaning Hart Research Associates and the Republican Party-leaning American Viewpoint. They surveyed 302 senior executives across the country and they suggest that typically such surveys can have a margin of error of plus/minus 5.6 percent. The findings are blunt and should be a wake up call for reform.

The new CED-sponsored survey concentrated on the campaign finance system. Business leaders believe the political system is based on "pay-to-play" -- if you do not provide cash to a campaign then do not expect to have access, and perhaps influence, on your candidate should she or he win election. Those surveyed were asked whether they believed politicians cast votes when in office to please special interests rather than voters. No less than 61 percent of the respondents said this is definitely the case and a further 33 percent said this is probably the case. The money in the campaign system is driving politicians and political parties to become more extreme, according to 81 percent of those surveyed. And 71 percent said major contributors have too much influence on politicians.

So what should be done?

Reform Action

First, the politicians need to start talking about the core issue of money and politics. President Obama, who cannot stand for reelection, has nothing to lose now in leading a major effort to educate Americans about the failings of the current system and to propose change. While most politicians decry the daily grind of asking for cash for their campaigns, there is no cohesive leadership in either of the major political parties to promote comprehensive reforms.

Second, boost transparency. The new poll finds that among business executives 95 percent of those saying that they are Democrats believe that all individual, corporate and trade union contributions should be disclosed, while 88 percent of those saying that they are Republicans hold this view. I would go further and argue for total transparency in funding sources for all entities that directly and indirectly are seen as engaging in election politics, which would embrace 'Super Pacs' that currently have ways to promote candidates without being part of the official campaign and can keep some of their funding anonymous.

Third, the business poll found overwhelming support for set limits on the amounts that individuals and organizations can contribute to elections. Today, some individuals of great wealth are spending of tens of millions of dollars in support of candidates and making a mockery of the democratic process.

Finally, I believe that no effort should be spared to educate Americans about the merits of public funding of elections. At the moment there appears to be weak support for this. The business survey found that 52 percent of those polled voice some support for such a course, but only 16 percent felt strongly about this.

Unless there is new leadership on these issues, the situation will get worse and the inability of the U.S. president to promote new legislation will erode further. Indeed, unless reform action is launched in earnest in the near future, the amount of cash in elections will probably rise; the volume of negative ads will probably increase; perceptions that 'pay-to-play' is the norm in national politics will harden; and, Americans confidence in politicians and institutions that uphold their democracy will continue to decline.
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Mitt, do you have a poor memory?

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Excuse me, but you DID say that, maybe not using the word "personal", but the intent was there: "...  There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. ..."
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Mitt Romney On 47 Percent Remark: 'Actually, I Didn't Say That' About Personal Responsibility
By Luke Johnson, July 29, 2013

His infamous 47 percent remarks were taken out of context, Mitt Romney told The Washington Post's Dan Balz in an interview published Sunday.

Asked about the oft-cited quote that 47 percent of Americans can't be persuaded to take personal responsibility, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee said, "Actually, I didn't say that ...That's how it began to be perceived, and so I had to ultimately respond to the perception, because perception is reality."

At a May 2012 closed-to-the-press fundraiser in Florida, Romney said, "And so my job is not to worry about those people -- I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the 5 to 10 percent in the center that are independents, that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon in some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not, what it looks like."

But Romney told Balz that the focus of his remarks was on swing voters, not on those who were already in President Barack Obama's camp. "[I]t was saying, 'Look, the Democrats have 47 percent, we've got 45 percent, my job is to get the people in the middle, and I've got to get the people in the middle,'" he said. "They’ve got a bloc of voters, we've got a bloc of voters, I've got to get the ones in the middle. And I thought that that would be how it would be perceived -- as a candidate talking about the process of focusing on the people in the middle who can either vote Republican or Democrat."

Romney's argument that the remarks were taken out of context is a new defense for him. During the campaign, he said at first that they were "not elegantly stated" and then that they were "completely wrong."

Also in the interview with Balz, Romney claimed that Obama had made a similar comment: "And I think the president said he's writing off 47 percent of Americans and so forth. And that wasn't at all what was intended. That wasn't what was meant by it. That is the way it was perceived."

Romney nonetheless acknowledged that the quote was "very damaging" to his campaign. Indeed, the Obama campaign seized on the remark, creating an ad based on it, and the former Massachusetts governor took a hit in the polls.
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A Republican cat fight.... meow pfft pfft

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Christie slams Rand Paul by accusing Kentucky of being a leech on the federal government
By Eric W. Dolan, July 30, 2013

Republican Governor Chris Christie slammed Senator Rand Paul on Tuesday, after the Kentucky senator accused him of begging the federal government for money.

During a press conference, Christie noted that his state paid more in federal taxes than they got back, which was not true to of the state that Paul represented. According to the Tax Foundation, for every $1.00 Kentucky’s taxpayers send to Washington, they get back $1.51. In contrast, for every $1.00 New Jersey’s taxpayers sent to Washington, they get only 61 cents back.

“I find it interesting that Senator Paul is accusing us of having a gimme, gimme, gimme attitude toward federal spending when in fact New Jersey is a donor state, we get 61 cents back on every dollar we send to Washington,” Christie said. “And interestingly Kentucky gets $1.51 on every dollar they sent to Washington.”

“So if Senator Paul wants to start looking at where he is going to cut spending to afford defense, maybe he should start looking at cutting the pork barrel spending he brings home to Kentucky at a $1.51 on every dollar and not look at New Jersey where we get 61 cents for every dollar,” he continued. “Maybe Senator Paul could deal with that when he is trying to deal with the reduction of spending on the federal side, but I doubt he would because most Washington politicians only care about bringing home the bacon so they can get reelected.”

Monday night of Fox News’ Hannity, Paul criticized Christie for asking the federal government for disaster relief aid after Hurricane Sandy.

“If he cared about protecting this country maybe he wouldn’t be in this gimme, gimme, gimme all the money you have in Washington or don’t have, and he’d be a little more fiscally responsive,” Paul said.

Paul was responding to a comment Christie made last week, in which the New Jersey governor said libertarians supported dangerous policies.

Watch video, courtesy of the New Jersey Star-Ledger...
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Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Limbaugh's followers will vote for the wingnuttiest of the wingnuts-- hence the presence in Congress of Michele Bachmann, Louis Gohmert, and Steve King

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Rush Limbaugh Still Controls A Major Political Party
By Amanda Marcotte, July 30, 2013

Very few people bother to vote in primaries. This is true even in contentious presidential elections where there are ton of nominees to choose from, such as the Obama vs. Clinton stand-off in 2008 or the Romney vs. A Cast of Clowns stand-off in 2012. For instance, only 9.4 million people voted in the Republican primary in 2012, out of over 56 million who voted for Romney in the general. For state and local offices, it’s even lower turnout, which means that a handful of determined extremists can basically run the party, especially the Republican party, where the most wild-eyed fanatics just so happen to be the most dedicated voters.

This is how it works, therefore:
(1)  Wild-eyed fanatics who are all hopped up on the latest bizarre theories and paranoias fed to them by Rush Limbaugh and Fox News choose the most right-leaning candidate out of the field. In major primaries—well, only the presidential one anymore—enough cooler heads show up that this may not happen, but on the state and especially local level, good luck to anyone who shows a bit of common sense, if they’re up against someone who can speak pure Wingnut.
(2)  Come the general election, at least in red states, a strong majority of white people automatically vote for the Republican, often with no idea how bad the politician they voted for really is. They vote Republican because being “conservative” is their identity as white people in red states, even if their understanding of that is no deeper than “guns are good and liberals are bad”. If they really thought about it, they probably wouldn’t be supportive of the ending Medicare/privatizing schools agenda that has become mainstream in the Republican party through the primary system, but the fear of becoming one of those hated liberals tends to override policy concerns.
(3)  In some cases, however, certain politicians have been targeted—think Todd Akin—who thought themselves a shoo-in because of this process, but because relentless national attention to their fanatical views, enough reluctant Republicans switched their vote. After all, if you do it just this once—whether it’s voting Democratic or sex with someone outside of your usual gender of preference—it doesn’t mean you have to give up  your identity. While that’s a good lever to pull for Democrats, it also have limited value, for this reason. Every time Democrats run a “look at this woman-hating fanatic!” campaign, they exhaust a number of people who are giving them their one lifetime vote for a Democrat.
I bring this up because Alex Pareene’s article about Rush Limbaugh’s declining audience is exciting news, but it’s also worth contemplating that the decline is slow enough that Limbaugh himself may retire or pass away before his ratings decline below a point of controlling the Republican base. It is true that Limbaugh’s numbers seem small enough:
The first thing to remember is that no one actually has any clue how many people listen to Limbaugh with any regularity. Limbaugh’s audience certainly sounds massive at 14 million weekly listeners, but that supposedly represents any person who tunes into Limbaugh’s show for any period of time over the course of a week. At any given period in his show, though, an average of three million people are tuned to Limbaugh. That’s not nothing, but it’s close. It wouldn’t crack the top 25 broadcast TV shows. And radio ratings involve even more guesswork and estimation (and spin) than television ratings. Limbaugh said his audience was “20 million” 20 years ago and people have just been repeating that number ever since, but no one actually has any clue.
That’s a group that would have no real power in the United States…unless somehow they managed to gain control over a major political party that had a reliable set of voters who worry that their balls will fall off if they cross the line and vote their conscience instead of their identity. Which they can unfortunately do, because so few people vote in primaries. Fourteen million people is enough to supply all the primary voters you need to control the party twice over. On the state and local level, only a fraction of Limbaugh’s audience is needed to turn his paranoia about “RINOs” into action, voting for the wingnuttiest of the wingnuts. That’s why we have such fun characters in Congress as Michele Bachmann, Louis Gohmert, and Steve King, and why that faction is going to have pull and even, in some cases, complete control for a long ass time.
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Makes sense to me

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Long backlog for godless wedding services in Ireland
By Tom Heneghan, July 23, 2013

Traditionally Catholic Ireland has allowed an atheist group to perform weddings this year for the first time, and the few people certified to celebrate them are overwhelmed by hundreds of couples seeking their services.

Demand for the Humanist Association of Ireland's secular weddings has surged as the moral authority of the once almighty Catholic Church collapsed in recent decades amid sex abuse scandals and Irish society's rapid secularization.

Until now, those who did not want a religious wedding could have only civil ceremonies. Outside of the registrar's office, only clergy were permitted to perform weddings.

But statistics show rising demand for non-Church weddings. In 1996, 90 percent of Irish weddings were performed by the Catholic Church or the Church of Ireland. But by 2010 that percentage had fallen to 69 percent.

The pent-up demand from those who want more than a civil ceremony in a registry office but reject a religious wedding has created a major backlog for the humanist group's ceremonies director.

Brian Whiteside, initially the only humanist "solemnizer" certified to legally marry couples, was already booked well into next year when the civil registry office agreed in late June to approve 10 others, taking some of the pressure off him.

"It remains very, very busy," Whiteside said. "We're all finding it difficult to keep up with the inquiries. We had 595 new inquiries in the first three months of this year, which in a little country like Ireland is quite a few."

The Irish parliament legalized secular wedding services last December, after a 10-year campaign by the Humanist Association. The law went into effect on January 1. Similar options are also allowed in Australia, Canada, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, Scotland and some U.S. states.

COUPLE GAVE UP ON CATHOLICISM

Brendan Hastings, originally from South Africa, and his Irish bride Suzy Addis had Whiteside preside at their recent humanist wedding in Slane, a village north of Dublin.

Soft modern music accompanied the relaxed ceremony and the main reading was a passage on love from the 1994 novel Captain Corelli's Mandolin.

"Basically we are both atheists and didn't want a religious ceremony," said Hastings, at 32 a year older than Addis. "Other weddings we have gone to tended to be all about Jesus and we're not into that. We were both raised as Catholics but kind of gave it up."

Whiteside, a retired Dublin businessman, said he began presiding at humanist weddings back when they were simply a symbolic ceremony rather than the official act.

The association also offers strictly secular funerals and naming ceremonies, which have no legal status.

Being the only certified humanist celebrant for the first half of the year, Whiteside was officiating at one or two weddings per week. He was scheduled for about 90 weddings this year and about 50 in 2014.

"It became a sort of second career," he said. "I don't want to make a business out of this, but it means a lot to me."

The recent ruling means the work can now be divided among the other solemnizers - the Irish bureaucratic term for all legally recognized wedding celebrants - living in Dublin, Wicklow, Cork and Galway.

NOT FOR PROFIT

The law says solemnizers cannot work for profit. Whiteside said he usually asks 450 euros per wedding, although it might be more if long distance travel is involved.

"We don't have salaries, so we have to have some kind of income," he said, noting that priests had salaries and used their own churches for weddings.

That price is low compared to other countries. The Dutch Humanist Union sets a base price of 475 euros while rates in Germany and Austria, where humanist weddings cannot replace the official civil ceremony, go from 650 to over 1,000 euros.

Scotland legalized humanist ceremonies in 2005 and saw them jump from 100 that year to 2,846 in 2011. Humanist weddings are now the third most popular choice for Scottish couples after the Church of Scotland and the Catholic Church.
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Ooooh, good pun!

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Weiner Roasted: Drops to Fourth Place in New Revealing Poll

Anthony Weiner has dropped to 4th place in the most recent NY mayoral race poll, released Monday by Quinnipiac University.

"It looks like former Congressman Anthony Weiner may have sexted himself right out of the race for New York City mayor," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

In the first poll conducted since July 24, Anthony Weiner has lost first place and more than a third of his support, according to the 449 Democrats interviewed for the survey. His support decreased from 26% of all democratic voters to only 16%-- in light of recent sexting revelations.

Currently, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has overtaken Weiner as the favored candidate; 27% of primary voters polled support her (a number which would jump to 30% if Weiner drops out).

Although 53% of democrats polled say that Weiner should drop out of the race, his campaign is tenacious. The former US Representative said Sunday during a campaign stop at a Brooklyn church that "We've gotten more volunteers and more people coming over the transom to help the campaign in the last several days than any time since the campaign started."

Weiner is certainly down, but he may not be out. Maurice Carroll advises, "Don't bet your paycheck. This is a really goofy election year."

See complete poll results from Quinnipiac University here.
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Gaining a foothold in Texas

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Turning Texas Blue
By Josh Baugh, July 29, 2013

The brains behind Battleground Texas, the grassroots nonprofit created by Obama campaigners to turn Texas into a competitive state, dropped by the Express-News Monday to talk elections — from county commissioners’ races to federal campaigns — with the newspaper’s Editorial Board.

Jeremy Bird, founding partner of 270 Strategies, and Jenn Brown, the executive director of Battleground Texas, made it clear that the organization is here to stay, and they don’t necessarily have their eye on the 2014 elections. In fact, if a top-tier Democratic candidate — a la Wendy Davis or a Castro brother — decides to enter the fray, it would actually speed up the organization’s timeline. Bird and Brown describe their attempt to turn Texas blue as a slow, methodical marathon.

So anyone who’s expecting Texas to turn blue by 2014, or even become a battleground state, will be disappointed. Over the next several years, though, the group is expected to grow exponentially.

The Obama machine that overtook Florida wasn’t created in a day — or a single election cycle. We saw it last September firsthand. The level of involvement on the ground — from campaign staffers to volunteers who packed into field offices before fanning out to canvass vast neighborhoods — was functioning at an organizational level foreign to Texas.

That Florida machine that we saw in action last fall took six years to build. How long it will take to duplicate that machine in Texas — if it can even be done — remains to be seen. It’s clear, though, that the folks behind Battleground Texas have the passion and energy to see it through.

Their efforts are under way, and they’re honing in on competitive seats across the state and will push to register millions of would-be voters who currently aren’t on the rolls. They’ve definitely done their homework in crunching numbers and clearly defining their targets. The looming question that remains is how successful they’ll be in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to a statewide office since Bird played Little League baseball…
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Monday, July 29, 2013

Yeah, we know about furloughs around here!

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GOP Rep. calls government shutdown ‘suicidal political tactic’
By Allison MacDonald, July 29, 2013

Republican Senators Mike Lee of Utah, and Ted Cruz of Texas seem to be upping the ante on shutting down the federal government over Obamacare, despite a growing number of their GOP colleagues condemning the tactic.

“If we’re going to defund Obamacare, now is the time we can actually get it done,” Cruz said in an interview Monday.

Last week, House Deputy Whip, Republican Tom Cole of Oklahoma told Fox News that this kind of take-no-prisoners approach was the “political equivalent of throwing a temper tantrum.”

Cole joined NOW with Alex Wagner Monday to discuss the shutdown strategy proposed by his fellow party-members and its potential consequences for the GOP and the American people.

“I agree with what they’re trying to do; they’re just doing it the wrong way,” Cole said, “but shutting down the government is a suicidal political tactic. Eventually it will be reopened but the president will not have capitulated, and you will have discredited yourself, and along the way you will have hurt the American people.”

If the government shuts down, Cole pointed out, one consequence is that a lot of workers will get furloughed. “Who’s going to man Veteran’s hospitals, who’s going to make sure the defense work gets done,” Cole asked, “who’s going to take care of Indian Reservation health care and schools?”

“Those are federal responsibilities and shutting down the government for a goal that you can’t achieve that way is just counterproductive,” Cole said.
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"[Fill in the blank] rips GOP ‘Old Guard.’"

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Political bickering isn't new
By Gary Kroeger, July 28, 2013

My school was demolished last month.

Yes, I’m an ex-Price Lab rat and one of the many former students, parents, teachers and citizens angered and saddened by the decision to rid the University of Northern Iowa of its school to train teachers. It offered a unique and rewarding learning environment for both students and student-teachers. It makes me angry to see a research and development school rendered irrelevant.

I drove by the mountain of dust, bricks and twisted metal where my friends and I grew up and learned — well, everything — and it made me sad.

But the closing is not what I’m writing about. A little treasure resulted from the Board of Regents shortsighted, politicized decision. When the building came down, a time capsule was revealed in the cornerstone.

Placed there in 1952 when the bricks that became our school were first laid upon each other, it was opened at our annual Northern University High School picnic during the Sturgis Falls celebration. It was a tin box, rusty from over 60 years of Iowa weather that challenges even the most carefully sealed treasures. Given that this box wasn’t entombed even remotely with such care, it was a small miracle when it opened.

Inside were plastic bags that protected manuscripts that appeared to be mimeographed. Remember mimeographs? An entire generation of students got a thrill each day as freshly mimeographed tests were passed out. Every one of us put the cool, slightly damp, paper up to our noses and inhaled. There was something strangely relaxing and intoxicating about it, but I digress.

Among the artifacts was a Waterloo Courier.

With deference to my editors who allow me to fill this column once a month, I will say that to include The Courier in this capsule was a masterstroke. A masterstroke because nothing sheds light onto the temperament of an era better than what was in the news at that particular time. We can then compare and draw contrasts to what occupies our news today and determine whether or not we’ve progressed.

The headline of The Courier on Oct. 30, 1952, was: "Truman Rips GOP ‘Old Guard.’" I was taken aback. It seems nothing has changed.

Today we are in what seems like the most politically contentious time in history. But it occurred to me as I strained to read the article over the shoulders of the UNI archivists that maybe we’ve always been this divided. Maybe we simply have more tools and avenues to voice our contentions these days and fan the flames.

From the back of a train on his Waterloo whistle-stop, President Harry Truman said: "We are in a fight to stay out of World War III, but if we follow the Old Guard Republicans as they vote in Congress, we would lose our allies, and we would be face-to-face with the Russians, all alone. … You can see that the Republicans never learn anything. ... Ever since 1932 the Republican Old Guard has been voting against progress."

Has anything changed? That observation is not meant as a condemnation of Republicans, but as a reflection on opposing points of view. You can decide for yourself whether Truman’s words remain true. My point is that the rhetoric is eerily the same, and perhaps we can collectively draw some relief from realizing that we’ve always been this divided.

And we have survived.

What is undeniably true is that we have more platforms by which to voice our differences. Information — as well as misinformation — travels at light speed. If our political consciousness has changed, it may not be the result of evolving perspectives but the fact that wireless, high-speed Internet and 24/7 infotainment news have turned us into an impatient society. We jump all over each other more quickly and with less substance.

That reality may only get worse. But maybe if we took a little more time considering what hasn’t changed about us, we could start to find more things that we have in common.

Like missing the smell of mimeographed tests.
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Sunday, July 28, 2013

Wow, a Republican who is "right" (yuk, yuk)

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King: ‘Pathological problem’ should bar Weiner from becoming mayor
By Kevin Liptak, July 28, 2013

Anthony Weiner’s proclivity for sending sexually charged online messages is a “pathological problem” that should prevent him from assuming the role of New York City mayor, Rep. Peter King said Sunday.

A Republican representing parts of Long Island, New York, King said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Weiner was “not psychologically qualified to be mayor of the city of New York.”

King’s comments came days after Weiner admitted to sending lewd chats and photographs to women online last year. He resigned from Congress two years ago for similar actions.

Despite calls from some of his rivals to step out of the race, Weiner has not withdrawn. His campaign has seen a hit, however – the NBC 4 New York/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll released Thursday showed him dropping to second among the Democratic candidates for mayor, and his favorable rating took a nose dive.

Previously, Weiner was leading in some polls, which King attributed Sunday to a “perverse celebrity factor” in the race.

“I just can't see any way, even if this latest scandal would not have come out, that Anthony Weiner could have won,” King told chief political correspondent Candy Crowley.

Listing past New York mayors such as Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani and the current one, Michael Bloomberg, King said it was impossible to imagine Weiner joining their ranks.

“I think he should do himself and everybody a favor and step to the sidelines,” he said.
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Is this true or not?

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Are American Political Parties Becoming Defined Largely By Race?
By Kevin Drum, July 28, 2013

A new AP report suggests that 80 percent of the U.S. population struggles with poverty at some point in their lives. Ryan Cooper riffs on this to make a nonpartisan point about American political parties:
It's probably fair to say also that poor whites are overwhelmingly Republican, and in large part due to an overhang of racial resentment....This is why I despair of analysis like Matt Yglesias' or Sean Trende's making the case the Republicans can keep winning with white voters alone (though NB that Trende doesn't argue that this means the GOP doesn't have to change). Because that does not bode well for our future. 
I lived in South Africa for a time, where voting breaks down almost entirely by race. To a first approximation, blacks vote for the African National Congress, whites and Coloureds (the non-offensive term adopted by mixed-race people) vote for the Democratic Alliance. The upshot is that because blacks make up about 77 percent of the population the ANC has won every election with over 60% of the vote. (An outcome, I should add, that is the predicable outcome of the Apartheid state's vicious racist terrorism. 
But the lack of political competition has been disastrous. Especially during the tenure of Thabo Mbeki, the whole South African government was shot through with corruption and rank incompetence, culminating in the 2008 power crisis. Single party states, outside of a few possible exceptions like Singapore, are a recipe for failure.

I don't have time right now to ruminate on this at length. But it's worth tossing out for further thought. My big problem with Cooper's thesis is simple: it's not clear to me that poor and working-class whites actually do vote overwhelmingly Republican. That's certainly true in the South, but everywhere else this vote is split fairly evenly between the parties—and this has changed very little over the past few decades. There's really no national trend of working-class whites becoming more Republican.

At least, that's one view. Andrew Levison and Ruy Teixeira present a different one here. They don't address regional differences, but they present fairly dire national data and go on to suggest that things might actually be even worse than they look. Democrats really are losing the white working-class vote, and this is a recipe for disaster unless things change.

I share Cooper's apprehension about the future of American politics if our major political parties both end up being defined largely by race and ethnicity. For that reason, among others, it's important to figure out which of these views is actually true.
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The "new" and the "old" forms of political journalism

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Nate Silver is good for political journalism
By Chris Cillizza, July 26, 2013

Nate Silver, king of the data geeks (we say this lovingly), announced he was leaving the New York Times to join ESPN/ABC this week.


The Internet — and in particular Twitter — nearly exploded reacting to the news, with praise for Nate outrunning criticism but plenty of both to go around. That’s nothing new of course. You could write a tweet that reads “I love good things” and within five seconds you’d have 10 people telling you why good things — and you — suck.

But, one critique of Nate and his work stood out for me.  It was in a piece by the New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan entitled “Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times“.

In it, Sullivan writes of how Silver never totally fit into the Times culture:
His entire probability-based way of looking at politics ran against the kind of political journalism that The Times specializes in: polling, the horse race, campaign coverage, analysis based on campaign-trail observation, and opinion writing, or “punditry,” as he put it, famously describing it as “fundamentally useless.” 
Then she adds:
A number of traditional and well-respected Times journalists disliked his work. The first time I wrote about him I suggested that print readers should have the same access to his writing that online readers were getting. I was surprised to quickly hear by e-mail from three high-profile Times political journalists, criticizing him and his work. They were also tough on me for seeming to endorse what he wrote, since I was suggesting that it get more visibility.
I don’t get this criticism — and I think it’s a fundamental misread of how we should go about doing political journalism. (Sidebar/disclaimer: I have met Nate, in passing, once but we have no relationship aside from that.)

For all of the talk that journalism is dying, I think we are at a point where the appetite for political coverage and analysis has never been higher. (The Fix family thanks you for your continued interest.) I find myself waking up every day not worried about having enough to write about but about having too much to write about.

Given the glut of political news and the intense interest in and appetite for it, we need to embrace a sort of “both/and” model of political journalism.

Here’s what I mean. I read Nate’s coverage of the 2012 election via Five Thirty Eight. I also read Ashley Parker’s reports from the Romney bus. And Mike Shear’s reporting. And Peter Baker’s. And Brian Stelter’s. And lots of other Timesfolk.

Journalism in the modern age isn’t a zero-sum game. The political world needs both the sort of data-driven analysis that Nate does and the nose-to-the-ground reporting that lots of other reporters at the Times do.  Ditto the Post where what we do on The Fix complements and supplements the work done by the other folks on the political staff.

Does anyone really go to the Post — or any news site — and say: “Ok, I can only read one take on a big political story?”  No.  If you are interested in politics — and, thankfully, there are lots of you out there — you read Dan Balz, Ezra Klein and The Fix as well as all of the great reporters we have covering Congress, the White House and so on and so forth.

Nate’s success — whether in page views or profile — doesn’t take away from the work everyone else at the Times did during (and after) the 2012 campaign.  Instead of tearing down Nate for the brand of journalism he practices, why don’t we embrace his ability to expand the number of people interested in the subject we have dedicated our lives to covering?

I say kudos to Nate. His success lifts all of us.
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Saturday, July 27, 2013

Is this an admission about your proclivities, Senator McCain?

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McCain hopes $1 coin leads to bigger tips for strippers
By Bryan Koenig, July 25, 2013

If Congress passes the COINS Act replacing the $1 paper bill for a coin, the U.S. government may be able to save billions in printing costs at the expense of a little more jangle in the average consumers' pockets. But what about the strippers?

That's what The Hill newspaper asked one of the bill's co-sponsors, Sen. John McCain, in a piece published Thursday. The question came from a separate 2011 story where the publication suggested strippers could suffer in a bill-less economy, with G-strings and garter belts far less accommodating of cold metal.

For his part, the Arizona Republican responded in stride in a Capitol Hill hallway.

"Then I hope that they could obtain larger denominations," McCain reportedly told The Hill.

According to The Hill, the 76 year-old McCain started answering questions from another reporter before a smile spread across his face and he shouted down the hallway to The Hill, "Fives, tens, one hundreds!"

McCain's office did not respond to a request for comment.

Officially called the Currency Optimization, Innovation, and National Savings Act, the COINS Act has been put before Congress multiple times in recent years. In the Senate it was most recently introduced in June as S.1105 by Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. McCain's fellow co-sponsors in the Senate are Michael Enzi, R-Wyoming, and Mark Udall, D-Colorado.

If passed, the bill would require Federal Reserve banks to stop circulating paper $1 bills within five years of the COIN Act going into effect.
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Aw geez, please don't elect any of these libertarian "losers"!

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Libertarianism and the coming Republican political war
By Chris Cillizza, July 26, 2013

Two things happened this week that revealed the basic dynamic of the fight for control of the Republican party in 2016.

The first was a vote on the House floor that would have significantly curtailed the the NSA’s phone-surveillance program as outlined in the Patriot Act. A vote that was widely regarded by Congressional sharps as a sort of “blow off steam” vote for civil libertarians nearly passed the House. In total, 134 Republicans (59 percent of House GOP) voted against the measure — including almost all of the party leadership — while 94 (41 percent) voted for it.

The second were comments made by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at a panel at the Aspen Institute on Thursday. “As a former prosecutor who was appointed by President George W. Bush on Sept. 10, 2001, I just want us to be really cautious, because this strain of libertarianism that’s going through both parties right now and making big headlines, I think, is a very dangerous thought,” Christie said.

Taken together, it’s quite clear that the choice in 2016 will be heavily defined by just how much libertarianism Republicans want in their party. The answer isn’t clear yet. But, that more than 40 percent of the Republican conference voted for legislation that would significantly curtail the reach of a government agency designed, at least in part, to preventing future terrorist attacks is telling. So, too, is the fact that Christie, widely expected to run in 2016, picked a fight with libertarians — and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, in particular — in the summer of 2013.

Our rankings of the 10 Republican candidates with the best chance to win the 2016 nomination are below. (We ranked the 2016 Democratic field last week.) The number one ranked candidate is considered the most likely to wind up as the party’s nominee.

Agree or disagree with our picks? Have a top 10 list of your own? The comments section awaits.

10. Rick Santorum: We haven’t had the former Pennsylvania senator ranked in our top 10 yet this year but, looking at the potential field and his track record from 2012, it’s clear (at least to us) that he deserves a spot. Re-living last year’s Republican primary fight through the terrific documentary “Caucus”, we were reminded that Santorum has two things going for him if he runs again: 1) He’s a social conservative through and through and 2) He has a genuine talent on the campaign trail. (Previous ranking: N/A)

9. Bobby Jindal: The Louisiana governor began the year looking like a top tier contender but halfway through the year he finds himself clinging to a spot in our top 10. Much of that slide is due to Jindal’s increasingly negative reviews in his home state; a poll done in the spring showed that almost half of all Louisianans gave Jindal’s performance in office a “D” or an “F”. The Fix is no college professor but that’s not very good. (Previous ranking: 5)

8. Paul Ryan: Just when we were well on the way to convincing ourselves that the 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee had no interest in running for the top job in 2016, he goes and agrees to headline a Iowa GOP dinner in November. Remember the Fix iron law of politics: No politician goes to Iowa accidentally. Doesn’t happen. So, Ryan wants to keep his name out there although we tend to believe he still doesn’t run. If he starts to show signs of growing interest in the race, he moves up these rankings. (Previous ranking: 4)

7. Ted Cruz: Speaking of Iowa, the Texas freshmen Senator’s trip to the Hawkeye State last weekend drew raves. Combine his charisma and conservatism and Cruz makes for a decidedly intriguing potential presidential candidate — particularly in Iowa and South Carolina. (And, yes, we, and Cruz, believe that although he was born in Canada he can run for president.) We’re still skeptical that Cruz ultimately decides to run but if he does, he likely breaks into top five. (Previous ranking: 7)

6. John Kasich: If the Ohio governor wins re-election in 2014 — Democrats believe they have a genuine chance to unseat him but Kasich is at new heights of popularity these days  – he’s got a compelling resume to run on: most notably that he has run and won in a state considered absolutely critical to Republicans’ chances of winning back the White House. We tend to believe that the best indicator of whether someone will run for president is whether they have done it before. Kasich has, albeit briefly, in the 2000 presidential race. (Previous ranking: 10)

5. Jeb Bush: And still we wait.  The former Florida governor is the frontrunner for the nomination if he runs. (Why? Read Jon Meacham’s thoughtful piece here.) But, will he run? After a flurry of door-opening this spring, Jeb has largely clammed up about his political future of late. The internal debate for Jeb is that he would like to be president (who wouldn’t?) but he has a strong distaste for the political process necessary to get there. (Previous ranking: 6)

4. Scott Walker: Midwestern governor. Elected and likely re-elected in a swing/Democratic-leaning state. Hero to conservatives nationally for beating back a recall effort over curbing public-employee unions’ power. Committed social conservative. Add it all up and sprinkle in Walker’s dalliances with early presidential voting states and you have a top tier 2016 candidate. (Previous ranking: 8)

3. Rand Paul: We are increasingly convinced that the Kentucky Senator will wind up being the prime mover in this race — he will act and the other candidates will react. That’s already happened on drones and Christie’s comments on libertarianism were quite clearly aimed at Paul. Paul has a real case to make that he is the only candidate who can change and expand the Republican coalition nationally. But, his unorthodoxy also means that things like Jack Hunter might well keep happening. (Previous ranking: 3)

2. Chris Christie: The New Jersey governor’s condemnation of the creeping libertarianism within the GOP proves two things: 1) He’s running for president and 2) He will do so as a defense-defending hawk in the mold of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. The question for Christie is whether he is another incarnation of Rudy Giuliani (tough talking hawk whose moderate credentials doomed him) or a whole new — and more successful — model for GOP candidate. Time will tell — but he’s definitely running. (Previous ranking: 2)

1. Marco Rubio: As NBC’s “First Read” detailed Friday morning, Rubio has taken a hit for his support of comprehensive immigration reform. But, it’s far from a political death blow. His efforts on abortion legislation and defunding Obamacare are clear attempts to re-bolster his conservative bona fides in advance of a 2016 bid. The Florida Senator isn’t as strong a frontrunner today as he has been in the past but he still looks like the best bet — not named Jeb Bush — at the moment. (Previous ranking: 1)
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Cure Congress -- elect women to office!

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Heiresses apparent: Daughters take their turn for the political dynasty
By Emily Heil, July 26, 2013

American political dynasties historically have been built on power passed from fathers to sons, brothers to brothers, even husbands to wives: the Adamses, the Kennedys, the Bushes, the Clintons.

Now, it is the daughters’ turn.

When Michelle Nunn announced her bid to become a U.S. senator from Georgia this week, she scrambled the usual red-state/blue state political calculus, putting in play a seat that could tip the balance of power in the Senate.

Without Nunn’s powerful political last name, there would be little hope that the 46-year-old Democrat who has never run for public office could win in that solidly conservative state.

But in politics, names have coattails. In Nunn’s case it will boost her ability to raise money and build support from backers of her father, former senator Sam Nunn, revered in his home state for his 24-year Senate career and his post-congressional work on nuclear non-proliferation.

A similar father-daughter tale is unfolding in Wyoming, where Liz Cheney, daughter of longtime congressman and former vice president Dick Cheney, is mounting what would otherwise be a long-shot bid to topple incumbent Sen. Mike Enzi in the Republican primary.

Perhaps more than any previous year, the 2014 midterm campaigns feature a wave of daughters eager to embrace their fathers’ political legacies while forging their own political futures. And at a time when the 2016 presidential field appears likely to include both the son of a prominent politician (Rand Paul) and the wife of a president (Hillary Rodham Clinton), it is no surprise that daughters are forming a political class of their own.

Political newbie Gwen Graham is expected to amass an impressive war chest in her bid for a north Florida House seat, thanks in part to her father, former Democratic senator Bob Graham. In Nevada, Democratic political consultant Erin Bilbray-Kohn is running to unseat two-term incumbent Republican Rep. Joe Heck. Her campaign Web site identifies her only as “Erin Bilbray,” perhaps trading on the name recognition of her father, former congressman James Bilbray.

And Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes is trying to unseat Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, a task that might seem quixotic — yet her political pedigree (her father, Jerry Lundergan, is a former state senator and a political bigwig in the Bluegrass State) has helped make her a credible candidate.

Another political scion, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, has launched her first Senate run. Though the seven-term Republican is no newbie, she owes some of her political chops to her dad, Arch Moore, a former West Virginia governor and congressman.

By contrast, there’s only one son of a lawmaker, Mike Collins of Georgia, son of former Republican congressman Mac Collins, seeking a congressional seat in the next election.

“When I was growing up, there was no expectation of the girls going into politics,” Kathleen Kennedy Townsend recalls of her experience as a daughter of America’s most storied political dynasty. The former lieutenant governor of Maryland is the eldest child of the late senator Robert Kennedy, just one luminary in a clan that has also produced a president, two senators and a handful of congressmen.

Kennedy Townsend remembers that her own political ambitions were welcomed, if not expected, something that’s changed for a younger generation. “These women grew up in a very different time, and I’m excited to see that change.”

‘An evolutionary trend’

Politicians passing down political DNA to daughters isn’t new: Prominent female lawmakers with political lineage include House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). But as women enter politics in greater numbers, it’s becoming more common for a daughter to be the one to take up the family mantle. The current boomlet of political daughters may be a signal that politics is an increasingly gender-neutral family business.

It used to be that a woman got into politics “over her husband’s dead body,” a morbid joke reflecting how common it was for a women to launch her public career only by filling the seat left by a deceased spouse. Dozens of women took that path, and many — like Margaret Chase Smith, who filled the seat left vacant when her husband, Rep. Clyde Smith (R-Maine), fell ill — went on to have distinguished careers in their own right. Chase Smith eventually won a Senate seat and became the first woman have her name placed in nomination for the presidency by a major political party.

Debbie Walsh, the director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, sees the rise of political daughters as “part of an evolutionary trend,” in how women come to power. “You’ve always seen children going into the family business, whether that’s a grocery store or politics,” she says. “It’s a situation where women hadn’t been as welcomed into the business or political world, and that’s changing.”

The same advantages that have long applied to the sons of politicians seeking office themselves apply to women, of course. Name recognition is a big benefit. If a political race is a 100-yard dash, having a well-known name can put a candidate at the 10-yard marker just to start.

Access to a ready-made political network and potential donors also doesn’t hurt.

But Matt Canter, the deputy executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, says names are only part of the equation. Family stories, he says, are important for any candidate, whether their surname is well-known, like Kennedy, or unfamiliar, like Obama.

“If a candidate does come from a family that has a strong tradition, that has done remarkable things, and a voter already has information about that, it can be helpful,” Canter said. And he notes that though candidates with political family connections may well have networks they can tap to raise a campaign war chest, so might other candidates with deep roots in her home state or district.

Father’s influence

For some, the biggest advantage might be learning the nuts and bolts of politics at the dinner table.

Pelosi, the highest-ranking political daughter right now, didn’t have the benefit of strong name recognition, and she ran 3,000 miles from the district represented by her father, Tommy D’Alesandro, the legendary Democratic congressman and Baltimore mayor. But she learned some job skills early on. As a little girl, she was in charge of the book her father kept that tallied favors owed and paid.

And in the campaigns of the political daughters now running for the Congress, one can see their fathers’ influence.

Lundergan Grimes, for example, is drawing from her father’s friendship with former president Bill Clinton: The Clinton imprimatur is expected to give her a fundraising boon, and Lundergan Grimes’ staff includes veterans of Hillary Clinton’s failed 2008 presidential bid.

In Cheney’s case, her father’s national profile might help with fundraising, but the goodwill he enjoys in the Cowboy State is considered to be her best defense against accusations of carpetbagging: She spent decades in the Washington area before moving back to Wyoming last year.

It’s too soon to tell where — or if — the candidates will break with their famous fathers’ political views. Cheney, in particular, is seen as an alter ego of her notoriously hard-line conservative father. “We can get our nation back on track,” Cheney said in a video announcing her candidacy. “Instead of cutting deals with the president’s liberal allies, we should be opposing them every step of the way.”

All of them appear happy to accept the gravitas that might be implied by their parents’ often-storied careers. Yet the names on the ballots will ultimately be their own, and voters’ brand loyalty extends only so far.

“Eventually, of course, you are judged by your own accomplishments,” Kennedy Townsend says.

Matriarchal dynasties

The next step in the “evolutionary” process may very well see women as the bequeathers of family political legacies, not just inheritors.

There is a handful of female lawmakers whose sons and grandsons have gone on to succeed them or join their ranks in Washington — think of the late congresswoman Julia Carson (D-Ind.), whose grandson André Carson now holds her former House seat. But so far, there hasn’t been a woman in Congress with a daughter who followed her footsteps.

Stephen Hess, the Bookings scholar who wrote the book “Political Dynasties,” predicts that it’s only a matter of time.

For example, EMILY’s List, the organization that recruits pro-choice Democratic candidates, already has its eye on Hannah Pingree, the former speaker of the Maine House of Representatives and the daughter of Rep. Chelli Pingree (D-Maine).

“In time, we’ll start to see dynasties that look very female,” Hess says.
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Friday, July 26, 2013

Supreme Court justices are like co-authors of a chain novel

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The U.S. Supreme Court is undeniably a political institution
By Justin Dyer, July 25, 2013

There are many lessons to be gleaned from the Supreme Court’s most recent term which ended with a pair of high-profile cases involving same-sex marriage. Here is one: the Supreme Court is undeniably a political institution.

The law does of course matter in constitutional litigation, and judging is different than legislating. But it is impossible today to pretend that the law is all that matters when the Supreme Court takes up a case. Justices are not (as John Roberts insisted during his confirmation hearings) akin to umpires calling balls and strikes. They are more like co-authors of a chain novel. Each justice can shape the story in different ways, but each is limited by what has previously been written, what can be negotiated with colleagues, and what readers will accept.

The nature of the craft and the institutional context impose real boundaries on what the Court can decide. Within these boundaries there is broad discretion. In his dissenting opinion in Windsor v. United States, Justice Antonin Scalia pulled back the curtain on this aspect of the judicial process. “I promise you this:” the Reagan-appointee warned, “The only thing that will ‘confine’ the Court’s holding is its sense of what it can get away with.”

In Windsor, the Court required the federal government to recognize the same-sex marriages that are now legal in 13 states, but it stopped short of requiring every state in the union to do the same. The strategy, it seems, was to take a modest first step toward nationalizing same-sex marriage without provoking a large political backlash. The majority of the Court, Scalia ventured, left the “second, state-law shoe to be dropped later, maybe next term.”

Scalia’s pointed Windsor dissent offers a glimpse of the political dynamics that are often part of the Court’s politically volatile cases. In little over a decade, the Supreme Court’s nine justices have effectively decided a presidential election, gutted federal campaign finance laws, set the rules under which universities may use race in admissions decisions, declared an important section of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional, and modified President Barack Obama’s signature health care reform bill.

Everyone’s partisan ox has been gored more than once; no one agrees with every decision. The point is that the Court has long been a powerful player in American politics, and these politicized decisions are intelligible only against the backdrop of broader political trends. “Scarcely any political question arises in the United States,” Alexis de Tocqueville noted in 1835, “that is not resolved, sooner, or later, into a judicial question.”

The flip side of Tocqueville’s aphorism is that, sooner or later, the American people are tempted to have every major political issue resolved by the judiciary. In the long run, this is fatal to self-government. As Abraham Lincoln insisted in his First Inaugural Address, when “the policy of the Government upon vital questions is to be irrevocably fixed by the Supreme Court” then the “people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”

The rule of law, Lincoln warned, can easily descend into the rule of nine Washington, D.C. lawyers. It is a warning worth heeding today.

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The fix is in, i.e. gerrymandered, manipulated legislative districts have given us a "do nothing" Congress

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Fix Congress: Overturn Vieth v Jubelirer!
By Tina Dupuy, July 26, 2013

OK House Republicans—I give up. Since you’ve been the majority the only thing you’ve accomplished is naming things after Reagan and voting to repeal Obamacare an unprecedented—let alone unreasonable—38 times. Seriously, you’ve done nothing. Even Congresses that set out to do nothing and were dubbed “Do-Nothing,” look like overachievers by comparison.

Last Sunday on “Face the Nation,” Speaker Boehner said, “We should not be judged by how many new laws we create, we ought to be judged on how many laws we repeal.”

Well, you haven’t repealed any laws either. So even when you throw out the measurements by which we usually judge the merits of Congress and just make up your own—you’re still a national disgrace.

Why is Congress so horrible? Why is the Ebola virus held in higher esteem in most polls than the Legislative Branch? One word: Gerrymandering.

Basically, through a solidly and proudly partisan process our representatives have carved out districts to protect incumbency. So your congressperson doesn’t have to work, be effective or listen to constituents—they just have to be a congressperson.

In 2011, when the dysfunction of Congress was noted as the primary reason Standard & Poors downgraded the United States’ credit rating for the first time in history, gerrymandering was the reason nobody got voted out. The fix is in and Congress gets to cash their government paychecks.

“The concept of equal justice under law requires the State to govern impartially,” wrote Justice John Paul Stevens in his dissenting opinion in the 2004 landmark 5-4 decision, Vieth v. Jubelirer.

Norma Jean, Richard Vieth and Susan Furey were plaintiff-appellants in the case. These Pennsylvania Democrats claimed that the Pennsylvania General Assembly (specifically Robert C. Jubelirer, President of the Pennsylvania Senate) had unconstitutionally gerrymandered their districts, violated Article I of the U.S. Constitution (one-person, one-vote) and denied them protection under the Eighteenth Amendment.

The case hinged on whether gerrymandering was justiciable (able to be decided by the courts). Five justices said it was not. No one penned a majority opinion.

In the minority, Justice Stevens wrote, “Today’s plurality opinion would exempt governing officials from that duty in the context of legislative redistricting and would give license, for the first time, to partisan gerrymanders that are devoid of any rational justification.”

Justice Stevens wins for the most prescient statement about our current, self-quagmired Congress.


Stevens also cited the 1964 decision Reynolds v. Sims, which forced state legislative districts to have equal populations: “Legislatures…should be bodies which are collectively responsive to the popular will.”

After Reynolds there was a Republican-led fight to pass a constitutional amendment allowing unequal legislative districts. Their amendment failed. But their goal has been realized: Voter disenfranchisement through manipulated districts.

Since Congress doesn’t have to adhere to popular will—it’s no shock they don’t. A majority of Americans want them to work together. A majority of Americans want health insurance regardless of preexisting conditions (as in Obamacare). A majority of Americans want infrastructure spending. A majority of Americans want the government to not nationalize women’s bodies. A majority of Americans want a higher minimum wage. A majority of Americans want comprehensive immigration reform. And clean air. And affordable higher education. And regulated banks.

A majority of Americans (1.4 million more) voted for Democrats and yet we still have an anarcho-Republican majority whose sole pastime is to play chicken with the general welfare of the country.

Congress is disincentivized from compromising, working together, or really working period. Congress can cynically put party before country to the detriment of us all as much as they please. And they clearly, under the “leadership” of John Andrew Boehner, have done just that.

Americans are the ones without jobs, pensions and savings. Congress is safe. See? They really don’t represent Americans.

Overturn Vieth v. Jubelirer. Kill the Gerrymander. Fix Congress.
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Wednesday, July 24, 2013

OK, so just say NO to "playing"

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Business Executives Call Political Giving ‘Pay to Play’
By Julie Bykowicz, July 24, 2013

Top U.S. business executives say major political contributors such as themselves wield too much political influence.

A new poll of company leaders shows that 75 percent of them regard political giving as “pay-to-play,” and even more said they would like the campaign-finance system vastly improved or completely rewritten.

Almost 90 percent favor limiting how much money individuals, corporations and outside groups can spend for political purposes during an election. The survey also found wide support for a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rule requiring all publicly traded companies to disclose to shareholders all of their political expenditures.

“There’s an impression that there is money being used to buy politicians, and that therefore they are not beholden to the electorate but to donors,” said Steve Odland, president and chief executive officer of the Committee for Economic Development and a former CEO of Office Depot Inc. (ODP)

The committee’s online survey of 302 executives was conducted May 29 to June 3 jointly by Democratic polling firm Hart Research and Republican pollster American Viewpoint. The Committee for Economic Development, a nonprofit business policy group based in Washington, released the survey today as part of its push for more disclosure in campaign finance.

Chamber Objection

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce objected to the survey’s findings, sending a lawyer to the Committee for Economic Development’s event today at the National Press Club in Washington. The business trade group criticized the poll as unscientific and agenda-driven, invoking the name of a billionaire Democratic donor whose nonprofit Open Society Institute has provided funding for CED programs.

“This survey is not representative of the business community and given that George Soros is contributing to the organization conducting it, the results should not be surprising,” said Blair Latoff Holmes, a Chamber spokeswoman, in an e-mailed statement. “The Chamber and its members understand that the real goal of the so-called disclosure push is to limit or remove altogether the business voice from the political and policymaking process.”

CED’s survey of executives was funded by the Omidyar Network Fund Inc., a nonprofit established by EBay Inc. co-founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife.

2012 Money

Trade groups such as the Chamber are among those that the CED says are responsible for obscuring money in politics. Together with unions and nonprofits, groups that don’t disclose their donors invested more than $335 million in the 2012 federal elections, according to the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics.

The survey of executives found that 86 percent said transparency in the campaign-finance system isn’t adequate. Accompanying the poll is a CED report calling for more donor disclosure.

“Political donors and spenders are finding it increasingly easy to avoid public scrutiny, as a growing number of organizations take advantage of porous rules to finance campaign activity without revealing the sources of their funding,” wrote Anthony Corrado, project director of CED’s Money in Politics and a professor of government specializing in campaign finance at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.

Distaste for the campaign-finance system bridges Democrats and Republicans, according to the survey, with 71 percent of self-identified Democrats and 68 percent of Republicans saying that major contributors have too much influence on politicians.

SEC Rule

Almost all of the surveyed Democratic executives, as well as 79 percent of Republican executives, said they would favor an SEC rule requiring publicly traded companies to disclose political spending.

Increasingly, companies are voluntarily making that information public. A September 2012 study by the Washington-based Center for Political Accountability found that 45 of 88 companies provide information about their corporate donations, up from 36 a year earlier.

The Committee for Economic Development’s survey of executives’ views comes a month after a Sunlight Foundation report analyzed “elite” donors. That report found that just 0.01 percent of the U.S. population accounted for 28 percent of the total $6 billion spent in the 2012 elections.

About 16.5 percent of those 31,385 elite donors listed their occupation as “CEO” or “chairman” of a company, according to the foundation, a Washington-based group that advocates for increased government transparency.
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