influence peddling - Represent Consumers

Revolving door just no longer cuts it to describe how large corporate interests have swallowed up the government officials that are supposed to be working in our interest.

First Street, a D.C. insiders’ guide to people, policy and influence peddling, recently published a guide to lobbyists. The highest paid lobbyists were former elected officials, with an average take of $178,000 a year, the next highest paid group was former staffers, with an average take of more than $144,000 a year. Both left the professional lobbyists far behind in their value to their clients.

In public, our corporate leaders use polite language describing themselves in glowing terms like “job creators.” Republicans wring their hands over regulations; Democrats weep crocodile tears over the plight of the middle class. Meanwhile the politicians feast at the public trough and prepare for lucrative payoffs, I mean careers, in the private sector.

Revolving door implies that these officials are somehow going back and forth between serving the public interest and the corporate interests that lobby them, pay for their campaigns if they’re elected, and then hire them when they’re ready to cash out.

But that’s not what’s happening.

The door doesn’t revolve, it only swings one way. And what’s happening to our government deserves much stronger language than the description of a door.

We have to face up to the fact that under our present system, election to public office, or appointment to key regulatory posts, is for the vast majority is the entryway into a world of legalized prostitution, where major corporations wield nearly absolute power over our government.

At WheresOurMoney.org we’ve proposed a constitutional amendment, 28A, to undo Citizens United, the awful U.S. Supreme Court ruling that unleashes even more unrestricted and unreported corporate money into our political system. That won’t curb lobbying. But rallying around the reversal of Citizens United will focus attention on the culture of legalized corruption that has overtaken our government.

While the media’s grand poobahs have been poopooing the Occupy movement as a bunch of clueless hippies, the occupiers themselves couldn’t be more focused on the source of their frustration.

It’s a political system addicted to corporate cash, with politicians willing to do and say anything to keep it coming.

The occupiers communicate a keen sense of just how outrageously we have been betrayed by a government captured by corporate campaign contributions, lobbyists and the cozy swinging door between government and big business.

Though the occupiers have been criticized for not arriving with a full legislative agenda in tow, the homemade cardboard signs they carry pithily describe the world that has been too often, until now, left out of the political debate between our two parties, which, just like other kinds of addicts, are unable to have an honest conversation about their substance abuse, or to acknowledge the damage it’s done.

The issue of corporate influence peddling has also been largely left out of the media’s horse race political coverage, which focuses on philosophical differences between left and right rather than what the occupiers are focused on – the corporate might that has overwhelmed our politics.

The occupiers know that at the root of our financial collapse, bank bailout, jobless recovery and continuing housing crisis is one root cause – the undue influence of bankers and corporate titans over our political system.

So it’s left to the youth camped out in parks across the country to pose the tough questions.

They’re picking up on the strong rhetoric Barack Obama himself used back when he was a candidate about the need for fundamental change in our political system. But the president abandoned that quest, and now he’s got to raise $1 billion dollars to fund his reelection ambitions.

The occupiers have also picked up on Obama’s call for civility, with their own devotion to process and making sure everybody gets heard. The cynics are having a blast mocking the occupiers’ general assembly meetings. But the atmosphere at the occupations is a world away from the toxic cable talking point battles that have gotten the country nowhere. Let’s see who has the last laugh.

Here at WheresOurMoney, we’re offering a powerful antidote to the toxic flow of corporate money that is poisoning our democracy: a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s wrong-headed Citizens United ruling, which said that for purposes of political contributions, corporations are just like people. This terrible decision will only make a bad situation worse and we’ve got to start the fight against it now. You can read the amendment, get more background on Citizens United, and sign a petition here.

Slamming the Door on Democracy

Government Under the Influence