Boy is this going to be a long presidential election campaign. With multiple candidates announcing their intentions to run for president in recent weeks, the circus is in full swing. And the only thing that is certain about the 2016 contest to elect the leader of the free world is that it will be the most costly in the history of mankind. But before I go into my rant on money and politics, I can’t resist the urge to poke a little fun at Hillary Clinton. I love how she is painting herself a “woman of the people” by rolling around Iowa in her “Scooby Doo” van meeting “average voters.” It’s so cute. She’s trying really hard to avoid looking like the elitist she truly is. I mean, when you’re worth around $15 million and concede you haven’t driven a car in 20 years, it’s tough to be “just one of the guys.” To be sure, politics attracts rich folks. Mitt Romney could probably buy and sell Hillary 20 times over, but then again, I never heard Romney characterize himself as “dead broke.” But it’s tough to talk about the wealth gap and the plight of college kids strapped with student loans and the high cost of tuition when you charge $300,000 to speak at a university. It’s tough when the first “average voters” you meet are paid political operatives. It’s tough when you finally do meet with some “average voters” but first confiscate their cellphones and cameras. It’s tough when Republican National Committee Deputy Communications Director Raj Shah spots your Scooby Doo van parked in a handicapped spot and tweets out a photo. And it’s tough, when talking about immigration reform, you misrepresent your family history by saying, “All my grandparents, you know, came over here." (Clinton’s dad’s dad, Hugh Rodham, was born in England. But his wife was born in Pennsylvania. Clinton’s maternal grandparents were born in Illinois.) Details, details. And as ridiculous as politics has become in America these days, money and politics has become almost unfathomably absurd. A recent piece in the Washington Examiner did the math for Hillary’s campaign. Seems the good senator from New York plans to spend roughly $2,5 billion in her bid to occupy the White House. Assuming she receives approximately the same number of votes as President Barack Obama did in his re-election – roughly 66 million – she will have spent $38 per vote. What a bargain. I really don’t care what party you prefer or which candidate you plan to support, this has got to trouble you. For years that has been the tired old adage about having the best elected officials money can buy. The sad thing now is – since 2010 – it’s true. That was the year the landmark Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission was decided. Citizens United was a conservative lobbying group that wanted to air a film critical of Hillary Clinton. They also wanted to advertise the film during TV broadcasts. This seemed to be in violation of the McCain-Feingold Act of 2002, a campaign finance law that defined “electioneering communication” as a broadcast, cable or satellite communication that mentioned a candidate within 60 days of a general election. (Well, duh.) The law prohibited such expenditures by corporations and unions. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia said that, yes, McCain-Feingold applied and prohibited Citizens United from advertising the film. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed this decision and struck down provisions of the law that prohibited corporations (including nonprofit corporations) and unions from making independent expenditures and "electioneering communications.” The majority said the law’s prohibition of all independent expenditures by corporations and unions violated the First Amendment's protection of free speech. The majority wrote, "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech." This is the famous “corporations are individuals” part of the ruling. Justice Stevens wrote a stinging, 90-page dissent. In it he noted the Court’s ruling, "threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation. The path it has taken to reach its outcome will, I fear, do damage to this institution. ... A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold." How prescient was that guy? Pretty much everything he foresaw has come to pass. More money is in politics now than ever before. And if you think there are no consequences, you are dead wrong. Politicians today are bought and sold along with the policies they fashion in Washington. You need look no further than the policies. You want to talk about issues like the wage gap? Why do you suppose so much money heads to the top at corporations? Do you think it’s some failure of capitalism? No, it’s not. It’s because we no longer have capitalism in America. We’ve got some weird hybrid form of capitalism where the people who run the corporations get to make the rules. Those people wield money, power and influence and lawmakers don’t have the will to stand up to them. So, of course, the rules get tilted toward the top of the corporate food chain. It’s human nature. And they, with clear conscience, can say, “Hey, we’re just following the rules.” Yeah, rules are a lot more fun to follow when you get to make them, too. In a constitutional republic, citizen legislators are sent to do the bidding of their constituents. There is little or none of that going on in this country anymore. Legislators do the bidding of their benefactors. Period. It’s a sad situation, any way you write it. And I don’t see it changing anytime soon.
