So are we headed for the same Corporatization of Elections that we have, say in, Stadiums. Like the ones here Locally, University of Phoenix where the Cardinal play. Where the University of Phoenix won the “naming rights” by paying the Cardinals lots of Money.
The same with US Air Arena (built as America West- and I still call it that).
Or Chase Field (built as Bank One Ballpark- or “BOB” as I still call it).
So as we going to have McElections??
These election results brought to you by…
Or are we already there to begin with.
WSJ: Corporations, labor unions and other political entities are gearing up to play a larger role in influencing elections in 2010 and beyond after a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down elements of campaign-finance law.
The Supreme Court on Thursday made it easier for entities to influence elections for Congress and the White House by stripping away rules that limited their ability to fund campaign advertisements. The court also struck down a part of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law that prevented independent political groups from running advertisements within 30 days of a primary election or 60 days of a general election.
The question now is whether corporations and labor unions will take advantage of their new freedom. For the past decade, labor unions have been more aggressive than corporations in finding legal ways to fund independent political campaigns. But the relaxation of campaign-spending restrictions could clear the way for groups from all points along the political spectrum to spend more, and target more of that spending in the critical final days of a campaign.
Or will be get EVEN MORE Negative Attack ads in this hyper-partisan atmosphere?
Corporations, unions and wealthy individuals have sought to influence elections for decades by funding their own independent campaigns for or against candidates.
In the 2004 election, outside groups spent more than $550 million on their own campaigns, more than double what they spent in the 2000 campaign. Most of these independent efforts were bankrolled by labor unions and wealthy Democrats and were designed to help Democrats at the polls.
The two largest independent groups in 2004—America Coming Together and the Media Fund—spent a total of $136 million in an effort to elect Democrats. The Service Employees International Union spent $48 million, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
During the 2008 election cycle, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents businesses, led all other independent groups by spending $36.4 million, mainly to help elect Republicans to the Senate, according to the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute, which tracks spending by outside groups. The second-largest organization was the labor union American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which spent $30.7 million. The Service Employees International Union spent $27 million.
William McGinley, a campaign finance lawyer with Patton Boggs who works with Republicans, said Democratic-leaning organizations “have outspent their conservative counterparts during the last few years, and now is the time for conservatives to re-engage.”
I would argue we are already there.
And have been for a long time.
Special Interest groups rule Washington D.C.
You only have to look as far as the Labor Unions who objected to the “Cadillac Plan” tax in the now largely defunct Health Care Reform.
They screamed and yelled and got special treatment.
AARP got bought off.
The U.S Chamber of Commerce got shut out because it wouldn’t be bought off.
The AMA got bought off.
Whole States (Nebraska, Louisiana and Florida) got bought off.
So the Politicians get bought off by the Special Interests, and they by them off too.
There is no place for the American people in this equation.
Only at the Ballot box.
And Massachusetts proved that.
The Political earthquake that that set off is still being assessed.
Obama Jan 14,2009: “If Republicans want to campaign against what we’ve done by standing up for the status quo and for insurance companies over American families and businesses, that is a fight I want to have.”
But on Jan 19th, the people spoke.
And the entire country changed.
That’s all, We the People have.
That’s our only weapon.
Charles Krauthammer: After Coakley’s defeat, Obama pretended that the real cause was a generalized anger and frustration “not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.”
Let’s get this straight: The antipathy to George W. Bush is so enduring and powerful that … it just elected a Republican senator in Massachusetts? Why, the man is omnipotent.
The evidence was unmistakable: Independents, who in 2008 elected Obama, swung massively against the Democrats: dropping 16 points in Virginia, 21 in New Jersey.
On Tuesday, it was even worse: Independents, who went 2-to-1 Republican in Virginia and New Jersey, now went 3-to-1 Republican in hyper-blue Massachusetts.
But you have to wonder, how many Anti-Bush attack ads will be airing soon because that’s still the main demon and main excuse of the Left in this country.
Will they run against a past President this fall?
And will you buy it?
An astonishing 56% of Massachusetts voters, according to Rasmussen, called health care their top issue. In a Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates poll, 78% of Brown voters said their vote was intended to stop ObamaCare. Only a quarter of all voters in the Rasmussen poll cited the economy as their top issue, nicely refuting the Democratic view that Massachusetts was just the usual anti-incumbent resentment you expect in bad economic times.
So, my advice, is to get a DVR between now an November and record your shows and fast forward through all the attack ads or else you may just go mad.
The SEIU has been one of the largest donors to outside political groups in the past decade. On Thursday, the organization denounced the court decision, saying it opened the door for corporations to outspend unions.
“I don’t think working people would ever have as much to spend as corporations. For us, being able to spend a few extra dollars isn’t worth allowing decisions to be made from boardrooms instead of the polling booth,” said union spokeswoman Lori Lodes.(Bloomberg)
But you don’t want them decided at the polling booth, you want them decided in D.C. That’s why you had a special meeting with The White House to pitch a fit over the “Cadillac plans” and got exempted from them for five years, while the normal average American (92% non-union) was not.
But at least we had some good news:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said her chamber lacks the votes to pass the Senate’s health-care legislation, dashing hopes of a quick resolution for President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority.
“In its present form, without change, I don’t think it’s possible to pass the Senate bill in the House,” Pelosi told reporters today in Washington. “We are not in a big rush,” Pelosi said. Congress will “take the time it needs to consider the options,” she said.
That doesn’t mean they will stop trying. Oh no, that will never happen.
But at least for this moment, the Wicked Witch is dead. Massachusetts, of all places, dropped a House on Nancy Pelosi. 🙂
“The sense is we shouldn’t drop the subject, but maybe we need to look at some pieces of it,” said Representative Jose Serrano, a New York Democrat.
That would fit with a suggestion Obama made yesterday.
“I would advise that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements in the package that people agree on,” Obama said in an interview with ABC News broadcast last night.
So, the people still have the ultimate power.
The Congress is already bought and paid for by Special Interests.
I don’t see much of a change.
But WE THE PEOPLE still elect these people. So ultimately, regardless, we have the last say.
But that doesn’t preclude the Corporations and other Interests from picking the Candidates as many Special Interest Groups do now.
So we may still get Twiddle-Dee and Twiddle-Dumber.
That’s when we have to raise our standards. No rubber stamps. No “I voted for the Democrat/Republican just because I am a Democrat/Republican”.
Be a savvier shopper than that.
Yes, that will require time and dedication while your working and relaxing and playing with the kids.
But, no one said Democracy was easy.
Because we can’t hope to out spend the Special Interests in Washington now.
But we get the Vote.
We have to use what tools we do have.
Now, more than ever.
With characteristic condescension, they contemptuously dismissed the (tea party) protests as the mere excrescences of a redneck, retrograde, probably racist rabble.
You would think lefties could discern a proletarian vanguard when they see one. Yet they kept denying the reality of the rising opposition to Obama’s social democratic agenda when summer turned to fall and Virginia and New Jersey turned Republican in the year’s two gubernatorial elections.
That something is substance — political ideas and legislative agendas.
Democrats, if they wish, can write off their Massachusetts humiliation to high unemployment, to Coakley or, the current favorite among sophisticates, to generalized anger. That implies an inchoate, unthinking lashing-out at whoever happens to be in power — even at your liberal betters who are forcing on you an agenda that you can’t even see is in your own interest.
Democrats must so rationalize, otherwise they must take democracy seriously and ask themselves: If the people really don’t want it, could they possibly have a point?
“If you lose Massachusetts and that’s not a wake-up call,” said moderate — and sentient — Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, “there’s no hope of waking up.”
I say: Let them sleep.
Good Night. Sleep Tight. Don’t let the Special Interest Bugs Bite. 🙂
Indyfromaz's Blog: The Thoughts of An Independent Arizonan 