Congress – Page 62 – The Wrongologist

Monday Wake Up Call – February 2, 2015

Waaay too many Mexican appetizers last night, not to mention margaritas and beer. Anyway, another national football excess is in the record books, congrats to Tom Brady and the Patriots.

Get your day started with this hilarious meditation on football vs. baseball by the great George Carlin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-ts=1422579428&v=qmXacL0Uny0&x-yt-cl=85114404

Monday’s hot links:
There’s no such thing as Nacho cheese. On the day after the Super Bowl, when so much nacho cheese was consumed, this shows how little can be taken for granted. Inquiring minds are wondering—do people expect nacho cheese to be a particular flavor? Or color? Or texture? Or is it just any cheese that happens to be on nacho chips? Here’s the truth: There are no standards for nacho cheese, it is just whatever we believe it to be. Does this bring up deeper, non-cheese-related existential questions?

Yosemite Park reported the first confirmed sighting of a rare Sierra Nevada red fox (Vulpes vulpes necator) in nearly 100 years. Park wildlife biologists documented a sighting of the fox on two separate instances (December 13, 2014 and January 4, 2015) within the park boundary. The Sierra Nevada red fox of California is one of the rarest mammals in North America. Estimates say there are fewer than 50 in the US. Check it out:

Mississippi has the highest vaccination rate for school-age children. It’s not even close. Last year, 99.7% of the state’s kindergartners were fully vaccinated. In California, epicenter of the Disney measles outbreak, almost 8% of kindergartners (41,000 children) were not immunized against mumps, measles and rubella. In Oregon, it was 6.8%. In Pennsylvania, it was nearly 15%! The secret of Mississippi’s success stems from a strict mandatory vaccination law that lacks the loopholes found in almost every state.

Leaving Afghanistan has become one of the most difficult operations the US military has ever undertaken. A Colonel in charge of packing up Afghanistan last year called it “a logistics Super Bowl.” Here is Lt. Gen. Raymond Mason, who headed Army logistics until he retired last year:

Certainly in our lifetime, it’s one of the biggest, if not the biggest operation in terms of complexity, size, and cost.

The dirty little secret is that our military knows how to get people, weapons and supplies into a war zone, but has little experience getting them back out. This may cost the taxpayers more than $2 billion before it is done.

China has sent drones to Nigeria. As the Boko Haram insurgency enters its 7th year, China is busy building a better relationship by selling drones, MRAP vehicles and smart bombs to Nigeria, (most of which the US has been unwilling to provide to Nigeria due to human rights concerns). China wants to become a first tier exporter of military equipment, and is looking to lock up Nigeria as a supplier of oil. On January 25, 2015, a photo appeared online showing a Chinese CH-3 UCAV drone which crashed in Nigeria’s Borno Province. Borno is the area where much of the Boko Haram violence occurred in 2014.

Your thought for the week: We hear all the time from yahoos on the web and yahoos in Congress something like this:

Isn’t it unfair that corporate dividends are taxed twice?

The answer is no, and here’s why:

A corporation is a legal entity. If it has an “accession to wealth” (meaning, a profit in tax legalese), in our system, the corporation must pay taxes. A stockholder is also a legal entity. If a stockholder receives a dividend, he/she also has an “accession to wealth”, and thus, pays a tax.

Why is this hard to understand? No one claims that when a worker gets paid a wage, and pays a tax on that income, and later spends some of that after-tax income paying someone to mow their lawn, that it is double-taxation for the lawn guy to pay income tax.

This is really simple folks: Money moves from entity, to entity, to entity, and each time, income tax applies.

And, if someone makes the argument that the shareholder is the corporation, they don’t get what a corporation is. It’s a separate legal entity that exists to protect shareholders from the business’s liabilities. The fact that it pays taxes is a normal consequence, and the entire point of its existence.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – February 1, 2015

The Super Bowl is today. There will be queso con chorizo and enchiladas at the Mansion of Wrong.

It was a busy week. Obama has bromance with India’s Prime Minister Modi, then flies to the funeral of the Saudi King. The Republican beauty pageant began; we learned that the Koch brothers plan to spend nearly $900 million to elect Republicans in 2016, but Mitt isn’t running. Mitt didn’t leave gracefully, but perhaps he showed the self-awareness to avoid further indignities. He signed off calling for an “end to the grip of poverty,” which, considering the source, should be received by most with something between a snort and a laugh.

The Koch brothers are almost their own political party. The biggest contenders for the Republican nomination went to Palm Springs for their audition with the Koch funding team. This means if you are a candidate, you will shade your story and beliefs to please the Kochs and their fellow travelers. That means you are going to spend more thought about getting and keeping your Koch money, and less time thinking about which policies matter. Or maybe, its just birds of a feather.

Choose your poison at the SB:

Thank you, Supreme Court, politics is now forever in your debt, and democracy has left the building:

We will soon leave the snow season for the money season:

Mitt decides not to be the next Adlai Stevenson:

Mr. Obama visits Saudi Arabia, makes sales call:

When will they ever learn?

Your word for the week: Agnotology.

Agnotology is the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data.

Does this concept bring to mind any particular group?

Friday Music Break – January 30, 2015

“We know something about billionaire consumption, but it is hard to measure some of it. Some billionaires are consuming politicians, others consume reporters, and some consume academics.” – Thomas Picketty

Today’s music has a populist message designed to help you fight the Plutocracy over the weekend. It is “First We Take Manhattan, Then We Take Berlin”, written and performed by Leonard Cohen. The song was originally recorded by Jennifer Warnes for her 1987 album, “Famous Blue Raincoat”. Cohen recorded it a year later for his album, “I’m Your Man”. This version was recorded in London in 2009:

It has become an occasional anthem for Syriza, the Greek Populist Party that just won power on an anti-austerity, anti-European Union platform. In Greece, it was played with the words, “First we take Athens, then we take Madrid!”

Sample Lyrics:
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
For trying to change the system from within
I’m coming now, I’m coming to reward them
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
I’m guided by a signal in the heavens
I’m guided by this birthmark on my skin
I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.

You loved me as a loser,
but now you’re worried that I just might win,
You knew the way you could have stopped me,
but you never had the discipline,
So many nights I prayed for this,
to let my work begin.

See you on Sunday

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – January 25, 2015

“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” – Frederick Nietzsche

It is clear that we have entered what may be the last years when we can delay or avoid entirely, the decline of America as the world’s indispensable nation. What is unclear is what the US electorate thought they were voting for last November. Polls have repeatedly shown that the public favors the Democrats’ policy proposals, but increasingly, votes for Republicans. So polarization has ensued, and DC has already turned its focus to the NEXT election, even though we just had one.

Everything between here and there will be simply BS and time filling. Are we to lose another two years? The rest of the world will not be waiting for us.

The Republicans had many responses to the SOTU:

Then there was the official Republican response:
BTW: Don’t you wear the plastic bags INSIDE your shoes to keep the water out? Shoe condoms? Really?

Yet, there are always a few things we all agree with:

With the unfathomable House and Senate votes that have already been taken, is there an image problem?

Last week, the pro-life peeps marched in DC, and the R’s in a show of support, tried a vote on abortion:

Could this be the way the logjam ends in DC?

Politics Is Usually Not The Answer

For the first time in his six SOTU speeches, the president’s economic message on Tuesday was not: “yes, the economy’s weak, but it’s getting stronger” or “we’re on the right path, but we’re not out of the woods.” Instead, he called 2014:

A breakthrough year for America, [as] our economy is growing and creating jobs at the fastest pace since 1999. Our unemployment rate is now lower than it was before the financial crisis. More of our kids are graduating than ever before; more of our people are insured than ever before; we are as free from the grip of foreign oil as we’ve been in almost 30 years.

He added: “this is good news, people!” What President Obama meant was, now that we’ve have sustained economic growth in place, we need to start talking about the policy agenda that will give all of us a chance to benefit from that growth.

But the spin afterwards spoke about things like “leadership”, “redistribution” and “class warfare” that the many, many GOP presidential candidates and their surrogates will parse incessantly, without offering any solutions for our economic future, or those domestic problems that continue to dog America.

Speaking of politics that have not led to solutions, Mr. Obama spoke of his opening with Cuba. Here is what he said:

In Cuba, we are ending a policy that was long past its expiration date. When what you’re doing doesn’t work for 50 years, it’s time to try something new. And our shift in Cuba policy has the potential to end a legacy of mistrust in our hemisphere. It removes a phony excuse for restrictions in Cuba. It stands up for democratic values, and extends the hand of friendship to the Cuban people. And this year, Congress should begin the work of ending the embargo.

But anti-Castro politics, mostly fostered by Republicans, have embargoed some things that have potentially really cost American citizens. No, it’s not Cuban Rum. The Cubans have developed a drug called Heberprot-P, that appears to be very effective in curing advanced foot ulcers in people with diabetes. It could have been licensed for US clinical trials since 2007. It is patented in over 30 nations, including here in the US, and in the European Union.

Most of us have never heard of Heberprot-P. The drug uses a form of epidermal growth factor (EGF) to help regrow cells lost to diabetic foot ulcers (DFU). According to the American Diabetes Association, DFU causes about 73,000 non-traumatic lower-limb amputations in US adults aged 20 years or older who were diagnosed with diabetes.

The idea behind Heberprot was developed in St. Louis years before the embargo by biochemist Stanley Cohen and neurophysiologist Rita Levi-Montalcini. They received the 1986 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discoveries of epidermal and nerve growth factors. They discovered that protein recumbent epidermal growth factor stimulates cell growth. The Cubans applied that idea to foot ulcers.

Because of the embargo, we haven’t brought the drug to the US for clinical trials. But, Mr. Obama could immediately license the import of Heberprot-P without waiting for Congress to debate the end of the embargo.

In fact, US scientists heard first hand from Cuban scientists about the Heberprot-P at two forums held here in 2014. One of them was a meeting of the Conference on the Management of Diabetic Foot Ulcers (DFCON, 2014), the largest meeting of US professionals treating patients with this ailment.

So, despite the politics and the hurdles presented by Cuban-American politicians, the President could license the importation of the drug for study and use in clinical trials, followed by an application for approval of Heberprot-P by the Food and Drug Administration. It could then be researched further by American scientists that wish to test different cell growth rates using incubation equipment and see if this treatment could in fact be applied to helping the regrowth of lost cells in humans due to DFU.

In fact, there is a precedent. In July, 2004, the federal government permitted a California biotechnology company to license three experimental cancer drugs from Cuba. That required permission from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

At the time, a State Department spokesperson said that an exception had been made because of the life-saving potential of the experimental Cuban drugs. A government condition of permitting the license required that payments to Cuba during the developmental phase were to be in goods like food or medical supplies, which are permitted under the embargo, while there are rules against providing the Cuban government with foreign currency. In 2004, the ruling was that after drugs reach the market, payments could be half in cash.

Many Americans are mutilated or die every year because of diabetic foot ulcers. First the toes go, then the feet, and later the legs. Death often follows.

And this drug could have been available for trials since 2007 and wasn’t, because of politics?

We should ask Republican politicians why. Maybe the Republican agenda has been helped by calling the Castro brothers sponsors of state terrorism, but it hasn’t done anything to help people with diabetes in the US keep their toes and feet.

Thoughts Before Tonight’s SOTU

Mr. Obama will make the State of the Union (SOTU) speech tonight. Much of what he is likely to outline as his program for 2015 has been leaked, and pundits have focused on the tax cut for the middle class and tax increases for the 1%. Given that the Republicans control both houses of Congress, this is never going to happen, so why now, and not in 2009 and 2010?

On Sunday, the Wrongologist wrote about Mr. Obama’s appalling coattails. Among the reasons his party lost 13 Senate seats, 69 House seats and 11 Governorships since 2010 is that Dems think they can win as “Republican Lite”. In the case of Democrats, they became the “less taste, less filling” brand.

It’s a lot easier to propose these tax policies when there is absolutely no prospect that these policies will ever be enacted. So, the real significance of these proposals will be how it sets up the eventual Democratic nominee for the contest against Bush 3.0, or Romney 3.0, or whoever winds up with the Republican nomination in 2016. But, will the electorate care that the president proposed something that the Republicans laughed out of town over the weekend? Probably not.

Political scientists point out that the 2016 congressional elections will be more favorable to the Democrats than the 2010 or 2014 elections were, because of the higher turnout in the presidential elections and the makeup of Senate seats that will be contested in 2016.

So, why won’t Democrats turn out for off-year elections? Think about it: Voters seem to be perfectly capable of finding their way to the polls in certain years and are motivated enough to take the time to do so. Yet, these same people consistently lose either their motivation or sense of direction, two years later. Democratic pros say that turnout is all about how to “message” better, which for Democrats means how to say the same old things in new ways. But, Democratic candidates, and their messaging have lost credibility, or are no longer relevant to the day-to-day issues of average people. So voting for Democrats is no longer a priority.

Nor is election turnout the only answer. In 2006, Democrats did extremely well with a 37.1% turnout. Yet, Democrats did poorly in 2010 when turnout was 37.8%. Turnout was higher in 2008 than it had been in any Presidential election year since 1968, probably due to the Obama factor. But, turnout in 2002 when Republicans did well, was only slightly off from 2006 when they did badly, at 37.0%.

Strategically, Republicans may not have much left in the potential electorate to motivate, if demographics are now really tilting towards Democrats. Thus, the R’s have no choice but to repress (or suppress) unenthusiastic and unmotivated Democratic voters.

The R’s got a huge assist in 2014 from Democratic candidates that didn’t stand for much, except the meta-message of “we suck less.” Even if a majority of the electorate sort of agrees with that, a certain portion also says, “Yeah, but not enough to care who wins.”

The issue is what strategies will work politically. The bind can be explained simply: to be successful, Democrats must convince the electorate that Washington can and should do things to improve their lives, but the Republicans have enough firepower to ensure that the D’s premise is a loser. With Hillary, Dems won’t beat them badly enough in 2016 to change that.

It’s clear that electing Democrats (usually) leads to better outcomes than electing Republicans. Change came in bunches: in 1933-1945, 1961-1973, 2009-2010. Think about it, in that 35 year period, Dems passed financial regulation, FDIC, SEC, Social Security, Medicare, Civil Rights Act, Equal Opportunity, Voting Rights Act and Obamacare.

If you doubt this, look at the 50 states. Each has its own set of policies. In many cases, states have adhered to a generally consistent policy for decades. So the economic conditions in the states is a strong indicator of the effects those policies. To see whether the economy performs better in red states or blue states, simply look these 2014 statistics for red vs. blue states. The differences in that regard are stark:

Or, you can look at poverty by red vs. blue state:

Or, per student education spending by state:

This may suggest a strategy on the state and local levels, based on: “Why can’t we have the success the blue states have?”

On the federal level, Democrats have not received credit from voters for proposing popular policies that never came to pass. In fact, the entire success of the Republicans in the 2014 elections was predicated on the idea that the president would receive more blame for gridlock and dysfunction in Washington than they would for causing it.

They were correct. And there are zero reasons to believe that the same playbook won’t work again. You can already hear Republicans decrying the “Obama/Clinton failed policies” of the past 8 years.

See what YOU think after the SOTU tonight.

Happy Martin Luther King Day!

Although it was first observed in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. Day wasn’t recognized by all 50 states until 2000. It isn’t simply a day about the man; it’s a day about a Dream. MLK remains the hero of a certain generation of Americans for whom activism was a building block of their personal journey to adulthood.

In most ways, our nation has lost that sense of can-do, that all things are possible if you follow your Big Idea, because sadly, we no longer have people who can rally us to make Big Ideas happen. And isn’t it fascinating that the three men of the 20th Century who had big ideas and brought them to fruition, Gandhi, Mandela and Dr. King, all faced “it can’t be done” opposition, often violent, from the white power base in their countries. All three modeled non-violence for their followers, and all three lived to see their Big Dream become a reality in their own country.

Since it is Wake Up Monday, here are 3 songs that pay tribute to Dr. King, his ideals and his relentless drive for equality. It is important to remember that he was just 39 when he was killed.

First, “Glory” by Common and John Legend from the soundtrack of the current movie “Selma”:

50 years later, we are far from completely erasing our race-related issues, except on TV, where all day, every day, commercials show people of all races having fun together while shopping for fast food.

Let’s work together to make it a reality outside of TV before too many more MLK days come and go.

Next, U2’s “Pride (In the Name of Love)“. From their 1984 album, “The Unforgettable Fire”:

If listeners have any doubt that Martin Luther King Jr. is the subject of the song, these lyrics drive the point home:

Early morning, April 4
Shot rings out in the Memphis sky
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride.

But, MLK’s assassination took place in the early evening, rather than the early morning. That didn’t matter, everyone loves the song, and the Edge’s guitar at the start is one of the most recognizable riffs of the 1980’s.

Finally, the Wrongologist’s favorite MLK song, “Southern” by OMD from their album “The Pacific Age“. On April 3, 1968, in Memphis, King delivered his last speech, which we now know as his “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech. He was assassinated the next day. OMD samples some of the content of that speech for their song “Southern”:

Although everyone knows the “I’ve been to the mountaintop” part of the speech, Wrongo thinks our focus should be on the following:

I want young men and young women, who are not alive today
But who will come into this world, with new privileges
And new opportunities
I want them to know and see that these new privileges and opportunities
Did not come without somebody suffering and sacrificing
For freedom is never given to anybody

Why should we focus on that part of the speech? Because one day down the road, and it will not be long, young people will have forgotten what MLK meant to America, and how whatever remains of their rights came to be.

They won’t know anything about the intellectual foundations of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Or, how the 13th Amendment ending slavery came about, and why, 100 years later in 1965, the Voting Rights Act was passed, or how 48 years later, in June, 2013, the Roberts Court eviscerated it.

So, today, teach a child about why MLK is important.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – January 18, 2014

With the media and the political parties now shifting their focus to 2016, once again, the Democrats need to remember how badly they have been shellacked under the Obama presidency. The WaPo reports that Republicans have gained more than 900 state legislature seats since 2010. Here is the sorry record:

Mr. Obama now holds the record for “worst coattails” by a modern president, eclipsing even Nixon. There are more than 7,000 state legislative seats in the USA, so the Democratic losses between 2010 and 2014 amount to 12% of all state legislative seats nationwide.

Republicans now control more than 4,100 seats, their highest number since 1920. After taking over 11 legislative chambers from Democrats in 2014, Republicans now control 30 state legislatures completely, and have full control of state governments (legislatures and governorship) in 23 states.

Democrats, by contrast, have full control of 11 state legislatures and total control of state government in just seven states. This isn’t just Obama’s fault, Democrats have focused almost exclusively on the winning the Electoral College since Mr. Clinton left office. Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy is long dead. This loss of state legislatures owes much to the spectacular failure of Democrat’s leadership. Democrats should throw out their entire leadership team and start over. Why would any candidate want to brand themselves with the organizations run by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and whoever it was that said Democratic candidates should run content-free campaigns in 2014?

How bad is this? Remember that policy is made first at the state level. With Republicans in control of so many state governments, the policy track record for their side will be vastly superior to what Democrats can do at the state and local levels. Also, State legislatures and governors redraw congressional lines. In most states, how the nation’s 435 House districts will look after the 2020 Census will be determined by governors and state legislators. Republican legislators are more likely to draw lines that are friendly to their side. Unless Democrats can reverse their state House and Senate losses before the 2021 redraw, Republicans will control the House for a very, very long time. Finally, State legislatures are the minor leagues of politics. Most politicians − President Obama included − who go on to great things, hone their craft in the state legislature of their home state. The Republicans’ farm system is now significantly larger than that of Democrats.

So begins the Republican’s discussion about 2016:

Mitt’s lessons learned in 2012:

GOP opens the 114th Congress with an anti-immigration statement:

Mr. Obama should have bought a clue:

The GOP has an impossible task ahead in certain states:

Tomorrow is MLK Jr. Day. There have been gains and losses since his death, but some things are unchanged:

Monday Wake Up Call – January 12, 2015

Rod Stewart turned 70 over the weekend. Married three times with eight children, he is worth about $150 million, give or take, and is still working. There are hundreds of Stewart songs to choose from, but here is the Rodster with Jeff Beck and Ronnie Wood, from the Jeff Beck Group’s album “Truth” recorded in 1968, doing “Rock My Plimsoul”:

A Plimsoul is a guitar pedal. While Beck and Stewart give themselves writing credit for “Rock My Plimsoul“, it is actually by BB King, written in 1964. Here is his “Rock Me Baby“:

Monday linkage:

Remember sub-prime loans? They’re back as auto loans, with the same delinquencies:

Over 8.4% of subprime auto loans taken out in the first quarter of 2014 were already delinquent by November, according to an analysis of Equifax data by Moody’s Analytics…That’s the highest rate of early subprime delinquencies since…2008.

Is our nuclear waste a goldmine? Possibly.

Professional Cuddlers: The Snuggling Industry Takes Off, but Clothes Stay On. The WSJ is on top of all the new trends.

Doctor offers abortions from a ship: In her documentary, “Vessel”, Rebecca Gomperts, provided abortions on a ship in offshore waters.

Tiny computer with Windows 8.1, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage for $149, debuts at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas:

Is it time for another George Zimmerman defense fund? Who could have predicted that Zimmerman would be in trouble again? Well, anyone with two functioning brain cells could have predicted it.

5 months of air strikes in Iraq and Syria in 4 charts: Since Aug. 8, the US has carried out 1,689 strikes in Iraq and Syria against more than 3,200 ISIS targets. From the first day of strikes through Jan. 2, the bombing has cost $1.2 billion, with an average daily cost of $8.2 million a day.

Analog search before Google: People sent their questions to reference librarians, no matter how strange. The New York Public Library had the foresight to write the questions down, including ones pre-dating the library’s reference desk itself. Like this one:

Ya sleep with a guy worth $27 million, and you don’t get his name? You deserve to remain single and poor.

Thought for the week: Give up on trying to appeal to reason. If appeals to reason worked, the GOP would get fewer votes than the Libertarians or Greens. During Adlai Stevenson’s 1956 presidential campaign, a woman called out: “Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!”

Stevenson replied: “That’s not enough, madam, we need a majority!”

Money Changes Everything

The WaPo reported that the world’s 400 richest people added $92 billion to their collective wealth in 2014. Drilling down on the US political implications of that headline, Bloomberg reports: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Here’s a bit of perspective on the ever-rising cost of elections and the big-money donors who finance them: Three of the country’s wealthiest political contributors each saw their net worth grow in 2014 by more than $3.7 billion, the entire cost of the midterm elections.

(OpenSecrets.org reported that the tab for the 2014 House and Senate elections came to $3.7 billion.)

Bloomberg’s records show that Warren Buffett, Larry Ellison, and Laurene Powell Jobs (widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs) each earned enough in 2014 to have covered all of that campaign expense with the just the growth in their individual wealth.

So, the 2014 return on investment for political donations seems to be very, very good. And with investment returns like that, Citizens United will remain in place forever.

The Bloomberg Billionaires Index shows that 11 of the political donors that Bloomberg tracks added a combined $33 billion to their wealth in 2014. The implication is that, as the 2016 presidential election season approaches, almost all of those donors will have even more cash to ~~burn~~ contribute.

Their wealth, combined with loosening campaign-finance restrictions and the growing comfort of the wealthy flexing their financial muscles in politics will jump-start 2016 primary campaigns in the next few months. And Congress gave an additional gift to wealthy donors by voting in the CRomnibus to raise the limits on how much individuals can give to political parties: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Previously individual donors could give the national party committees up to $32,400 per year. The new law allows donors to add gifts of up to $97,200 to each of three causes: presidential nominating conventions, building funds, and legal proceedings, such as recounts.

That’s a grand total of $324,000 per year, ten times the prior level.

This points to a reality: A wealthy donor can now almost singlehandedly bankroll a candidate, as Sheldon Adelson did for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in 2012. These buckets of ducats raise questions about whether their political contributions create policy. Bloomberg quotes Craig Holman of Public Citizen:

Our democracy just isn’t going to survive in this type of atmosphere…The US, throughout history, has worked on a very delicate balance between capitalism in the economic sphere and democracy in the political sphere. We no longer have that balance. The economic sphere is going to smother and overwhelm the political sphere.

The sheer amount of money some donors made on paper in 2014 rewrites the context of “big” money in politics. For a state-wide political race, a $1 million cash infusion could change the outcome. For America’s big-money clique, it’s a fraction of what some billionaires can make or lose in a single day.

The NYT’s Binyamin Appelbaum contends in “Who Wants to Buy a Politician?” that there is an upper limit to the political expenditures by the wealthy. He makes the point that during the 2014 midterms, television stations in several contested markets reported that they had sold all of their available slots and that one station in New Hampshire actually issued refunds after selling more ads than it could air.

He says that the real return on political investment is in lobbying, which seems to be more valuable than campaign contributions. Appelbaum quotes Michael Munger, of Duke University:

Incumbents and large corporations can basically spend as much as it would take to defeat some change that would harm them…They spend around 10 times as much on lobbying, suggesting that it’s less effective to influence the selection of policy makers than to influence the policy-making process itself.

Also, the lobbyists threaten legislators that there will be fewer campaign donations next time unless the legislator votes correctly.

Either way, the wealthy have the money to buy the change they need, or you do not.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Congress