April 2013, Volume 15, Number 4
Edited by Jim Hightower and Phillip Frazer
Logo Lowdown from the 2012 elections. Part 1--donors on the record
Here's who is buying America's democracy
The spark that ignited tea party wrath in 2008 was not such right-wing bugaboos as "Obamacare," the federal deficit, or states' rights, which were added on later by Koch-created front groups. Rather, the uprising sprang directly from the public's raw outrage over Washington's flagrant coddling of Wall Street banksters.
People were affronted by the most naked example in recent times of the power of corporate campaign cash to buy an obscene injustice. Here were America's most privileged elites in plain view, jetting into the capitol city to call in all of the favors they were owed for the political "donations" they had previously made. That binding, ongoing dependence of lawmakers on Big Money is what allowed the Wall Street titans to (1) escape jail for their reckless selfishness, which crashed our entire economy and destroyed millions of our jobs; (2) keep their top-executive jobs, their grossly inflated paychecks, and their even-more-inflated sense of self-worth; and (3) be handed trillions of dollars from us taxpayers and Federal Reserve "regulators" to bail them out while workaday people were left to sink.
Brandishing the tea party banner in 2010, a bevy of new candidates parlayed the public's fury into a Republican takeover of the US House. However, having gained the power to push for a little less corruption, one of the very first actions these fire-breathing "reformers" took after being sworn in was to make special-interest political money more influential than ever by voting to kill the Presidential Election Campaign Fund (PECF), the sole financing mechanism for clean elections in national law. It disburses no-strings-attached public funds to presidential candidates so they don't have to debase themselves by dragging a sack down K-Street, through Wall Street suites, and into the penthouses of the super-rich--literally selling themselves to private interests, one check at a time.
It's the most god-awful human activity that doesn't involve physical pain. ---- FORMER REP. BARNEY FRANK, remarking on constantly having to solicit campaign donations from wealthy interests, which he candidly calls "begging" and "debasing yourself."
Admittedly, the presidential fund has been greatly weakened since it was enacted in 1974. But, in the wake of the Wall Street bailout scandal, the logical step to take would've been to strengthen and extend that public financing alternative as a way to limit the spoilage that inevitably flows from special-interest political spending.But no. Such pinheaded potentates of the House as Majority Leader Eric Cantor strutted out to declare that killing public financing was "a no-brainer" (a phrase that, ironically, admitted the mindlessness of his move).
The supremacy of private-interest funding has turned our elections into a crass auction of government power to the wealthiest of moneyed elites.
Who are these masked men? We the People have a right to follow the money, right down to the brand names that take our consumer dollars and convert them into political donations that produce anti-consumer, anti-worker, anti-environment, anti-democracy public policies. This month and next, the Lowdown will name as many of these heavy hitters as we can unmask, including some of the severely shy ones trying to hide their self-serving corporate donations by funneling them through secretive "dark money" front groups.
In this issue, we chart the flow of publicly reported contributions that corporations make through their executives, PACs, and "soft money" channels. The numbers here are drawn from the comprehensive compilations of our country's two preeminent trackers of political money: OpenSecrets and the Sunlight Foundation. We break the brand name donors into industry groups, listing major corporations that gave $100,000 or more to the GOP's presidential and congressional campaigns, with at least two-thirds of their money going to Republican presidential and congressional candidates, party groups, or outside electioneering fronts.
We also list the top-20 brand name backers of 2012's Democratic candidates for the White House and Congress. In the May issue, the Lowdown will focus on the self-serving corporate donations funneled in by secretive SuperPACs and dark-money front groups run by the likes of Karl Rove and the US Chamber of Commerce.
Jump ahead to:
- Supermarkets
- Retail sales and services
- Corporate farms and suppliers
- Food and beverage processors
- Restaurant chains
- Oil & gas
- Forestry & paper
- Trucking
- Trains & ships
- Equipment & materials
- Insurance corporations
- Builders
- Coal
- Airlines/Air freight
- Investment houses
- Capital management
- Commercial and mortgage banks
- Loan companies
- Resorts/entertainment
- Pro sports
- Radio/television/music
- Publishing
- Health care corporations
- Miscellaneous
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