Big Money in Politics

Dear Editor,

Over the years, various rulings by the United States Supreme Court have whittled away the People’s right to regulate political spending. The Court has ruled that corporations and other artificial entities are people and that making financial contributions to candidates is speech. The Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision put the icing on the cake by prohibiting the government from restricting independent political expenditures (often to purchase “attack ads”) by corporations and associations. By equating corporations with people and money with free speech, these decisions have unleashed a flood of cash into our electoral process—and it’s having a profoundly negative effect on our country.

Quite simply, our democracy cannot survive this assault from unlimited outlays of money. When the rich can spend as much as they wish, often in secret, to affect the outcomes of elections, is it any wonder that our elected officials listen to them and not to ordinary citizens? In fact, recent studies show that unless you’re among the wealthiest of Americans, your interest (and opinions) will not be represented in Congress. Closer to home, the Wisconsin Legislature’s recent attacks on education, workers’ rights, the environment and the Civil Service System demonstrate that the corrupting influence of big money is not just a Washington problem.

It might be supposed that most “public servants” enter politics with the idea of serving the public. Unfortunately, not long after arriving in the Legislature or Congress, our representatives find themselves riding two horses, one representing the public interest and the other representing Big Money. The path that these two horses take inevitably diverges. This leads to a very uncomfortable psychological and ethical position for the public servant who must appear to represent the public while in reality working for Big Oil, Big Pharma, the Military Industrial Complex (at term coined by Dwight Eisenhower) sand-mining companies or Wall Street. Under these circumstances, the number of elected officials who retain their ideals while managing to win elections becomes smaller in every cycle. Cash from these special interests comes to mean more than the public interest.

People see this. Unfortunately, it has led a vast number of Americans who feel that their votes mean very little, to choose not to vote at all. At the same time, wealthy folks like Wall Street hedge fund managers, the Koch brothers and charter school advocates seeking to rob funds from public education are investing incredibly large sums of money to influence elections. They are spending billions because they rightly believe that elections are important to them. Unfortunately, the goals they seek are unlikely to benefit you and me. Convincing people that they are powerless is the greatest weapon of the Donor Class. Hopelessness and apathy are its allies.

The real power, though, lies with people who vote—and it’s time for the above nonsense to stop. There is a national organization, United to Amend, that seeks to reverse the disastrous effects of the Citizens United decision and return our democracy to We the People. If you would like more information or if you are interested in helping with this effort, please call Harry Pulliam, United to Amend Green County Co-chair, at (608) 228-5439.

Harry Pulliam