Robert Reich Reports

[billy backstay]

​ Follow the money! Small donors, big donors, and the midterms​ ​ Big donors are giving more to Republicans. More small donors are giving to Democrats. Where will this lead?​ Robert Reich Aug 12

Notably, the Inflation Reduction Act didn’t attract a single Republican vote in the Senate. (And at least one Democratic senator — Kyrsten Sinema — made sure its tax provisions wouldn’t raise tax rates on rich individuals.) Why?

We talk a lot about money in politics, but there’s a huge and growing difference between the big money (campaign donations of $1 million or more), most of it pouring into Republican coffers and small money (individual donations of $200 or less), mainly pouring into the Democrats. (Corporations have been giving to both sides, in roughly equal measure.)

The significance of this difference is growing.
With the midterms elections looming, the gap between the two sources is larger than ever. Democrats are far outpacing Republicans in small-dollar donations. The most recent reports (through June 30) show, for example, that:

— In Georgia, incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock has raised $14 million in small donations; Republican senate candidate Herschel Walker has raised only about $8 million in small donations.

— In Florida, Val Demings, the Democratic challenger to Senator Marco Rubio, has raised more than $24 million in small donations; Rubio himself has reported $12.7 million in small donations.

— In Arizona, Democratic Senator Mark Kelly's re-election campaign has raised nearly $23 million from small-dollar donors. His GOP challenger, Blake Masters, less than $2 million from small donors.

But the GOP’s big money donors are making up the difference.

— Billionaire Peter Thiel has so far poured over $25 million into the races of Blake Masters in Arizona and J.D. Vance in Ohio.
— Kenneth C. Griffin, the CEO of giant hedge fund Citadel, is bankrolling Republican super PACs to the tune of nearly $50 million.

— Stephen A. Schwarzman, chairman of giant hedge fund Blackstone, has so far contributed a combined $20 million to the main House and Senate Republican super PAC.

— Banking heir Timothy Mellon (descendant of the robber baron Andrew Mellon) has so far contributed $10 million to the main House GOP super PAC.

— Ditto billionaire Patrick R. Ryan.

— Miriam Adelson (whose husband, Sheldon Adelson, was one of the GOP’s most generous contributors until his death last year) just made her first $5 million donation. The list goes on.

Small donors are ramping up their giving to Democrats because they’re aware of how nuts the Republican Party has become on issues ranging from abortion to democracy. Trump has pulled into the GOP white supremacists, Christian nationalists, QAnon paranoids, xenophobic cultists, antisemites, misogynists, and rightwing militias. Plus a StarWars cantina of grifters, crackpots, and thugs who — as the January 6 attack showed — pose a clear and present danger to American democracy.

Big donors are ramping up their giving to Republicans because they now have so much money that any Democratic-led tax increase on them (or Republican-led tax cut for them) will invariably have large financial consequences. The Inflation Reduction Act reveals just how much damage Democrats could do to the bottom lines of the rich.

Many big donor billionaires (e.g., Peter Thiel) are trying to justify their donations as “libertarian,” but they know damn well the current Republican Party has nothing to do with personal freedom. It’s busy intruding on reproductive rights, pushing book bans in libraries and classrooms, barring young transgender people from playing on certain sports teams or using certain bathrooms, refusing to allow teachers to talk about aspects of American history they don’t want young people to know, and actively suppressing votes. Liberty my foot.

No, the billionaires aren’t libertarian. They want only one thing: more tax cuts.

The extraordinary growth of small donors to Democrats is all about justifiable fears of what Republicans will do with more power. The growth in big dollars to Republicans is all about greed.

What do you think?

 

[Steam Flyer]

Thing is, if Republicans crash the bus hard, again, a lot of those big donors are going to lose their asses.

 

[billy backstay]

Thing is, if Republicans crash the bus hard, again, a lot of those big donors are going to lose their asses.

Nothing would make me happier!! I don't have a problem with rich people, just the ones who cheat on their taxes to the detriment of the proletariat; which probably applies to most of the donors cited by Reich...
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[Jules]

At the risk of sounding like a broken record...

Remember when political candidates used to talk about campaign finance reform? When was the last time you heard that on the campaign trail?

What has happened in the interim is the laws have changed to the benefit of big donors and politicians alike, to the point that what used to be bribery is now legal. This was by design and both major parties, as well as the big donors, have benefited from those changes.

This will never be a country of, by and for the people until we get money out of politics. And that will never happen if we wait for elected officials to change the laws. They aren't going to kill their golden goose.

Our only hope of real change is voting out incumbents until they get the message we, the people, are who they work for, not big money. And that will probably never happen until the situation for the common people is so bad the people are screaming, "Off with their heads!".

Forgive my cynicism but I used to think the baby boomer, anti-establishment revolt of the 60s would turn this country around, but how did that work out?

 

[billy backstay]

At the risk of sounding like a broken record...

Remember when political candidates used to talk about campaign finance reform? When was the last time you heard that on the campaign trail?

What has happened in the interim is the laws have changed to the benefit of big donors and politicians alike, to the point that what used to be bribery is now legal. This was by design and both major parties, as well as the big donors, have benefited from those changes.

This will never be a country of, by and for the people until we get money out of politics. And that will never happen if we wait for elected officials to change the laws. They aren't going to kill their golden goose.

Our only hope of real change is voting out incumbents until they get the message we, the people, are who they work for, not big money. And that will probably never happen until the situation for the common people is so bad the people are screaming, "Off with their heads!".

Forgive my cynicism but I used to think the baby boomer, anti-establishment revolt of the 60s would turn this country around, but how did that work out?

You are preaching to the choir Jules, and I am just as cynical as anyone here.

It's the "Golden Rule". Those with the most Gold will make all the Rules. Same as it always was, and ever shall be....
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[TyeDyedGary]

Least we forget, what we call the two political parties are in really private corporations. And the purpose of a corporation is to make money.

 

[Steam Flyer]

Least we forget, what we call the two political parties are in really private corporations. And the purpose of a corporation is to make money.

Oh good, we had plenty of "Hunter Biden's Laptop" and a couple of "HILLARYs" plus a scattering of "Obama Did It Too, But Worse;" yours is the first "Both Political Parties Are Equally Bad" so far.

We like to keep a full set of lame-ass RWNJ excuses and distractions in stock.

 

[Jules]

Oh good, we had plenty of "Hunter Biden's Laptop" and a couple of "HILLARYs" plus a scattering of "Obama Did It Too, But Worse;" yours is the first "Both Political Parties Are Equally Bad" so far.

We like to keep a full set of lame-ass RWNJ excuses and distractions in stock.

He didn't say they were equally bad. He said they operate like for-profit corporations, which they both do.

Think of the pressure the political parties put on their members, our elected officials, to fund raise. Think about the fact that if you want to be on a committee, they look at how much money you bring in.

The two parties are NOT the same but they both place enormous importance on bringing money in.

 

[Mrleft8]

He didn't say they were equally bad. He said they operate like for-profit corporations, which they both do.

Think of the pressure the political parties put on their members, our elected officials, to fund raise. Think about the fact that if you want to be on a committee, they look at how much money you bring in.

The two parties are NOT the same but they both place enormous importance on bringing money in.

Essentially they are the same as labor unions. Lots of people not working, getting paid to make sure that the workers make enough money to pay the dues, so the non-workers can get paid for not working....

 

[Jules]

Essentially they are the same as labor unions. Lots of people not working, getting paid to make sure that the workers make enough money to pay the dues, so the non-workers can get paid for not working....

Having worked in the IBEW my entire working life, your depiction is mostly inaccurate. The vast majority of union workers I worked with actually work. The few who didn't got laid off. And I laid off my fair share of leeches.

The rich and corporations love to tout this bullshit image of union workers sitting on their asses. I know for a fact it's patently false. We really need to ask ourselves what the source of information is before accepting it as gospel truth.

 

[Steam Flyer]

Having worked in the IBEW my entire working life, your depiction is mostly inaccurate. The vast majority of union workers I worked with actually work. The few who didn't got laid off. And I laid off my fair share of leeches.

The rich and corporations love to tout this bullshit image of union workers sitting on their asses. I know for a fact it's patently false. We really need to ask ourselves what the source of information is before accepting it as gospel truth.

Isn't it kind of a funny coincidence that the rise of anti-union sentiment, pushed hard by RWNJ media, has been almost exactly symmetrical to the drop in real wages and the rise in the share of wealth going to the 1%ers?

 

[Ishmael]

Isn't it kind of a funny coincidence that the rise of anti-union sentiment, pushed hard by RWNJ media, has been almost exactly symmetrical to the drop in real wages and the rise in the share of wealth going to the 1%ers?

It's almost as if they were connected somehow.

 

[Fah Kiew Tu]

Oh good, we had plenty of "Hunter Biden's Laptop" and a couple of "HILLARYs" plus a scattering of "Obama Did It Too, But Worse;" yours is the first "Both Political Parties Are Equally Bad" so far.

WRT campaign/political money they in fact ARE equally bad.

What they're not is equally successful.

Neither major party wants to do anything that might level the playing field for others. Neither wants to give up on the money they get and what they can do with it. And neither does more than pay lip service to significant reforms like eliminating gerrymandering, malapportionment and similar electoral perversions.

So, equally bad, fair call, just not equally successful.

FKT

 

[Ishmael]

WRT campaign/political money they in fact ARE equally bad.

What they're not is equally successful.

Neither major party wants to do anything that might level the playing field for others. Neither wants to give up on the money they get and what they can do with it. And neither does more than pay lip service to significant reforms like eliminating gerrymandering, malapportionment and similar electoral perversions.

So, equally bad, fair call, just not equally successful.

FKT

No, the Republicans are increasingly unhinged and coalescing around a Christo-fascist theme. There's a huge amount of grift involved.
The Dems are not anywhere near that level of crazy.

 

[Steam Flyer]

WRT campaign/political money they in fact ARE equally bad.

What they're not is equally successful.

Neither major party wants to do anything that might level the playing field for others. Neither wants to give up on the money they get and what they can do with it. And neither does more than pay lip service to significant reforms like eliminating gerrymandering, malapportionment and similar electoral perversions.

So, equally bad, fair call, just not equally successful.

FKT

Republicans are increasingly abouot putting gov't at the service of industry. They always favored business over people, so no real surprise, but look at Trump's appointees: mostly former CEOs put in charge of regulatory agencies with the stated purpose of hamstringing that agency.

If you owned (for example) a chain of power-generating stations and were tired of having to pay some guy to work on the boiler controls to keep the combustion clean and reduce acid rain, you have over upmty-hundred-thou to your Senator and your Presidential candidate... Republicans of course... and then you get a seat at the head of the air quality enforcement division of the EPA. Guess what you no longer have to worry about, it's a great investment too.

The sad part is, the boiler control system guy is not going to retire young to a life of waterfront ease, a bunch of people are going to have emphysema, and the forests are all going to get eaten away, plus the fish in the streams will eventually die. But you will get a couple hundred million more dollars in your own pocket, that's a WIN! Plus owning all the libs of course.

 

[Fah Kiew Tu]

No, the Republicans are increasingly unhinged and coalescing around a Christo-fascist theme. There's a huge amount of grift involved.
The Dems are not anywhere near that level of crazy.

2 different topics here.

I agree with you on that one, BUT WRT campaign finance, donations, outright bribery, selling votes to big donors, electoral reform, both the major parties ARE the same insofar that neither want to have a bar of any changes.

Maybe not equally successful at the grifting, but same-same WRT wanting to preserve the current system.

Be in no doubt I'd be voting Dem were I a US citizen because while I think they're equally unprincipled & corrupt in this area, I don't think they're insane religious fascists and outright enemies of a secular democratic society, which is where the Repubs are these days.

FKT

 

[billy backstay]

From 2 days ago....

The worst memo in American history​

It came from Lewis Powell​

Robert Reich
Aug 11

Senator Joe Manchin has been Congress’s largest recipient of money from natural gas pipeline companies. He just reciprocated by gaining Senate support for the Mountain Valley pipeline in West Virginia and expedited approval for pipelines nationwide. Senator Krysten Sinema is among Congress’s largest recipients of money from the private-equity industry. She just reciprocated by preserving private-equity’s tax loophole in the Inflation Reduction Act.

We almost take for granted big corporate money in American politics. But it started with the Powell memo.

In 1971, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce asked Lewis Powell, then an attorney in Richmond, Virginia (and future Supreme Court justice) to report on the political activities of the Left.
Richard Nixon was still president, but the Chamber (along with some prominent Republicans like Powell) worried about the Left’s effects on “free enterprise.” Powell’s memo — distributed widely to Chamber members — argued that the American economic system was “under broad attack” from consumer, labor, and environmental groups. In reality, these groups were doing nothing more than enforcing the implicit social contract that had emerged at the end of World War II — ensuring that corporations were responsive to all their stakeholders, not just their shareholders but also their workers, their consumers, and the environment on which everyone depends.

But Powell and the Chamber saw it differently. Powell urged businesses to mobilize for political combat.

Business must learn the lesson . . . that political power is necessary; that such power must be assiduously cultivated; and that when necessary, it must be used aggressively and with determination—without embarrassment and without the reluctance which has been so characteristic of American business.

He stressed that the critical ingredients for success were organization and funding.

Strength lies in … the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations.

On August 23, 1971, the Chamber distributed Powell’s memo to leading CEOs, large businesses, and trade associations. It had exactly the impact the Chamber sought — galvanizing corporate American into action and releasing a tidal wave of corporate money into American politics. An entire corporate-political industry was born — including tens of thousands of corporate lobbyists, lawyers, political operatives, and public relations flaks. Within a few decades, big corporations would become the largest political force in Washington and most state capitals.

Washington went from being a rather sleepy if not seedy town to the glittering center of corporate America — replete with elegant office buildings, fancy restaurants, pricy bistros, five-star hotels, conference centers, beautiful townhouses, and a booming real estate market that pushed Washington’s poor out to the margins of the district and made two of Washington’s surrounding counties among the wealthiest in the nation.

I saw it and lived it. In 1976, I began working at the Federal Trade Commission. Jimmy Carter had appointed consumer advocates to some regulatory positions (several of them influenced by Ralph Nader). My boss at the FTC was Michael Pertschuk, an energetic and charismatic chairman. Joan Claybrook chaired the National Highway Traffic Safety Commission. Other Naderites were spread throughout the Carter administration. All were ready to battle big corporations that for years had been deluding or injuring consumers.

Yet almost everything we initiated at the FTC, and just about everything undertaken by these activists elsewhere in the administration, was met by unexpectedly fierce political resistance from Congress. At one point, when the FTC began examining advertising directed at children, Congress stopped funding the FTC altogether, shutting it down for weeks. I was dumbfounded. What had happened?

In two words, the Powell memo.

The number of corporations with public affairs offices in Washington had ballooned from one hundred in 1968 to over five hundred by the time I joined the FTC in 1976. In 1971, only 175 firms had registered lobbyists in the nation’s capital. By 1982, nearly 2,500 had them. The number of corporate Political Action Committees mushroomed from under three hundred in 1976 to over 1,200 by 1980. Between 1974 and 1980, the Chamber of Commerce doubled its membership. (And remember, this was still thirty years before the Supreme Court’s infamous Citizen’s United decision.)

It didn’t matter whether a Democrat or Republican occupied the White House. Even after George H.W. Bush became president, the corporate-political industry continued to balloon.

By the 1990s, when I was secretary of labor, corporations employed some 61,000 people to lobby for them, including registered lobbyists and lawyers. That came to more than 100 lobbyists for each member of Congress. Corporate money also supported platoons of lawyers who represented corporations and the very rich in court, often outgunning the Justice Department and state attorneys general.

Most importantly, corporations began inundating politicians with money for their campaigns. Between the late 1970s and the late 1980s, corporate Political Action Committees increased their expenditures on congressional races nearly fivefold.

Labor union PAC spending rose only about half as fast. By the 2106 campaign cycle, corporations and Wall Street contributed $34 for every $1 donated by labor unions and all public interest organizations combined.

Wealthy individuals also accounted for a growing share. In 1980, the richest one-hundredth of 1 percent of Americans provided 10 percent of contributions to federal elections. By 2012, they provided 40 percent.

Although Republicans mostly benefited from a few large donors and Democrats from a much larger number of small donors (more on this to come), both political parties transformed themselves from state and local organizations that channeled the views of members upward into giant fundraising machines that sucked in money from the top.

Never in the history of American politics has one document — the Powell memo — had such nefarious consequences.

 

[Steam Flyer]

From 2 days ago....

The worst memo in American history​

Robert Reich

.... ... corporations began inundating politicians with money for their campaigns. Between the late 1970s and the late 1980s, corporate Political Action Committees increased their expenditures on congressional races nearly fivefold.

Labor union PAC spending rose only about half as fast. By the 2106 campaign cycle, corporations and Wall Street contributed $34 for every $1 donated by labor unions and all public interest organizations combined.

Wealthy individuals also accounted for a growing share. In 1980, the richest one-hundredth of 1 percent of Americans provided 10 percent of contributions to federal elections. By 2012, they provided 40 percent.

....

This is the part that stands out to me.

The richest 0.01% of USAnians, who own a huge portion of all wealth and rake in an even more huge portion of all income, derive this from the corporations that they pretty much own & control. They realized that no investment was as good as buying the government, because with control of the government as though it were just one of their corporations, they not only control ALL the wealth & income but also all the lives of their competitors and workers. It's an investment with tremendous returns, a gold mine!

 

[billy backstay]

This is the part that stands out to me.

The richest 0.01% of USAnians, who own a huge portion of all wealth and rake in an even more huge portion of all income, derive this from the corporations that they pretty much own & control. They realized that no investment was as good as buying the government, because with control of the government as though it were just one of their corporations, they not only control ALL the wealth & income but also all the lives of their competitors and workers. It's an investment with tremendous returns, a gold mine!

This should be illegal...
.

 

[Steam Flyer]

This should be illegal...
.

I don't think lobbying should be illegal but it should be transparent. And the laws on lobbying should be simple, and they should be rigorously enforced.