Money, It's A Crime

Money, It's A Crime

Graph from The Atlantic Monthly

    Okay, apparently that saying is not proving accurate despite what Pink Floyd might have said.  Bankers, Wall Street traders, corporate raiders, politicians...few if any are prosecuted or chastised (indeed many prove the opposite and are rewarded such as the recent Wells Fargo CEO who received a $150 million exit package despite having surreptitiously moved customers' monies around without their knowledge, all in a speculative effort to profit the bank's shareholders).  And surprisingly little of this issue has emerged in the political spectrum (the first of the U.S. presidential debates, now limited to just two of the four parties running, are scheduled for tonight so it will be interesting to see if such a subject is brought up).  But then came this in The Atlantic Monthly on the pay and returns of political consultants: The consultants may be getting rich, but recent events suggest they don’t have any idea what they’re doing...At the presidential level, Hillary Clinton’s push for the Democratic nomination was nearly derailed by a candidate whose campaign manager was a comic-book-store owner with no experience in elections outside of Vermont.  And while Clinton’s staff-heavy operation ultimately prevailed, her worst showings came in caucuses—the sort of contests where on-the-ground organizing is supposed to make the biggest difference.  Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, is a field-organizing specialist.  On the Republican side, the most expensive and professional presidential campaigns proved remarkably ineffective.  Ted Cruz’s campaign paid almost $6 million to a state-of-the-art analytics firm that touted its slicing and dicing of the electorate based on personality profiles.  Marco Rubio’s campaign and super pac spent $105 million; Ben Carson’s spent $78 million.  Most notoriously, Jeb Bush, between his campaign and his super pac, employed a flotilla of the best-credentialed consultants in Republican politics, burned through $139 million of his donors’ money—and dropped out after just three primaries, having won four delegates and as little as 3 percent of the vote in the states where he competed.  One doesn't have to be a math major to realize just how much money was spent (and in some cases, is still being spent) to try and get elected (in the graph, one can see the difference between what the candidates --and thus your donations to such-- spent vs. the "outside" money that came in...Merriam Webster just last week announced that the word "Super-PAC -Political Action Committee- would be added to their lexicon).

    A quick peek at some of those numbers, many in the hundreds of millions of dollars, makes one wonder just how an ordinary citizen would be able to afford such an attempt (even in our state's local races, the campaigns costs and spending run in the millions of dollars, the only opposition candidates generally being multi-millionaires).  So what happened?  Since when did our disdain for corporate wealth do a one-eighty and become the marker for a "great" leader?  It's a question that was vehemently challenged by legal activist Lawrence Lessig in his TED Talk: We had found in a poll that 96 percent of Americans believe it important to reduce the influence of money in politics.  Now politicians and pundits tell you, there's nothing we can do about this issue, Americans don't care about it, but the reason for that is that 91 percent of Americans think there's nothing that can be done about this issue.  And it's this gap between 96 and 91 that explains our politics of resignation.  I mean, after all, at least 96 percent of us wish we could fly like Superman, but because at least 91 percent of us believe we can't, we don't leap off of tall buildings every time we have that urge.  That's because we accept our limits, and so too with this reform.  But when you give people the sense of hope, you begin to thaw that absolute sense of impossibility.  As Harvey Milk said, if you give 'em hope, you give 'em a chance, a way to think about how this change is possible...

    Despite all the talk of tonight's debates possibly being one of the most watched confrontations, one has to wonder how we in the U.S. got to this state where the two top candidates --out of over 300 million possibilities-- are two people who are not really liked.  Was it a matter of spending, or bullying, or backgrounds, or discontent, or change or Wall Street?...all terms being heard and defined as the "pulse" of the nation.  Or was it a matter of simple acceptance and resignation on our part, we the electorate and proletariat (a disclaimer: some of my money is still housed in Wells Fargo); as with my robbery and hacking and stolen information, has it become a case of what-can-you-do?  Others (the police, the bankers, the traders, the politicians) are on the job and have it under control, we are told...no worries.  Friends have told me that tucking a folded $20 bill behind your driver's license does wonders in foreign countries when your car is pulled over by the police; another told me of tucking a $100 bill behind his credit card when at an airline's ticket counter and politely asking, "How's 1st class looking?" (he ended up in 1st class).  Have we come to this, this acceptance that corruption and robbery is just a fact of living in today's world?  I think we can look back to our grandmothers and grandfathers (for the most part) and respect their refusal to lower their values or morals...whatever their views, there was a right and a wrong.  We condemn outright killing...unless it is the "enemy."  We decry child or adult or elderly abuse...unless it's in the home.  We rail against fraud...unless it happens to be our government doing the spending.  Okay, not all of us are passive and indeed many of us do not sit idly by and shrug our shoulders...we give money to fight poachers, we sign letters of protest, we catch up on important issues and tell friends to spread the discussion.  But perhaps we need to do more...we need to have hope.

    To those of you who may be watching two people banter back and forth tonight, one of whom will likely end up as the new President of the United States, it might be a good time to keep the words of Lawrence Lessig revolving in the back of your head: Here's my wish...May one.  May the ideals of one boy unite one nation behind one critical idea that we are one people, we are the people who were promised a government, a government that was promised to be dependent upon the people alone, the people, who, as Madison told us, meant not the rich more than the poor.  May one.  And then may you, may you join this movement, not because you're a politician, not because you're an expert, not because this is your field, but because if you are, you are a citizen.