Bernie

Bernie Sanders, who decried the US political system as corrupted by big money donors, was asked whether that meant the politicians were corrupt. He seemed a little caught off guard; perhaps he was thinking "yes" but realized that he really couldn't say that on national television.

His answer should have been, I think, a firm 'no'. They are simply doing what they must to survive in the system of campaign finance rules.  It's the system, not the people in it, that is flawed. They are no more to blame than CEOs pursuing a profit - that's their job - even if that means doming something we don't like but which saves the company money and which we haven’t legislated against. It's the role of government to set the rules of the game and regulate the incentives in order to get the outcomes we collectively want.

Of course that's harder to do when those we are asking to change the rules are the beneficiaries of the current system.  But at least we need to be clear about the problem and then we can examine what that leads to; perhaps then we might elect representatives whose mandate is changing the rulers of the game.         

Power and influence

Things have changed. Once, our elected representatives spent most of their time divided between four activities: drafting legislation and caucusing with colleagues on their side of the aisle; negotiating legislative changes with counterparts on the other side of the aisle, both in and out of committee; campaigning for re-election, and fund-raising.  Fund-raising which once took only 5% of their time now consumes over 35% (some estimates suggest the figure is nearer 50%)¹. Every spare moment must be devoted to arm-twisting, rubber chicken lunches and celebrity parties at which the wealthy can be relieved to their money. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I don't see an invitation to one of these glitzy events anywhere in my future since I don't have the price of entry.    

Since campaigning can't be avoided, the effect has been to dramatically reduce the two remaining activities, negotiating and legislating. As a result, compromise has become very difficult to achieve since the two sides spend almost no time exploring possible win-win solutions, and the drafting of legislation is outsourced to lobbyists. Importantly, it also means that the flow of information from the electorate (through campaigning activities) and the other party (through negotiating activities) into the legislative process has declined, while that from lobby groups and donors has increased.

It should come as no surprise that this system generates policies that favor those with a lot of money to spend on lobbying and funding congressional (and state) election campaigns. Increasingly, we have, as some wag once remarked, the best government money can buy.
¹ Figures are approximate and based on anecdotal and/or apocryphal data.       

Click here, contribute $5...

"Click here, contribute $5, and fight for Ohio, Florida, a Democratic Senate and four more years. This is the only way we win".

This was in an email from Crystal King, Political Director at the DSCC, one of the many I get on a daily basis.

I hope this isn't true; my assumption had always been that winning an election was a function of a strong argument and a compelling case.

Ms King's assertion means either:

1. The party platform is irrelevant,
2. The candidate doesn't matter,
3. The outcome is solely a function of cash raised.    

If she's right, election outcomes are essentially for sale and we can give up and go home how. 

Market distortions

Neoclassical economists bemoan government intervention in the economy through  taxes, subsidies, quotas, price controls and the like. These distort the functioning of the free market.

The corollary, however, is the distortion of government and representative democracy by money, lobbying and incentives.

If business wants government to stop distorting its market then shouldn't government require that business not distort representative democracy?

Reaching out

As anyone who reads my reflections (probably no one) will have realized, I'm 1) talking to myself, and 2) becoming more liberal with age. This of course defies the old adage that in middle age a broad mind and a narrow waist change places; with me it's all getting broader.

Anyway, I digress. Over the last few years I've responded to email invitations from Democrats to support their re-election campaigns; the President and Elizabeth Warren, who I admire enormously, specifically.

However, it dawned on me today that of all the email I've ever received (and these days I'm getting four or five a day from the President, or the First Lady, or any one of numerous of his campaign staff), none, not a single solitary email has sought to sound out my opinion on the issues. Each and every one is simply an invitation to open my wallet.

So, I'm feeling increasingly disconnected and in an odd way disenfranchised.  Voting for the lesser of two evils, neither of which one has had any had in shaping, doesn't give one a sense of connection to ones elected representatives.

The country is being boiled slowly and hasn't realized the water is getting hot.  For the 99% it's a loosing battle. First, the cost benefit is not nearly as attractive as it is for the 1%. If you can invest $1M in lobbying to get legislation written as you want, you will make out like a bandit. For the rest of us, the ROI is nothing like as attractive.

And with increasingly favourable tax treatment and decreasing government oversight, the 1% can easily afford to redouble their lobbying.  The 99% can't keep up, the the median income of the two groups continues to diverge.

"For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath."  Mark 13:12

Some things, it appears, never change.

What Money Can't Buy

I should probably read "What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets" by Michael J. Sandel before writing this but I have a backlog of books and this thought came to me when he was being interviewed on The PBS Newshour this evening.
 

Watch 'What Money Can't Buy' and What it Shouldn't Buy on PBS.

Sandel was talking about "line standers" people who lobbyists pay to stand in line to get in front of members of congress, so that the lobbyists don't have to waste their valuable (literally - the opportunity costs is huge) time waiting in line.

So if lobbyists buy all the people in the line, then potentially regular citizens are crowded out. Extend this further (and it's not beyond the realms of the possible) and they might pay ordinary folk with a beef wanting to talk to their congress person to given up their place in the line for a sum of money (to be negotiated).  After all, everything and everyone has their price, don't they?

Then I realized why the trends Sandel talks about have been troubling me. When groups and individual with great wealth have a disproportionate voice (some would say the only voice) in a system of  representative democracy, we have a system reminiscent of Britain in the 1700s; if I have remembered correctly what little history I learned, only those with land (i.e., wealth) could vote.

Moreover, there were some electoral districts (or boroughs) which had so few (land owning) residents, that these voters could be readily bribed by candidates. [As it happens, I was born only a few miles from one such "rotten borough", Bramber in West Sussex]. When the outcome of an election depends on the size (in dollars) of the coffers and war chests, government is no longer truly representative, a point being made much more forcefully and eloquently by Lawrence Lessig.

A quarter of a millennium of struggle for universal suffrage seems to have been de facto reversed, or at least some significant ground lost, in the last 30 odd years.

Our Electoral Sohpie's Choice: a Darwinian Perspective

I have often wondered whether our elected representatives really believe the things they say. Some seem, to me anyway, so implausible, so divorced from common sense, that my initial conclusion was that they must have been persuaded to adopt the views of the interest groups who paid for, and will be paying their campaign expenses. This made me uncomfortable, since it suggests a weakness of will, a lack of spine and integrity, of honor and commitment, values that seem increasingly rare.

There is however an alternative, slightly less depressing explanation. Given a very large number of heterogeneous candidates, those whose views most closely correspond to the largest funding sources will be elected. This model doesn't require that elected representatives adopt the views of their funders, merely that they are selected as "most fit", in a Darwinian sense, to the political environment and the resources it makes available.

Of course, the net result is the same. Electoral issues are defined by campaign donors and the views of those who we elect represent a Sophie's choice between the interests of two sets of opposing funding groups.

I imagine, not quite what the framers of the constitution had in mind.