Kenneth Vogel -- Big money
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It's ironic that one of the biggest changes in U.S. political system
came during the tenure of the President Obama, who had sworn to
defeat and push back against the use and influence of big money in
our political campaigns.  For me, that shows the power of the U.S.
Supreme Court to radically change our political system, and to make
it responsive to the rich.

The Citizens United decision and the rise of super PACs has
increased the need for more and bigger checks from donors.  And, the
need for that huge stream of money goes on through a long election
cycle: through primaries, and through the general election, too.

In some sense, we already knew this.  We knew that there were huge
amounts of money in our political system, both in campaign finance
and in the lobbying that goes on during Congress's work to create
and vote on legislation.  Vogel's value is to give us a readable and
entertaining account of the inside of this process and also,
depressingly, to show us just how huge those sums are and how much
influence they enable a small slice of the U.S. public to have and
how corrupt the U.S. political system has become.

It's not a pleasant picture.

This new system and all the money in it has eroded the power of the
official political parties.  And, this is one part of "Big money"
that I do not understand very well.  Vogel claims that because
of the organization of the super PACs, (1) the function of our
political parties has been privatized and (2) that now we have
"shadow parties" composed of organizations of super PACs and the
political operatives and consultants that create and manage them.
This privatization of political parties and organizations is
especially true of the Tea Party, which several groups, the Koch
brothers in particular, tried to fund and to capture for their own
purposes.  This is a topic that I'd love to hear discussed in a
college level political science class or seminar.

One consequence of the erosion of the power of the major political
parties in the U.S. (both the Republican and the Democratic parties)
is that leaders in Congress, both in the Senate and in the House of
Representatives, have lost much of their power to control their
members.  And, that results in a dysfunctional Congress that refuses
or that cannot act to pass legislation and solve problems.

Vogel reports in detail on the new industry and the teams of
consultants and operative that has grown to create and promote and
manage this flood of cash.  But, even he cannot see inside many of
these organizations, because of the lack of reporting requirements.
Perhaps 'that' is why he calls them "shadow political parties",
because they operate in the dark, because they are opaque to us, and
because they are the dark matter of our political system.

The details that Vogel reports give a picture of the segments of
this industry: (1) the fund raising and organizing that pumps super
rich donors for money; (2) the operational side, e.g. the spending
of these huge amounts of money, especially during and on political
campaigns; and (3) the gate-keepers for the rich, i.e. those who
screen the candidates in an attempt to ensure that the money given
to or spent on a particular candidate will produce the results that
the donor wants to achieve.

The candidates are very aware that they are being screened.  They
know that they are being auditioned for their future performance.
And, they are intensely conscious that if they do not act
accordingly while campaigning and when in office, that they will fore
go important sources of funds.

The outrageous thing is that, since the dominant and most successful
strategy is to go after only the super rich, our political system is
becoming skewed so as to represent only a very narrow segment of our
population.

The success rate that big money and super PACs have in getting their
candidates elected is not 100 per cent, which is not surprising,
since we now have a system in which the rich compete against the
rich.  But, *some* well-funded candidate is going to win, and that
winning candidate knows who paid to get him into office.  That
elected official knows that s/he "must dance with the one who
brought them".  And, remember that much of this huge pool of money
is spent after the campaign: it is used to lobby officials after
they get into office.  Either way, the influence in politics is
predominantly that of the super rich, because that's where the money
is.

We have to remember that there are those who believe that we should
have a right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence
politics.  Perhaps they are aware of the consequences; perhaps they
are not.  And, some of them justify, or at least rationalize it by
claiming that it'd be alright if we had full disclosure.  I question
whether disclosure would have much effect, since many of the
donors are proud of their support.  But, you'd have to get that
disclosure requirement written into law and enforced, which seems
like an up-hill battle.

One thing that Vogel's book exposes for us is one of the significant
consequences that the concentration of wealth in the U.S. is having.
In effect, it shows the flaw in the argument that it's good for the
rich to get richer, as long as everyone's lot is improved at the
same time.  If the rich get *much* richer than everyone else, then,
as Vogel shows, they get much more political power.  And, it cannot
be good for our country to have a class of super rich who have much
more political influence than everyone else.  That's not democracy;
that's plutocracy.

A cautionary note -- The organization of the institutions that
collect the donor's money, that pass along the money, and that spend
that money (e.g on campaigning ads), is extremely complex.  That
means that there are very smart people behind it.  One implication
of that, among others, is that counter-acting this movement, dealing
with it, limiting it, whatever will be extremely difficult.  For a
Congress that cannot agree to anything except voting for President
Obama or voting against him, that seems like an unlikely thing to
ask for.

There is, in "Big money", a sizable amount of reporting on the
libertarian, lower-taxes, smaller government people and their
attempt to produce the kind of government (or lack of government?)
that they want.  But, Vogel is balanced.  He spends plenty of time
on the left wing, as well, both on the liberal, more progressive big
donors and those who are in the more business friendly segment of
the left.  And, by the way, there is also on the right, a segment
that pushes more for a government that is favorable to business more
than for less government.

However, Vogel at one point admits (or claims) that if an individual
or a company or an industry, for that matter, wants more from the
U.S. government, then the fiscally prudent thing to do is to spend
their money on lobbying after the election rather than on the
election campaign.  Vogel as much as admits that writing huge checks
in support of a candidate's election campaign is as much about ego
as it is about getting some kind of desired election results.  It's
also about perks and wanting to be stroked.

Vogel's book is a very good attempt to provide detailed and
well-organized view of one of the most important problems in U.S.
politics, specifically the influence of money in our political
system and the degree to which the money is provided by a narrow
class of super rich.  Vogel spends less time on analyzing the
results of that influence.  But, he does do an important service in
providing the description and details from which that analysis could
start.

A down-side to Vogel's writing is that he makes more of us aware of
the extent to which politics in the U.S. is an activity done by and
for the super rich.  It's no wonder that voter participation and
citizen satisfaction with our government is so low.  I worry that
the kind of awareness that Vogel leads us to will make that even
worse.  And, it will not help that delegates to the political
convention will see the perks and attention from the candidates and
their organizations going so much toward the super rich.

Some of the consequences that Vogel mentions: (1) A shift toward
privatization, in this case the privatization of the funding of
campaigns and the influence exerted on government officials.  (2) An
increasing balkanization and tribalism of voters and the officials
they elect.  That fragmentation into smaller and more rigid factions
makes it more difficult for our government, especially the
Federal government, to do any meaningful work on the problems we need
solved.  (3) "A completely legal hijacking of American democracy by
the ultra-rich" (p. 247): those who can afford to buy our government
will more and more be able do so.

One look toward the future: Vogel suggests that the Clintons, both
Bill and Hillary, have a huge ability to raise large sums of money.
So, if you are aghast and sickened by that amount of money chasing
politics now, you are not going to want to watch the 2016 campaign.
And, one of *my* worries is that, if so much of that big donor money
on the Democratic/liberal side is vacuumed up into the race for the
presidency, what will happen to all the other races.  We are already
seeing so many state legislatures and governorships being captured
through big funding on the right.  Are we likely to see that become
even more skewed?

09/12/2014

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