I joined working in the Obama Presidential campaign when I learned he eschewed taking campaign contributions from lobbyists. I have viewed lobbyists as corporate agents used to retain corporate ownership of the United States Congress. Bluntly, big corporations own Congress by using lobbyists to make campaign contributions to help re-elect Senators and Congressmen/women to office who help the corporations make more money.
I’ve posted blogs in the past stating that we ordinary people will have to buy back Congress so that Congress will have to represent us ordinary mortals rather than Corporate America.
In today’s Politico is an article that troubles me. I am troubled by Democrats looking for ways around Obama’s avoidance of lobbyist contributions.
Tonight there is a Democratic fundraiser scheduled to take place at some hotel. They call it an Issues Conference. It is an invitation only event—costs $5,000 a head to go. (You do have $5,000 laying around don’t you? But do you have an invitation?) I’m sure lobbyists have invitations and the $5,000 admission. The Obama rule is that no money be taken from lobbyists at tonight’s Conference. So the Democrats won’t take lobbyists’ money tonight. But Friday morning, after Obama is gone, the lobbyists can line up with their campaign contributions in hand to pass over to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, who will willingly accept those campaign contributions. See the following quote from Politico:
Please note that the Friday Issues Conference is NOT subject to lobbyist restrictions, though the event is intended for personal contributions only,” a finance official from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee wrote in an e-mail sent to lobbyists Tuesday and obtained by POLITICO, bolding the entire sentence to underscore the clarification. “The Issues Conference is separate from the DSCC/DCCC events with President Obama.”
Democratic Senators and Congressmen/women are just as susceptible to accepting corporate contributions as are Republicans. Common sense tells you that those that accept the money will see that those that gave the money get the red-carpeted treatment.
We ordinary Democrats will take a second seat while corporate American continues on with business as usual.
There has got to be a better way to finance political campaigns. Money is the mother’s milk of politics. Obama’s presidential campaign demonstrated that us ordinary people can have our voices heard with $5, $10, $20 campaign contributions so long as we remain engaged and make such contributions by the thousands. Democratic and Republican Senators and Congressmen/women need to learn that lesson and gear their campaigns to appeal to the ordinary voter for their contributions and support rather than the wealthy corporations.
I don’t expect that to happen. But I think it should. Democratic politicians are following the same old path which leads to corruption as we saw during the Bush-Cheney regime. We never learn.
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