Corporate Chump-Change Perverts American Policy
Let's suppose for a minute that your annual income is a modest US$50,000 (modest to some, unimaginable wealth to others).
Don't you hate to see a bunch of that wasted in taxes? Wouldn't you like a nice tax cut, just for you maybe?
Well, let me introduce you to Mr. Congressional Lobbyist. Would you be surprised to learn that, for a mere $50–or 0.1% of your annual income–Mr. Lobbyist will work tirelessly (and legally!) on your behalf and virtually guarantee that the U.S. Congress will pass a bill that will lower, perhaps even eliminate, your taxes?
Is that a deal or what! Only $50! Wouldn't you jump at the chance? (You know, I'm thinking that, at that price, even our Canadian friends might like to join in the fun.)
Last year, 15,000 registered lobbyists spent more than $3.25 billion trying to sway Congress. This year has brought even more of the same. Oil and gas companies spent $44.5 million lobbying Congress and federal agencies in the first quarter of 2009 — more than a third of the $129 million they spent in all of 2008, which in itself was a 73 percent increase from two years before. Medical insurers and drug companies are also digging deep: 20 of the biggest health insurance and drug companies spent nearly a combined $35 million in Q1 — a 41 percent increase from the same quarter last year.
[Arianna Huffington, "Lobbyists on a Roll: Gutting Reform on Banking, Energy, and Health Care", Huffington Post, 25 June 2009; links in original text.]
Recall that last year, in 2008, Exxon-Mobile reported an annual profit (be clear that the number is profit and not gross revenues) of over $45 billion.
They are, of course, only one of the "oil and gas companies" lobbying congress. Nevertheless, the astronomical amount–$45 million in the first quarter of 2009–the oil and gas industry spent lobbying congress is a mere one-thousandth, or 0.1%, of Exxon-Mobile's annual profit alone.
It's akin to asking you for $50 to change the law of the land in your favor. It cost virtually nothing, a blip on the balance sheet not really worth writing down.
This phenomenon is another reason why US Corporations should not be treated as legal persons the way they are now. Corporate money for lobbying should not be treated, as it is now, as constitutionally protected "free speech".
Corporations are not people. Treating large-corporation money as "speech" instead of graft allows it to swamp the real voices of actual American people.
I hope that we are able to keep this in mind during our national "debate" on health-care reform. The "voices" of the big pharmaceutical companies and the big health-insurance companies are very loud right now, making it very difficult to hear the voices of the actual American people.
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on Thursday, 25 June 2009 at 21.49
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Jeff, that's an excellent post. To far too great an extent our democracy has deteriorated into a marketplace for influence where money talks and those able and willing to shout at multi-million-dollar decibel levels alone can rest assured their concerns and preferences will be heard and their needs will be addressed.
That bit about considering corporations people and their influence buying free speech is a really sore point with me. It's legally indefensible, IMO, and must be done away with while we still have some semblance of democracy.
We Americans are fools for tolerating this situation for more reasons than its destructive effect on our democracy. Imagine how much less gasoline and home heating might cost if oil and gas companies weren't passing on the cost of their $45 million-a-year lobbying budgets to consumers.
on Thursday, 25 June 2009 at 22.11
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As I have posted many times now, nothing really changes until the corporate personhood changes. It's a stupid, stupid feature of American law that has had much to do with the transforming of the MBA from businessperson to sociopath. All of the crime with none of the consequences.