Awash in cash

The Washington Spectator has a big article (alas, no link) to another exasperating aspect of the huge amounts of money in Congress. Following a practice Newt Gingrich started in the 1990s the Dems have now essentially posted prices for the jobs of seats on top committees, chairpersons, and leadership positions, with Pelosi expected to pay (in 2008) $800K and raise $25M to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Even members without jobs must donate $250K if they expect to have access to the polling, media access, and strategy behind the DCCC. "You want it -- you buy it."

The effect of all this money:

* Money, not ability, controls who serves where.

* Power is concentrated in who controls the money.

* Corporations and conservative think-tanks can control who sits on which committees by the way they spread their dollars (and for many corporations $25M is peanuts).

* Actions by Congress are mostly grandstanding to show the people behind the purse that pet projects are being worked on (or thwarted).

* Campaigns "rest heavily on slogan-filled, fabulously expensive lowest-common-denominator appeals to collections of affluent special interests." Which created the worse Congress money can buy.

* All members of Congress and anyone thinking of running must toe the line on what their leadership and financial backers want. Positions harden and become more extreme.

* We as a nation lose legitimacy as a democracy.

Lou Dubose, editor of Washington Spectator, notes the huge pots of money the members of the Budget Supercommittee started raking in the moment their appointment to the committee was announced.

All this means the Dems are as beholden to their financial backers as the GOP is to theirs. And it ain't us.

During the previous presidential election cycle the group Unity '08 worked to create an alternative to the two big parties. They said they would nominate their own candidates and the Prez. and Veep. would be from different parties. That effort went quite a ways, but eventually ran out of steam and money. It's detractors naturally said the Unity '08 candidate could not win, only draw votes from one party, causing the other to win.

The people behind Unity '08 are back, this time as Americans Elect '12. They are working for a place on the ballot in all 50 states and have made it onto 6, including Michigan. They say this is a chance for Americans to participate directly in the nomination process (their website has a link to sign up as a delegate) without the overshadowing corporate influence.

It sounds good. However, I have some concerns. The problem of Unity '08 remains. Are they a viable alternative, or will they only suck votes from one major candidate, giving the win to the other? If my major choices are (1) a party clearly in the clutches of corporate and Fundie interests and quite willing to sacrifice me and the country, and (2) a party also in corporate clutches but willing to present a veneer of not being against me, do I risk my vote for this alternative with little chance which might throw the election to the party willing to sacrifice me?

In addition, they are only talking about a candidate for president. And we've already seen how a determined faction in Congress (see above for level of corruption) can neuter a president from the other major party. What would they do to a president who has no natural power base in Congress? A bit of poking on the AE website shows that there are lots of people with this concern and think the House is a better place to start. And there are many qualified candidates in the ranks of the unemployed.

Another issue is can they get their message out without corporate money? And if they show enough promise can they fend off corporate money?