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$20 Million on Lobbying Defeats CA Privacy Bill
sphughes writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that banks, insurance companies and other corporations spent more than $20 million in campaign contributions and lobbying expenses to defeat a recent consumer privacy bill SB773. The story can be found here. These are preliminary figures through July and may actually run much higher. The bill had been modified from opt-in to opt-out but was still killed."
American democracy is great. Every dollar is represented equally.
I've said it before yes but it seems particularly apt now.
Until the Supreme Court restores the balance it destroyed with its 1978 decision to equate corporate dollars and legalized bribery with freedom of speech, we can only expect this sort of thing to continue.
... but as we all know, there are potent efforts underway to take that particular voice out of our hands in order to protect the cartels of Hollywood and Nashville, efforts designed to put us back in our place, on the couch, accepting whatever they wish to spoonfeed us.
Even insurrection in the streets is unlikely to do much, as the corporate rhetoric will simply change to "don't give in to mass terrorism, and by the way, here's another two hundred grand for next years campaign." The sole method by which this can be stopped is for the voters to turn these fuckers out for good and put them in the unemployment line, but alas, the latter is prevented by corporate favors granting these useless ex-politicos positions as "consultants," with most of their "consulting" done on the golf course or the beach, while the former is prevented by the Media Cartel's monopoly on widespeard information dissemination which effectively locks everyone out of politics at the federal level who doesn't have millions to spend, thus closing the circle on effective citizen participation in govrenment at the federal level completely.
The Internet may play a role is offsetting this
So, what have any of you done about it, beyond a moment's expression of outrage?
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Nonetheless, experts on money in politics say campaign contributions cannot help but influence decision makers -- and that corporations wouldn't donate if they got nothing in return.
Unless you were glued to the business and political sections of the news, the opt-out plan slipped by most of us until we starting getting all of those signature cards in the mail, discretely buried on the inside of the last page of a very boring policy pamphlet, which most people threw away.
Yet here we are today, struggling with the effects DMCA and meekly trying to fend off a slew of similar bad bills that are swirling around us like a bad storm. The pattern is the same - the general public is unaware, the entertainment industry has gobs of money and are buying our elected officials at every turn.
Now, where is that damn letter I've been working on for a month?
Oh, and I'm sure that the lobbyists with effectively unlimited budgets will just nap through the debate on that one.
I wish it could be that way. But until "campaign finance reform" is something other than a buzzword from the "let them eat cake!" legislature, dream on.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I love the way everyone here goes on about the horror of street cameras in Europe and then this slips through without a problem... I think I would rather lose public privacy (what is that anyway ?) and keep my personal privacy.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Do you really think that politicians are going to pass laws that take money AWAY from them? Get real. These clowns passed the laws ALLOWING this virtual bribery in the first place. Maybe a pol gets into office with the best of intentions, but they quickly discover graft..and it goes downhill from there. Personally, Gray Davis is the biggest disappointment here. Look at the choice I have in November for governor: Davis (a democrat and a crook) or Simon (a republican and a crook). If a state of over 35 million people can't do any better then these two clowns, why even bother to vote?
Have you ever tried taking a chunk of meat away from a tiger?
CFR could be a solution, but until the voters get some sense to not be blindly swayed by slick ads, nothing will change. With the First Amendment around, you won't be able to stop the slick ones from doing an endrun around CFR.
What we really need is a grassroots awareness of the issues. Democracy works fine if the people are aware of the issues and make sensible decisions.Now, obviously you can't wave a magic wand and make everyone more aware. But what you can do is "get out the vote". Make noises; talk about issues and convince more people to pay attention. The last thing a typical politician wants is a voter who's paying attention to whats going on. Once the awareness comes, these turds will listen.
"President: chosen by a vote of confidence by each state legislature. Can serve one 5 year term and must be a military veteran."
First off, I'd rather live in a country where we're citizens first and soldiers second, not the other way around. While I agree with some of what Heinlein was trying to say in Starship Troopers (not to be confused with the movie of the same name), the idea is to make the citizens value their own right to vote through service to the state (and not necesarily military service), not to create a military junta.
Secondly, the only thing preventing that now are the laws in fifty states that lock the votes of the presidential electors to the popular vote. And nobody involved in the process is interested in changing that. We're taught in schools that democracy is the best choice in all situations (even though it's not), while the politicians benefit from being able to rely on party mechanics to get them into office. The more voters you have to worry about, the more it "helps" to be able to herd the voters into larger and larger groups.
"Senate: chosen by state legislatures again, can serve up to 3 3 year terms"
If the seventeenth amendment were repealed, what's the point in having such short terms or term limits? The idea was that the state legislature could have more direct control over their Senators than, say, a few voters having to remember why they were pissed off six years ago.
"House of Representatives: chosen at random similar to jury duty from the part of the population of a state never convicted of a felony. Term: 1 year."
First off, I don't think anybody would be too keen on having to take a year out of their lives to live in Washington when they weren't planning on it. What if they live in Alaska? Or what about their old jobs?
Secondly, this is one of those cases where democracy is limited enough to be useful (unlimited democracy is about as bad as no democracy at all). The voting body is small enough that individual votes count and two-way communications between the representative adn the constituants are possible.
You know, just because you've been called for jury duty doesn't mean you're automatically on the jury. The prosecutor and defense counsel have to agree that you're fit for the jury. In what you're describing, who would play the role of the opposing lawyers in the House member selection process?
"Before any bill goes to the President for signing a "Constitutional Court" must read it and vote on its constitutionality."
Um... no. That's not how courts work. They don't look at a law and say "can I see any way this might violate the constitution?" They must be presented with a specific case; an example, if you will. Their job is to interpret the law, not to get involved in the law-making process. Doing what you're suggesting would give too much power to the court.
"Any act of corruption could be summarily punishable by the US Supreme Court if it makes a constitutionality ruling."
"Acts of corruption" like, say, impeaching a federal judge? Methinks you're being a little too naive here.
"Any lobbyist and his/her financial backers found to have been involved would receive the maximum penalty the law provides without any appeal."
So, you want to fix over-broad laws that leave room for too many loopholes by... introducing an over-broad law with room for too many loopholes?
The courts are there to decide guilt and punishment on a case-by-case, individual basis. Introducing a blanket law like this will simply be too harsh in some cases and too lenient in others. And we'll be right back where we started.
"The message: if you aid and abet government corruption you will be punished VERY severely."
And in your model, who decides what is corrupt government and what isn't? The government.
"The fundamental flaws in democracy are that (a) it legitimizes any action a politician may take in the eyes of said politician if he/she wins by a strong majority,"
That's what the constitutions and the courts are for. A properly-written constitution prevents the majority from exerting too much control over the individual. The federal constitution is still properly-written, but it's slowly being whittled away over the centuries. Most state constitutions, on the other hand, are not, and usually require a simple majority to amend them.
On the other hand, a government chosen by a democratic process cannot simply ignore the voters, which is liekly to be worse than having too much democracy in this case.
"(b) it gives the majority the illusion that it has any moral authority by sheer fact of being a majority"
Only for extreme sizes of "majority." If the majority is big enough to be treated like a faceless, nameless mass, it needs to be broken down into smaller voting bodies. Problem solved.
"(c) it establishes a political aristocracy that can't relate to either its working class our bourgeoise constituents if it tried."
Again, only for extreme sizes of "majority." The shear number of people voting for a particular federal political office makes true two-way
communications impossible. A democracy with a small enough voting body (say, at the state or local level) allows and even fosters a dialog between the voters and the government.
"How many think the DMCA would have been passed if Joe Blow down the street was chosen at random to be the next rep for his district and then was asked to draft a law that would make his little Johnny or Suzy a multiple felon?"
The DMCA would have had a tougher time passing if the House of Representatives were anywhere near it's constitutionally-mandated maximum size. The more members of the House you have, the fewer voters an individual congressperson needs to please, and the individual's voice becomes more important to the representative. Laws like that get passed because the majority just doesn't care, and having 435 people "represent" nearly 300,000,000 effectively mutes the concerned minority.
"As Peikoff put it, the face of democracy is the execution of Socrates."
There is a solution, and it's been around for 215+ years. It's called the United States Constitution. Your mention of the death of Socrates brings to mind Federalist number 63. Been there, done that, problem solved.
Democracy is like radiation therapy for cancer. Too much is just as dangerous as too little, but the proper levels can work wonders.