How To Keep Members Of Congress Out Of The Clutches Of Wall Street Banksters
>
Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD) once put it bluntly: Campaign fundraising has become an incredible “time suck” for lawmakers. It’s a bipartisan problem. Both political parties insist that freshmen members do as much “call time”-- dialing through lists of potential donors begging for campaign cash-- as some telemarketers on top of their legislating duties.
Now, it looks like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has said no to this bootlicking dollar-grubbing culture...
For most members, fundraising is becoming an ever-steeper hill to climb. Incumbents in the House and Senate raised $486 million in 2000. By 2016 that number had nearly doubled to $909 million-- far outpacing inflation. Members don’t have to report how much time they spend on fundraising, but leaks to the press have indicated that the parties expect new members to budget four hours a day of call time, plus an hour a day for fundraisers, which can be anything from a breakfast to a cocktail hour to a pass-the-hat potluck to a $1,000-a-plate gala dinner.
“Both parties have told newly elected members of the Congress that they should spend 30 hours a week in the Republican and Democratic call centers across the street from the Congress, dialing for dollars,” Rick Nolan, a Minnesota Democrat who retired from Congress this year, said recently, adding: “The simple fact is, our entire legislative schedule is set around fundraising.”
In 2013-- not an election year, keep in mind-- the reporter Ryan Lizza happened to overhear a freshman Democratic member of Congress doing call time in a public space for two and half hours straight and live-tweeted what he heard. “I now understand the case for public financing of congressional elections,” Lizza wrote at the end.
Every hour spent dialing for dollars is one that can’t be spent crafting policy or hearing from constituents.
How is AOC able to say no this pervasive culture of nonstop fundraising? For one thing, with the press following her every move, she can get her political messages out for free. But more important, she can rely on a loyal base of small donors. Coming into the 116th Congress, Ocasio-Cortez had the highest percentage of small donors ($200 or less) of any member of Congress, at 62 percent... Instead of sitting in a cubicle dialing for dollars from a list of big donors, Ocasio-Cortez, like some other grassroots-funded lawmakers, asks her supporters for a small donation monthly, which she compares to a Netflix subscription. "One of the most important things people can do to get big money out of politics," she tweeted, "is small recurring monthly donations. (You can see the monthly button on this link) It’s like Netflix, but for unbought members of Congress. It’s why I can act independently."
This approach fits a youth culture where younger voters use their smart phones for everything but conversations. Cold-calling a millennial for money is likely to be a waste of time.
Of course, not every member can build that network of small donors right away. That’s why we sorely need reforms like public financing-- part of the sweeping package of democracy measures that made up Democrats’ first bill of 2019-- which can give ordinary Americans a much louder voice in campaigns right away.
But let’s also hope more members copy AOC’s approach. Three dollars a month for a clean member of Congress? It’s less than most of us drop on a single cup of coffee at Starbucks. Netflix, but for democracy.
Corrupt status quo Democrats-- say, for example, Steny Hoyer, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Jim Clyburn-- aggregate toilet money from the worst sectors and buy influence, support and power inside the House Democratic caucus by spreading it around to other members who are reluctant to be seen taking money from pay day lenders, private prisons, Wall Street banksters and other villains. But by taking the money from crooked operators like Hoyer, Wasserman Schultz and Clyburn or corrupted PACs like the New Dems', Blue Dogs, Congressional Hispanic Caucus' or the Congressional Black Caucus', they can maintain plausible deniability without giving up the opportunities to stock up on the toilet money. Let's take the banksters-- or more precisely, the Financial, Insurance, Real Estate sector. Since 1990 this most corrupt of sectors has doled out $1.9 Billion to congressional incumbents, almost another billion more to non-incumbent candidates. They gave plenty to both parties, although around $300 million more to corrupt Republicans than to corrupt Democrats (as though it were part of the Democrats' lesser of two evils strategy).
Let's look at the dozen members currently serving in the House (not senators and not members who have retired like corrupt slim balls Paul Ryan, Joe Crowley and John Boehner) and see which ones took the most money from the Financial Sector. As you would probably guess, the single most corrupt person in Congress is Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the shame of Bakersfield. Can you guess who the second most corrupt is?
• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- $8,076,292Clyburn's haul has been $2,939,316 and Wasserman Schultz has gobbled up nearly as much-- $2,843,300. But now let's look at two especially ugly pieces of the pie, two that respectable members would never accept money from: pay day lenders and for-profit prisons. These are the 10 current members of the House who have taken the most from payday lenders, and have protected their interests in return:
• Steny Hoyer (D-MD)- $6,848,364
• Jim Himes (New Dem-CT)- $6,373,157
• Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)- $6,344,203
• Steve Stivers (R-OH)- $5,619,577
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC)- $5,604,442
• Richard Neal (D-MA)- $5,524,010
• Nita Lowey (D-NY)- $5,261,403
• Kevin Brady (R-TX)- $4,205,485
• Ed Perlmutter (New Dem-CO)- $4,119,973
• Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)- $4,063,040
• John Larson (D-CT)- $3,970,959
• Alcee Hastings (D-FL)- $182,950Wasserman Scultz has taken $64,100 from the payday lenders. The sector is too toxic for Hoyer and Clyburn, each of whom has largely avoided it. Now let's do the same exercise for the 10 current members of the House who have taken the most from for-profit prisons and helped make the companies fabulously wealthy:
• Steve Stivers (R-OH)- $169,225
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC)- $139,599
• Blake Luetkemeyer (R-MO)- $135,100
• Gregory Meeks (New Dem-NY)- $132,000
• Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)- $130,050
• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- $105,300
• David Scott (Blue Dog-GA)- $95,130
• Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA)- $90,200
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)- $82,900
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)- $110,240Although Wasserman Schultz was a big private prison advocate and accepted $12,400 from them, Hoyer and Clyburn were smart enough to stay away from this particular sewer. I'm going to give you one more list-- the freshmen who have started taking the big bucks from the banksters. If you helped them get elected last year... now you know what their promises were worth. These are the Democratic freshmen who have already taken over half a million dollars:
• Charlie Crist (Blue Dog-FL)- $86,450
• Hal Rogers (R-KY)- $77,400
• John Carter (R-TX)- $71,600
• Vern Buchanan (R-FL)- $44,300
• Robert Aderholt (R-AL)- $27,100
Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- $25,200
• Bennie Thompson (D-MS)- $23,650
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN)- $20,500
• Tom Graves (R-GA)- $16,500
• Mikie Sherrill (Blue Dog-NJ)- $1,461,371I bet the worst freshmen are all going to be coming from this list, like Mikie Sherrill, Abigail Spanberger, Elissa Slotkin, Jason Crow, Elaine Luria... We'll keep track.
• Elissa Slotkin New Dem-MI)- $1,121,380
• Antonio Delgado (D-NY)- $1,083,890
Susie Lee (New Dem-NV)- $1,038,528
• Josh Harder (New Dem-CA)- $1,002,006
• Angie Craig (New Dem-MN)- $958,085
• Tom Malinowski (New Dem-NJ)- $943,010
• Jason Crow (New Dem-CO)- $892,148
• Abigail Spanberger (Blue Dog-VA)- $866,186
• Elaine Luria (New Dem-VA)- $801,969
• Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (New Dem-FL)- $800,142
• Colin Allred (New Dem-TX)- $781,377
• Katie Hill (New Dem-CA)- $780,946
• Max Rose (Blue Dog-NY)- $777,317
• Mike Levin (D-CA)- $749,053
• Andy Kim (D-MI)- $743,272
• Kim Schrier (New Dem-WA)- $715,247
• Lizzie Fletcher (New Dem-TX)- $709,329
• Conor Lamb (D-PA)- $702,991
• Harley Rouda (New Dem-CA)- $697,360
• Katie Porter (D-CA)- $687,534
• Steven Horsford (D-NV)- $631,516
• Chrissy Houlahan New Dem-PA)- $631,180
• Haley Stevens (New Dem-MI)- $625,938
• Donna Shalala (D-FL)- $612,552
• Ed Case (D-HI)- $554,917
• Dean Phillips (New Dem-MN)- $543,793
• Sharice Davids (New Dem-KS)- $501,830
 |
| One down-- plenty to go! |
Labels: Alexandria Ocasio, banksters, campaign finance reform
posted by DownWithTyranny @ 1:00 PM
6 comments
|
Reddit
6 Comments:
Bernie showed how this is done. All you need do is REPRESENT THE PEOPLE! Bernie was the first politician I was willing to donate to. I knew him well enough from watching and listening to him on Thom Hartmann's show, which is now being done by Mark Pocan by the way. When Bernie announced he was going to run, I gave him more than the $27.16 that was asked for, and he still came up with $20,000,000 in the month of January 2016 alone. That was $5,000,000 more than HER! raised during the same time period. Yet not one dollar of Bernie's money came from Wall St. [Source]
It can be done. We already know that most democraps WON'T.
$hillbillary's fundraising was always going to be augmented by the monies raised by the DNC and the various pac and superpac bribery funds of the leadershit.
What Bernie raised is what he had. he had nearly zip in extra undoc'd money.
That said, Bernie certainly deserves a ton of credit for the way he did it.
Now... THAT said, it's still true that whomever is elected on the democrap slate is always just a partial proxy for Pelosi/hoyer/cliburn in the house. (I have a feeling the senate is never going to see another democrap majority)
AOC is nice to listen to and to look at. And her motives may genuinely be good ones. But her existence in the house only serves to empower Pelosi to:
1) raise her prices for access and policy -- the prices for the gavel always go up!
2) buy more frosh members; recruit more corrupt future proxies in 2020; and find and pay for selected primary opponents for intractable current members
3) continue and enforce the democraps' refusal to enact anything at all progressive and refusal to enforce the constitution, laws and regulations (inconvenient to the money), since all policy and other deeds flows through the speaker and only the speaker.
Back to Bernie: I would have presumed that he was also genuine, as DWT would have us believe of him and AOC, had he NOT endorsed and campaigned for THE MOST FUCKING CORRUPT POL IN OUR LONG AND SORDID HISTORY!!
And I also know that the Clintons (many others) have made the democrap party in their own image since the early '80s.
so the title and piece is misleading and pointless. The real goal should be to find a truly left movement and make the already utterly corrupt democraps go the way of the Whigs.
Short of that, the whole topic is moot. Those who are getting rich under the status quo will NEVER kill and eat their golden goose.
so many metaphors...
Something else we need to keep reminding people about is that Bill Clinton and Al Gore accepted money from the Koch Brothers to form the DLC and convert Democrats into democraps.
Being a corporate lobbyist has clearly worked to convert Barney Frank into a corporatist tool and going after Bernie Sanders whether he's going to run or not.
I watched an interview with Chris Hedges from a Toronto site, and I wish more people knew about what Hedges is currently trying to do. He feels obligated to try to change the direction this nation is headed, but he's seen so many former Soviet-bloc nations go down the same path the USA is now on that he doesn't see that we are going to escape similar fates.
That is a serious argument, my friends. I think you all should read this https://essaydragon.com/blog/argumentative-essay-topics article at once. Thank you!
how to keep congress out of the wall street opium den?
1) elect a real left majority in both chambers and the white house (that means NOT democraps)
2) write lege prohibiting corporate donations, PACs and lobbying
3) amend the constitution making only human beings "people" and only human speech (verbal, written, sign language...) qualify as "free speech".
short of this, it won't ever happen and it is a total waste of time to even talk about it.
period.
barney was a corporate tool for a very long time. I don't know why lefties always revered him in spite of his refusal to do his job (in the house finance committee) while he took a shitload in bribes from finance.
Maybe the left will revere an open gay man no matter what he does and refuses to do. maybe the left are just fucking idiots.
Barney, btw, is a corporate tool still. He sells his "speeches" to banks just like $hillbillary... though not for "Clinton money". And he repays them with whatever influence he still sways.
It's no surprise he trashed Bernie. I might have expected him to await an announcement by Bernie... but maybe the "party" is trying to immunize themselves from a possible Bernie 2020 problem. maybe this was the democraps throwing a noodle onto the wall to see if it would stick.
Post a Comment
<< Home