Dan Lungren Comes Out Strongly Against Fair Election Reforms

If you've been following the Blue America PAC at all, you may already be aware that we've decided that we won't be endorsing any candidates for the House in 2010 unless they are genuinely enthusiastic about passing John Larson's Fair Elections Now Act (HR 1826). We're not asking for some unenforceable pledge; we want nothing less than heartfelt enthusiasm. Right now Larson has 117 co-sponsors from across the political spectrum-- not just stalwart progressives, but even reactionary Blue Dogs (2) and Republicans (2).

Eleanor Norton [D-DC]
Neil Abercrombie [D-HI1]
Robert Andrews [D-NJ1]
Michael Arcuri [D-NY24]
Tammy Baldwin [D-WI2]
Earl Blumenauer [D-OR3]
John Boccieri [D-OH16]
Bruce Braley [D-IA1]
Michael Capuano [D-MA8]
Ben Chandler [D-KY6]
William Clay [D-MO1]
Steve Cohen [D-TN9]
Gerald Connolly [D-VA11]
John Conyers [D-MI14]
Jim Cooper [D-TN5]
Jerry Costello [D-IL12]
Joe Courtney [D-CT2]
Elijah Cummings [D-MD7]
Kathleen Dahlkemper [D-PA3]
Danny Davis [D-IL7]
Peter DeFazio [D-OR4]
William Delahunt [D-MA10]
Rosa DeLauro [D-CT3]
Lloyd Doggett [D-TX25]
Michael Doyle [D-PA14]
Donna Edwards [D-MD4]
Keith Ellison [D-MN5]
Anna Eshoo [D-CA14]
Sam Farr [D-CA17]
Chaka Fattah [D-PA2]
Bob Filner [D-CA51]
Bill Foster [D-IL14]
Barney Frank [D-MA4]
Alan Grayson [D-FL8]
Raymond Green [D-TX29]
Raul Grijalva [D-AZ7]
Luis Gutiérrez [D-IL4]
Phil Hare [D-IL17]
Jane Harman [D-CA36]
Alcee Hastings [D-FL23]
Martin Heinrich [D-NM1]
James Himes [D-CT4]
Maurice Hinchey [D-NY22]
Mazie Hirono [D-HI2]
Paul Hodes [D-NH2]
Rush Holt [D-NJ12]
Michael Honda [D-CA15]
Steve Israel [D-NY2]
Jesse Jackson [D-IL2]
Sheila Jackson-Lee [D-TX18]
Eddie Johnson [D-TX30]
Henry Johnson [D-GA4]
Walter Jones [R-NC3]
Steve Kagen [D-WI8]
Marcy Kaptur [D-OH9]
Dale Kildee [D-MI5]
Ronald Kind [D-WI3]
Larry Kissell [D-NC8]
Suzanne Kosmas [D-FL24]
Dennis Kucinich [D-OH10]
Barbara Lee [D-CA9]
John Lewis [D-GA5]
David Loebsack [D-IA2]
Zoe Lofgren [D-CA16]
Nita Lowey [D-NY18]
Ben Luján [D-NM3]
Daniel Maffei [D-NY25]
Carolyn Maloney [D-NY14]
Betsy Markey [D-CO4]
Edward Markey [D-MA7]
Eric Massa [D-NY29]
Carolyn McCarthy [D-NY4]
Betty McCollum [D-MN4]
James McDermott [D-WA7]
James McGovern [D-MA3]
Jerry McNerney [D-CA11]
Michael Michaud [D-ME2]
Bradley Miller [D-NC13]
George Miller [D-CA7]
James Moran [D-VA8]
Christopher Murphy [D-CT5]
Scott Murphy [D-NY20]
Jerrold Nadler [D-NY8]
Grace Napolitano [D-CA38]
John Olver [D-MA1]
Solomon Ortiz [D-TX27]
William Pascrell [D-NJ8]
Thomas Perriello [D-VA5]
Gary Peters [D-MI9]
Chellie Pingree [D-ME1]
Todd Platts [R-PA19]
Jared Polis [D-CO2]
David Price [D-NC4]
Charles Rangel [D-NY15]
Silvestre Reyes [D-TX16]
Steven Rothman [D-NJ9]
Dutch Ruppersberger [D-MD2]
Linda Sánchez [D-CA39]
Janice Schakowsky [D-IL9]
Robert Scott [D-VA3]
José Serrano [D-NY16]
Joe Sestak [D-PA7]
Carol Shea-Porter [D-NH1]
Louise Slaughter [D-NY28]
Adam Smith [D-WA9]
Fortney Stark [D-CA13]
Betty Sutton [D-OH13]
Harry Teague [D-NM2]
Bennie Thompson [D-MS2]
Paul Tonko [D-NY21]
Niki Tsongas [D-MA5]
Christopher Van Hollen [D-MD8]
Timothy Walz [D-MN1]

Is your own congresscritter on the list? If not, you should call him or her and ask why not. If you live in the Sacramento suburbs or in Mother Lode Country, don't bother looking. You're congressman, Dan Lungren, is helping to lead the battle against Fair Elections. This week he penned an editorial against reform for USAToday using every deception in the book to try to turn readers away from campaign finance reform. Most Americans have seen what the corrupt campaign financing system we have today has done to our legislative process and how much it has cost all of us-- much to the delight of Big Pharma, the Insurance Industry, the banksters, etc. Responses to Lungren's hackish OpEd, ran 100% opposed to his views. "Lungren misses the point" sums them up:

Campaign financing for public office by private donors is more about influence peddling than it is about First Amendment, freedom of speech rights. The manner in which political campaigns are run requires incredible sums of money.

It is presumed that spending more money guarantees a win because more media time can be purchased.
Further, the wealthy who run for office inject their money to ensure success.

The present system also favors the incumbent because this person is most likely already doing the bidding of his private financiers.

The benefits of using public money far exceed the drawbacks. Political campaigns would be shorter and more focused since fewer dollars would be available.

The perceived, if not actual, buying of influence by lobbyists, industry associations and unions would be eliminated.

This would then give the voter a bigger voice in the selection process. It would likely also reduce the seemingly endless insulting campaign ads that do more to mislead the public than educate it.

As to Lungren's-- and the GOP's-- claim that free speech and the right to bribe members of Congress are one in the same, one respondent asks "Am I the only one who sees that money is not speech, that it is the megaphone through which speech is transmitted? It is like any meeting, if one speaker has a megaphone and the other doesn't, which one gets heard?"

Lungren, of course, has benefited handsomely from the status quo. Widely considered a congressman who will sell his vote to any corporate interest, his voting record corresponds totally to the demands of the special interests that have funded his sleazy political career. Lobbyists figure very prominently in his election efforts-- to the tune of $122,921 so far. Here's what he's taken in from the sectors whose bills he has been voting for:

Finance, Insurance, Real Estate- $590,217
Energy & Natural Resources- $111,600
Medical-Industrial Complex- $197,912

That's closing in on a million dollars, a lot more attractive to a hack like Lungren than appealing to individual donors. What he-- and his crooked colleagues-- fear most is putting the power in the hands of those who can organize lots of people into politics with small checks, rather than those who bundle large contributions. The good news is that the progressive running against Lungren, Dr. Ami Bera, is a proponent of HR 1826. Last year Obama won the district and Lungren only managed to hold onto his seat with 49.5% of the vote. In 2006 he had won re-election with 59.5% and his opponent, Bill Durston, pulled 86,318 votes. Last year Durston surged to 137,971 votes. Next year if Bera manages to make the Fair Elections Now Act a salient issue in the district, it should help him send Lungren into the retirement he's earned.

The Far Right Fights Back Against Democratic Elections

When we started DWT the theme had a lot to do with exposing corrupt political hacks like Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, Tom DeLay, Conrad Burns, Ted Stevens, Jack Abramoff, Jerry Lewis, Duncan Hunter, etc. Of that lot only Lewis is still in DC, DeLay, Conrad and Hunter seem to have avoided prison, and the Justice Department felt sorry for Ted Stevens-- an in-crowd Beltway good ole boy-- and let him off. There are still plenty of corrupt elected officials wasting billions of taxpayer dollars to enrich themselves and finance their political careers. This week we looked at WalMart's senator, the execrable Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), at crazed and on-the-take wingnut Virginia Foxx (R-NC), at lobbyist-owned Kendrick Meek (D-FL), and at the systematic payoffs by Big Pharma and HMOs for shills like John McCain (R-AZ- $8,595,609), Arlen Specter (R-PA- $3,914,733), Max Baucus (D-MT- $2,797,381), Miss McConnell (R-KY- $2,723,168), Joe Lieberman (I-CT- $2,373,119), Orrin Hatch (R-UT- $2,311,744), Lamar Alexander (R-TN- $2,056,558), Richard Burr (R-NC- $2,039,094) and John Cornyn (R-TX- $1,994,353), all working diligently to make sure universal health care will never become a reality in our country.

Today Politico published an opinion piece by virulent anti-democracy Bush Regime shill Hans von Spakovsky, that asks a simple, and highly misleading question: Should taxpayers subsidize pols? What von Spakovsky misses-- quite purposefully-- is that taxpayers do subsidize pols. When Duke Cunningham, Don Young, Jerry Lewis, Tom DeLay, Jack Murtha, Roy Blunt, Thad Cochran, William Jefferson or John Boehner is selling earmarks worth millions for thousands, who is subsidizing that? Duke Cunningham's cars and mansions and yachts and whores cost the taxpayers millions and millions of dollar in earmarks through Jerry Lewis' incredibly corrupt Defense Appropriations Committee. Some estimates are as high as $100 billion dollars a year-- a year-- as the cost of corruption in Congress alone. We bear those costs!

It costs at least a million dollars to run for a House seat, sometimes five times that, and over ten million to run for a Senate seat. Those elections are largely financed by special interests with very specific agendas. The biggest special interest that's gone into perverting our electoral system has been the $2.2 BILLION (since 1990) by the FIRE (Finance/insurance/real estate) sector. What did they want? Deregulation so they could rip off the public. What did they get? TRILLIONS of dollars worth of deregulation. And what did we get? The Bush Depression. Von Spakovsky is a clown to miss the point-- or to try to hold up a bright shiny object to make his readers miss the point.

His complaint is the Fair Elections Now Act that was introduced this week by Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Arlen Spector (R-PA). There's a similar bill sponsored by John Larson (D-CT) and Walter Jones (R-NC) wending its way through the House.

This bill would allow candidates to opt into a public funding program if they raised a minimal amount of money from home-state residents. This proposal resembles the current public funding program for presidential primaries. But serious White House contenders have recently eschewed that program because it provides nothing near the amount necessary to run a nationwide campaign. And there is no indication that the proposed program for congressional candidates would be any better.

The key difference between Durbin’s congressional proposal and the existing presidential matching system is that the funding for the chief executive races is completely voluntary-- via taxpayer check-offs on tax returns. Durbin would fund his new program by taxing government contractors. [And Larson's would be funded by broadcast spectrum sales by the Federal Communications Commission.]

Those shilling for the rich and powerful, like von Spakovsky, object, strenuously. "Taxing government contractors or using spectrum sales may sound innocuous, but it will simply make government more expensive, giving taxpayers less bang for their buck. Contractors will necessarily incorporate the cost of the tax into their government bids, effectively passing the costs on to the Treasury. Using spectrum sales for political campaigns will also take away revenues that would otherwise fund existing government programs or reduce the deficit, robbing Peter to pay Paul. Durbin may call it a tax on contractors, and Larson may believe spectrum sales are free money, but both concepts are ultimately a tax increase for rank-and-file taxpayers."

Von Spakovsky is, as usual, wrong about everything. The amounts set for the Senate bill, for example, would provide enough money so that roughly 80 to 85% would have approximately as much or more money (should they work hard to seek small donors) than they had the last time they ran and won. On the House side, the figures are set by what the average cost to win was across the entire country (with a one-time reduction of 20% because of the savings in fundraising costs)-- which means most candidates will have more than what they’re used to-- and again, those who continue to raise small donations will have as much as they’ve had in the past. Either bill would provide a competitive edge for virtually every candidate who does the hard work to seek small donations from regular people, not lobbyists or big money donors.

Historically, the right, has done all they could to minimize the role of ordinary working people in elections. For rightists like von Spakovsky, decisions should be made by the wealthiest people-- only and anything that removes power from their hands is problematic. He may talk and "significant constitutional concerns"-- the Supreme Court's misguided application of the First Amendment giving the wealthy the right to buy elections-- but the real problem for him, and for all anti-democracy types, is that by taking Big Money out of electoral politics, you remove the clout that the rich wield. If a shady character like Blanche Lincoln wasn't so dependent on WalMart and the Walton family, do you think she would be joining a disreputable neo-fascist like Jon Kyl to try to abolish the estate tax?

There is only one way-- short of hanging every right winger-- to solve the grave problems that face our country: campaign finance reform; the real stuff. Money is the root of all evil and in politics it begets corrupt government, regardless of party. Tobacco lobbyist and congressmember, John Boehner (R-OH) rarely gets anything right and when, he does, it's for the wrong reasons but today he used a phrase that should be forever linked to his name: