United States presidential campaigns today are extremely expensive. In the year 2000, all candidates combined spent $528 million; in 2004 it had risen to $889 million. By Sept. 21, 2008 Obama had spent $454 million and McCain $230 million. The 2008 total easily topped $1,000,000,000 (one billion dollars).
While $1 billion is an extremely large amount of money, it pales when compared with the revenues and profits of major U.S. corporations. Profits for some major corporations in 2007 (before the recent recession) included Exxon-Mobil at $40.6 B., GE at $22.2 B., Chevron at $18.6 B., Walmart at $12.7 B., and AT&T at $11.9 B.
These profits, year after year, produce one of the more inequitable societies in history. As more and more Americans are left behind in our economic system – the middle class shrinking and the number of poor rising – the wealth at the top continues to multiply.
Forbes Magazine annually publishes a list of America’s richest citizens. The following names and net worth are from its Sept. 2009 issue: Wm. Gates - $50 B., Warren Buffet - $40 B., Lawrence Ellison - $27 B., four Walton (Walmart) families - $19 to $21.5 B. each.
On Jan. 29, 2010, Bill Moyers had as one of his guests Zephyr Teachout, a professor at Fordham U. School of Law and a visiting Assistant Professor at Harvard’s Brennan Center for Justice. That night she stated: “Goldman Sachs is the smartest political party I know in this country.”
In one sentence she encapsulates the essence of wealth’s threat to our democracy. Some of our major corporations “earn” in a matter of weeks the equivalent of the cost of a major presidential campaign. Some of our wealthy citizens could pay for a major presidential campaign from the interest, dividends, and rents their investments earn in a year. Transferring these billions to Senatorial or Congressional campaigns allows them to control whole committees of the Senate and House.
Our financial elites were already purchasing favorable legislation before the latest Supreme Court decision allowing corporations and the wealthy unlimited influence on members of Congress. Unless citizens fight back with all the resources available, their access to the legislative process will be denied by the power of money.
This court decision, which sets the stage for the corporate takeover of our democracy, is NOT Constitutional law. It is a case of an ideological activist court whose decisions generate new laws. Indeed, a Goldman Sachs political party is sure to arise. Everything else in our nation is being given corporate names.
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