Congress And The Illusion Of Political Choice

In a declining Empire, it goes without saying that special interests buy government officials to achieve their ends. What is interesting about the American example is that the large majority of the citizenry still believe they live in a Democracy. A commonplace observation, especially among self-styled "progressives," is that Americans vote against their own best interests over and over again. These progressives are very upset and disappointed by this outcome.

But the observation that people vote against their self-interest is misleading, for a vote cast for either party is necessarily a vote against the best interests of the voter almost all of the time. We can call this phenomenon the Illusion of Political Choice.

Mother Jones has published a special report Who Owns Congress? I've included some of the most interesting parts below. Go over to their report if you want additional details. First, let's look at the Big Picture.

Donations by industry, 1989-2010

Finance, insurance and real estate is often abbreviated by the acronym FIRE, as in the FIRE economy which iTulip's Eric Janszen often refers to. It is not an accident that the period of our Empire's decline, which I date to 1983, coincides with the period of disproportionately large donations to Congress from FIRE representatives. (The chart above only goes back to 1989.) You can see that FIRE organizations donated more money to Congressional election campaigns than Labors and Unions, Energy and natural resources, Agribusiness and Construction combined.

The Illusion of Political Choice is best illustrated in the chart below (hat tip, Barry Ritholtz).

Senate seating by major business sponsors

You can easily see that over well over half the Senate is "owned" by the FIRE sector or "lawyers and lobbyists" representing other special business interests. The actual percentage of money raised varies among politicians. For example, Mitch McConnell (R, Ky) has raised $37.2 million, 14% of which comes from FIRE interests, while Charles Schumer (D, NY) has raised $62.2 million, 27% of which comes from FIRE interests. These bribes are pitifully small compared to the services rendered in almost all cases. I am often disappointed that so many can be sold out for so little.

You can explore the Mother Jones report yourself but before I sum up, there were some other numbers I found interesting.

• Percentage of US adults that gave $200 or more in '08: 0.61%
• Percentage that gave more than $2,300: 0.13%
• Number of people who gave more than $10,000: 36,388
• Number who gave more than $95,000: 938

This is a remarkable statistic in so far as you'd have to give at least $25,000 to a political campaign to even get the candidate's attention and shake his hand. Otherwise, you'll get a table way in the back at the Fundraiser Dinner. And bear in mind that corporate donations are almost always made "voluntarily" by individuals within the corporation. That's just how its done.

With so few people controlling the Congress, and with the Illusion of Political Choice being the dominant paradigm, you might wonder why so many Americans remain vested in the political system. It's a good question, and one obvious answer is that they are really stupid. For example, my local "newspaper" reprinted a column by one Gail Collins, who is a syndicated columnist for the New York Times. Ms. Collins' column is called Worst election of the year—

Which state is having the most appalling campaign season? So much competition!

There's Arizona, where Jan Brewer, the immigrant-bashing governor, stomped away from her horrible debate performance while reporters yelled: "Governor, please answer the question about the headless bodies!" Always hard to beat a state with a headless-bodies controversy.Arizona got additional awfulness points when Ms. Brewer announced that she was not participating in future debates since she only needed to do that one to get public campaign funds. Still more when she said she might change her mind if her poll numbers dropped. Even more for the fact that they haven't.

California (Fourth Month Without a Budget!) has a governor's race that's degenerated into a debate over whether Meg Whitman should take a lie detector test to refute the weepy claims of her undocumented ex-housekeeper...

She goes on in this vein. Now, we could simply say this is mindless drivel and leave it at that. But the more interesting question is why Ms. Collins remains fixated on these obviously corrupt—not to mention crazy—people participating in an obviously corrupt process. Another ready answer is that this is how Gail makes her living. Another is that she, like everybody else, likes to gawk at a train wreck.

But on a deeper level, I think Ms. Collins still wants to believe we live in a Democracy even as she ridicules the various sociopaths running for office. Otherwise, why would this insane, corrupt charade be worthy of her attention? And, by implication, ours?

Bonus Video

 

Comments

[Mike]

Oh sweet Jeebus, thank you for the Bulworth clip. Really. I have shown that movie over and over and over and .... well you get the point to everyone I know and they JUST DON'T GET IT!

They never will, sadly.

Oh well, back to the garden!