Thom Hartmann: There was a Time when Banksters Couldn't Buy Politicians [View all]

[thomhartmann]

Wall Street makes a lot of money. Or, more correctly, they TAKE a lot of money, as the leeches and banksters on Wall Street are very much Takers, rather than Makers. They don't make anything - they just move money around and skim - take - their vig off the top. But in the process, they end up with hundreds of billions of dollars in cash - truly big bucks. About a dozen Wall Street banksters made over $2 billion dollars last year - EACH! And the banks themselves have had one of their most profitable years ever, borrowing billions from the Fed at zero percent interest rate, loaning that money to the US Treasury at 2 percent or so, spinning off trillions in derivatives, and stuffing all the profits in their pockets.

Meanwhile, other divisions of the banks are foreclosing on your homes, and actually making both a profit and a tax write-off on it! The result is that both the banksters and the banks on Wall Street have billions and billions of dollars in money they came by pretty easily. And, given that, what better place to put that money than into buying politicians and the laws and regulations those politicians can write? After all, most of the money Wall Street banksters are making right now is being made in ways that were completely illegal for more than 70 of the last 80 years. Then they bought some politicians and got the laws changed. And for most of the 20th century, if they'd made that kind of money, they would have paid upwards of 70 to 90 percent income tax on it - until they bought some politicians and got those laws changed, too.

In the 2008 election cycle, the banksters were betting that Democrats would help them out - so they invested over $170 million in that party, a bit more than they gave to Republicans. And, of course, these are just the official donations - they may have given a LOT more through invisible sources, groups like Karl Rove's so-called "charity" that doesn't report its donors. But the Democrats won big in 2008, and immediately started to pass laws that would rein in the banksters, and even slightly increase their taxes. Horrors! So in 2010 - and, so far, in 2012 - Wall Street has been funneling more of their money to the Republicans, because the Republicans have promised to make it even easier for banksters to rip us off, and, when they do, to keep their taxes low. I mean, the Republican Party is even running a bankster as their candidate for President, and, like a good bankster he and his wife are telling "you people" that they're not gonna let us see their tax returns.

We've been here before. Back in the election of 1920, Herbert Hoover ran for president on the slogan of "Less government in business, and more business in government." He promised to deregulate the banksters, and cut their taxes from 90 percent to 25 percent. The result? Nine years of a bubble that looked like boom times - the roaring 20s - followed by a horrific crash that produced a decade-long Republican Great Depression. And when FDR tried to do what Obama is trying to do - regulate the banksters - they said - like they are now - that the President was anti-American, a socialist, and that he was trying to tear down important American institutions like banks and capitalism. Roosevelt kicked them squarely in the teeth with his "Economics Royalist" speech. But back then the banksters couldn't buy every politician in America. We had laws against that, passed back in the 1800s at the state levels, and in 1907 at the federal level, that prevented corporations - and even, in some cases, very rich people - from buying politicians or political parties.

For example, this old Wisconsin law was on the books from around the time of the Civil War until the 1950s: "No corporation doing business in this state shall pay or contribute, or offer consent or agree to pay or contribute, directly or indirectly, any money, property, free service of its officers or employees or thing of value to any political party, organization, committee or individual for any political purpose whatsoever, or for the purpose of influencing legislation of any kind, or to promote or defeat the candidacy of any person for nomination, appointment or election to any political office." And the penalty for breaking the law? Remember, last week one of the world's biggest banks just pled guilty to criminal manipulation of LIBOR - and not a single bankster from Barclays was arrested.

But back in Roosevelt's day, they were serious about taking on banksters. The penalty part of that law reads, in part: "Any officer, employee, agent or attorney or other representative of any corporation, ... who shall violate this act, shall be punished ... by imprisonment in the state prison for a period of not less than one nor more than five years... and if the corporation [is guilty and is] a domestic corporation it may be dissolved, ... and if a foreign or non-resident corporation its right to do business in this state may be declared forfeited." The reason that law is no longer on the books, and the reason why Obama can't take on the banksters with quite the vigor that FDR did, is because five men on the Supreme Court have appointed themselves the kings of America and declared that money isn't property - it's speech.

And because it's speech, billionaires on Wall Street can throw all of it they want into political campaigns. And their banks can, as well, because, as bankster Mitt Romney said so well and so often: It's time for us to stop the insanity of bought-and-paid-for politicians and political parties. And the only way to do that, is to overturn these twin crazy Supreme Court doctrines with an amendment to the US Supreme Court that plainly and openly says that corporations are not people and money is not speech. For more information on how to clean up American politics, go to move to amend.org

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