Reply #5: People vs. Corporations

[housewolf]

I agree with much of what you say, but I want to point out that corporations are not exactly powerless. While they do not vote per say, what they DO do is influlence (some say "buy") legislation and regulations.

Take the miserable medicare prescription plan last year - theoretically that should have been a great piece of "people" legislation. In fact, it ended up as a great piece of corporate welfare to the pharmaceutical industry, so much so that the federal government even gave away its right to negotiate prices it will pay!

Then there was the FCC media consolidation issue in which Michael Powell received hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of public comments against media consolidation, but he granted it anyway at the behest of corporations.

There are many other example of this type of corporate influece. I think this is what you are arguing against.

Fact of the matter is this - Repuplicans are in control of our legislative process. They run the committes that write the laws. And they are in charge of the executive branch, which means that they are in charge of making and changing the regulations. In the last Congress, the repubs basically cut the Dems out of the legislative process, going to far as to hold secret legislative meetings and barring Dems from attending, "punishing" Dems by eliminating their earmarks from appropriations bills, not bringing Dem-initiated legislation to the floor, or simply voting down Dem suggestions and ammendments. It's a tough world for Dems in Congress these days.

Which leaves Dems in the position of being the opposition party, whose basic job is to obstruct the repubs. And get labelled "obstructionists" as they did so well to Tom Daschle.

Hopefully some of the Dems will be able to find ways to work with Repubs to moderate so of the legislation, we'll have to see.

The issue is further compounded by the fact that most of the conservative and moderate Dems (the DLC/New Dems) are just as much in the thrall of the corporations as the Repubs. Example - where is John Breaux going since his retirment from Congress - into a corporate lobbying firm. He's not the only one. It's like a sickness - leave government and go to work for corporate lobbying firms using the contacts you made while working for the public at the advantage of the corporations, in essense "against" the public who used to pay you.

What would it take for the Dems to be "for the people" as opposed to being for corporations? What would that mean? Well, they can vote against corporate-sponsored Repub legislation. Okay, great, they can do that... but in the reality-based world, the repubs can cram through any piece of legislation they want to so a Dem vcte for or against is really only something that can be used for their resume, something they can crow about or their opponents can use against them.

What I am really saying here is that our legislataive process in broken. Very few bills actually make it to the floor for a vote. The ones that do are huge and have all kinds of stuff added to them to satisfy some special interst or another. Legislators are expected to vote on bills without having sufficient time to review them. They are voting on measures that they've never read and don't know what they contain. A vote isn't just a vote, it's capital that's traded for this favor or another. The leadership buys legislators votes with favors and punishes them if they vote against their wishes. Political power is entrenced in the committee structure and hierarchy.

Congress refuses to reform itself. It is a horrible system and it's just not working in the interests of the American people anymore.

What can be done? Well, get money out of the political process. Transform financing of campaigns away from the private realm into the public realm. I am sure there are other ideas too.

One thing we need to look at is rights of corporations. It was only about 150 years or so ago that corporations were accidentally given "rights of personhood" by the supreme court through a mistake in transcription. That gave corps all the same rights and liberties that individuals have. Is that correct? How can we get that revoked?

Dems need to start talking about these issues.