THE MONEYED IN POLITICS - THE SIXTH ESTATE AND THEIR LOBBYISTS

Money plays a role in all politics everywhere but no more than in America. In the US money is central to who is elected on every governmental level and then money is used, in wallops, to dictate what those that have been elected will "decide". 

LOBBYING

The American legislature is institutionally and unashamedly influenced by money. These transactions are effected via lobbyists, who who are employees of Lobby or Legal firms. The lobbyists directly approach staff members and Congressmen. These lobbyists are the go betweens big business and interest groups and the legislature. While lobbying is not unique to the USA it is a major industry and the principal movers and shakers behind this activity are the business - financial complex. The latter can be considered to coin a new term, The Sixth Estate. (The media are considered the Fourth Estate because of their influence in the political process and the Fifth Estate are said to be all other non governmental groups, influencing society including the newest most influential modality, the internet in the form of tweeters, bloggers, the u tubers and face bookers and the like). This Sixth Estate, currently is by far the most influential group in enacting legislation in the US.  

There has never has been a limit to the money spent on lobbying and this vocation has totally overwhelmed the legislative process. Although there are ostensibly rules and regulations, proven violations are far and few between and, anything goes. There are said to be over 12,000 registered lobbyists in Washington. That conservative estimate would mean for every Legislator there are over 20 lobbyists. A study conducted by Raquel Alexander of Washington and Lee University, in 2009, showed that lobbying was highly lucrative and gave a return to the investor of 22,000 percent. There are obvious lobby groups in the public eye such as the National Rifle Association that have been successful at preventing any meaningful gun control. If one takes the recent Affordable Care Act it is open secret that without the support of the Medical Insurance Companies, the Hospital Group and the American Medical Association it would have not happened. The tobacco lobby finally succumbed after successfully, for fifty years, keeping the government out of the science that had proved that tobacco was a killer. Their successful survival for 50 years was brokered by the lobbyists.

Eisenhower in his farewell speech, in 1961, predicted that the military - industrial complex would have undue influence in the United States and so it did. He warned that "… the councils of government must guard against unwarranted influence … by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist….. this combination, (military and industry), endanger our liberties and democratic process…”.

Eisenhower did not even thinly disguise how money can influence military policy. The money comes in forms of political contributions and the like and the influence was brokered by the lobbyists. All this raises the questions of the endless wars that America have been involved for the past 60 years. Several of them futile and “unwinnable” costing endless blood and treasure but making untold fortunes for the “industrial” component of the complex. (The only viable conspiracy theory remaining in the Kennedy assassination is that he was killed because he was about to pull out of the Vietnam war. Historians are awaiting the release of, to date of still classified CIA documents).

Since Eisenhower’s time there have been complexes on everything and anything. Today the business - financial complex, The Sixth Estate, reigns supreme and their pathway to success is brokered by the lobbyists.

In the USA there are also interest groups that raise sums of money like the Anti -  Abortion Groups and The Women Rights groups who also influence  legislators but that is not the group that Jay H Ell is focussing on at the moment.

PASSAGE OF MEDICARE PART D TELLS IT ALL

The Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement Act of 2003, also known as Medicare Part D is illustrative of the power of The Sixth Estate. The Bill would cover most of the cost for prescription drugs for the elderly. The bill was so controversial that the publicity of its passage resulted in an expose of how the lobbyists of the Sixth Estate work in Congress. Sixty Minutes produced a feature that laid bare the process that resulted in the passage of Medicare Part D.

The central argument surrounding the Medicare Part D legislation was whether or not the cost of the newly available medicines, to the elderly, would be controlled by the Government or would Congress allow the Pharmaceutical Companies, themselves, to set the prices. The Republicans in Congress gave the Pharmaceutical Companies the prerogative. This was in contrast to similar Government programs such as  Medicaid and the Veteran Administration Medical Program where the government controls the cost of pharmaceuticals. The rationale for the Republican decision was that the pharmaceutical industry would compete among each other and bring down the cost of medicines.

Needless to say the Pharmaceutical Industry lobby played the central role in this outcome. In the words of Republican Congressman Walter, “The Pharmaceutical Lobby wrote the Bill, It was a 1,000 pages long and it was presented to Congress at 3.00am in the morning to vote on.” He maintained that it was the ugliest night he had experienced in his 22 years in politics. Tom De Lay, the Republican Chief Whip “bribed” and “twisted arms” to the extent that he and a number of Republicans were brought before the ethics committee for their behavior. The Pharmaceutical Companies were said to have paid the lobbyists $250,000,000 for their work. The cost of the Prescription Program was estimated at 400 billion dollars.( Interestingly several of those Republicans who voted for the Bill did not demand, as they do today, that spending cuts be made to offset “entitlement" costs). It was estimated that if the Medicaid formula would have been used by the government then a $133 billion per year would have been saved. That represents an additional profit to the Pharmaceutical companies in the first year of over 532% on money spent. In addition the costs of Brand name drugs have been raised and not lowered following the implementation of the Act.

Sixty Minutes showed the “rewards" of all those involved in the decision making process that put this crucial clause in the Bill. All of them, Congressmen and their staffers, either obtained very high paying jobs in the pharmaceutical industry or  lobbying firms related to the industry. The  Congressman Chairman of the House Committee, that this Bill officially emerged from, was said to be rewarded with a million dollar a year employment contract. Also Congress allowed the Medicare Administrator a waver to negotiate with various companies for a job while all this process was going on. Finally, the Department of Health and Human Services used nearly 10 million dollars of taxpayer money to justify the merits of the program as it was passed.

CBS’s Steve Kroft concluded the Sixty Minutes segment by saying the high cost of drugs in America is due to the Pharmaceutical lobby.

HOW LOBBYING WORKS.

Jack Abramhoff, a convicted lobbyist, upon release from prison wrote a book entitled, “Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth About Corruption from America’s Most Notorious Lobbyist”. It was also made into a movie entitled Casino Jack. While Abramhoff may be the most notorious lobbyist he still is small time in terms of the big leagues, only dealing in millions and occasionally 10’s of millions and not in 100's of millions and billions. However he does provide insight into how it all works. Free trips, expensive gifts, sport skyboxes, free restaurant with liquor, free services, campaign contributions, and anything else in what amount to out and out bribes. He specialized in getting Indian tribes Casino licenses. He was heavily involved with Tom De Lay in this and other projects. Subsequently 21 others were also convicted as a result of Abramhoff schemes including one Republican Congressman and staffers from Congress and even the White House. What is interesting about Abramhoff is that he acknowledges he was just a part of it - “ I was involved in a system of bribery - legalized bribery for the most part that still exists today”. So in the grand scheme of things Abramhoff was small fry and the real stuff, “still exists today”.

The only way that it can stop is for Congress itself to legislate as to what represents “business as usual” and what is ultimately regarded as criminal. Abramhoff and his motley crew was an outstanding exception in being prosecuted. If it is legitimate for the Lobbyists to write the legislation where do you draw the line? And if this is going on on the surface only the Good Lord knows what is going on behind the scenes including donations to campaign funds - where so many "expenditures" of the candidate are legitimate.

COMBINED IMPACT OF THE LOBBYING GROUPS ON COSTS AND FINANCIAL MATTERS.

To get some idea of the declared amount of money spent on lobbying in the past few years the Center for Responsive Politics publishes figures on its website OpenSecrets.org. For the past five years it has been averaging three and a half billion dollars a year. Of the sectors involved Health, Finance, Communication and Miscellaneous Business are up there were about $350 million each. A loose interpretation of all the money spent is that it all comes from the business- finance complex - The Sixth Estate. There is about a $100 million to single issue and Ideology groups but many of those are really protecting the business interests. For example, Grover Norquist’s quaintly named “America’s For Tax  Reform” is merely seeing to that the fat cats don’t pay more tax.

As matters stand at the moment the Republican Party as a whole are the standard bearers of the agenda of the business - finance complex.

This is evidenced by their support of the following :The richest people in America pay less taxes than the lower middle class. Corporations are able to keep money oversea without paying taxes on it. There are so many deductions allowed to business and finance that it is a miracle they end up paying anything. Investing in tax free havens for corporations and individuals is legal and no legislation has been introduced to change this. The fight too is against regulation or control of business practices because that cost businesses money and hinders progress. (It also results in economy meltdowns as witnessed in the recent mortgage crises where unashamed greed rendered millions without homes while the perpetrators  were bailed out and their leaders instead of going to jail received obscene sums of money). The Republicans are against minimum wage for the same reason.

In fact the business - finance lobbyists, their clients The Sixth Estate and the Republican agenda are in sync.

THE MONEY IN ELECTING THE DECISION MAKERS.

Jay H Ell remembers being struck by a passage in the late Paul Simon’s autobiography as to why this highly respected Senator from Illinois had decided to leave politics after only two terms in the Senate. It was about money. As it was, of the 100 Senators, he was one of only two that had been elected with less money in his campaign than the loser. Besides the thought of having to solicit contributions he reflected on how, he had late at night responded to a long list of people he had to return calls too. He randomly selected a few. The next morning he looked at the list and whom he had chosen. He saw that he had unconsciously selected former donors to his campaigns. He reflected that if that was what he was doing instinctively it was time to quit.

To a lesser or greater extent there always been a wail about rich candidates using their own wealth pitting themselves against the “peoples” candidate. This became more evident when giants amassed unbelievable sums of money. Nelson Rockefeller in his successful gubernatorial run for New York in the mid sixties spent nearly $3.5 million dollars. An independent fortune for those days. However with todays oligarchs amassing untold fortunes a potential problem looms high.

The Koch brothers who have a combined fortune of over 65 billion dollars are organizing like crazy for the 2014 election. They have already amassed a half a billion dollars. Their money has already having a marked impact on Senate races. For example in North Carolina 3 million dollars in negative brainwashing adds have changed a “safe” Democratic seat to a current lead in the polls by the Republicans. This is said to be the situation in at least 5 seats. In this early stage the Republicans are outspending the Democrats ten to one,

As seen even with all that lobbying money there is still opposition. So see to it that there is nobody around to oppose anything!

IMPACT OF SUPREME COURT’S CITIZEN UNITED DECISION OF 2010

Besides the individual candidates collecting money from all sorts of contributors and the party itself collecting and assisting candidates, Political Action Committees, (PACS) are now able to collect unlimited sums of money in order to influence the election of a candidate or candidates. The Supreme Court in their landmark Citizen’s United decision by 5 votes to 4 opened the floodgates to unions, associations and corporations to collect and spend unlimited sums of money on candidates and political positions. This included State Elections where relatively little money could sway an election. This has been used particularly effectively by Conservative leaning PACS.

The immediate impact of Citizen’s United, according to an article by Andrew Mayersohn in the OpenSecrets website was that In the 2012 election triple the amount of money was spent by outside groups as compared to 2008. Liberal outside groups were largely outspent by conservative groups. Although Karl Rove of the American Crossroads PAC was panned for his backing so many losers he is still raising large sums of money which he will spend more "judiciously" this time. The 2012 Presidential election was considered to be a 2 billion affair and it is projected that the 2016 will be at least involve 3 billion..

Jay H. Ell believes that we are only seeing the beginnings of the impact of Corporate money in politics. Public companies have been a bit shy to publicly support these PACS but there is a mechanism whereby they can donate to certain PACS anonymously. Why would they hold back? They are some pretty rich people who are connected to corporations in America who know some other pretty rich connected people and they can now control the elected as easily as they control legislation. What is a billion here or a billion there when we are talking about a trillions in an economy?

Another Supreme Court decision is looming that Jay H Ell thinks that will go the same way as Citizen's United. It is McCutcheon versus the Federal Election Commission. The former is objecting to the limits that an individual can donate in any two year cycle. Currently it is a $123,000 in various chunks. The argument McCutcheon is using is the same that triumphed in the Citizen's United that money is akin to free speech and is protected under the Constitution. Surely what is good for Corporations, whom the Supreme Court ruled have the same legal status as people, must hold for real people. Then people like the Koch brothers won’t even have to bother to form PACS they could just contribute directly.

THE FUTURE.

So will the takeover of big money be complete? There are 85 people that have the same amount of money as 3 billion people on this planet and several of those are in America. The Corporations are all powerful anyway and are truly multinational and much of what they do lies outside of the purview of the American system.

There is no doubt that democracy, as understood today, as at risk. However, at the end of the day each individual can cast a vote should he or she overcome the attempts at voter suppression. The money may smear the opposition and put the chosen candidate and his or her policies in a good light before the electorate. However, belittling the poor and unemployed, continuing to call the illegal immigrants purveyors of drugs, ostracizing the LBGT community, having a paternalistic attitude to women’s reproductive rights, favoring corporations, not increasing the minimum wage and continuing to fight to prevent the uninsured to get health care will not get their votes.

The internet, as part of the fifth Estate represents a major challenge to what Jay H. Ell has labelled the Sixth Estate and as circumstances are at the moment all the money in the world will not stop Hilary who is perceived to be against this agenda - or at least as much as any politician can be. Her Presidential nomination campaign appears more like a movement than a political event. If she runs, and Jay H. Ell believes it is in her DNA and with all that is going on has no choice anyway. (No viable Democratic candidate is emerging out of deference to her.) Finally, it also needs remembering that Romney could not get elected on the Sixth Estate ticket in 2012 and the situation and demographics have worsened since then. There is however evidence that all this money is influencing public opinion. The Republican mantra  is that distributive economic justice is “Big Government ” and it is “Big Government” that is responsible for the economic plight. The Democrats and Obama are "Big Government" so vote them out!

But if it comes to money the sums needed are paltry to these billionaires, the Sixth Estate, to control the economic and social agendas of the most powerful nation in the world. 

America then truly will have the best Government money can buy.