A number of groups will be convening upon the Georgia State Capitol to reflect on Citizens United and its effects on democracy here in Georgia and the United States more generally. I’ll be speaking about the case at 10am. Later that morning, Senator Nan Orrock will introduce a resolution calling for Congress to overturn Citizens United. The sponsors and organizers of the event are: Georgia PIRG, Georgia WAND, The People’s Agenda, Georgia STANDUP, EcoAction Environment, Georgia AFL-CIO, and Planned Parenthood. Please join in this lively event. January 21 Day of Action

I’m working on an essay called The Case for Plutocracy and wish to share a few studies and news stories that are influencing my thinking:

Breaking news: New government funding bill allows high risk trading backed by taxpayer money, enabled by political donors and spenders: Citigroup drafts provision of government funding rule. The result is to put capitalism (and especially ordinary American’s savings) at risk. Let’s repeat the 2008-2009 economic crisis, shall we? Most troubling for democracy, though, is the evidence that large financial interests draft legislation that is passed word for word (70 plus of 85 lines of text to be precise), and naturally these financial interests (JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Wells Fargo etc.) are big players in political finance. That’s the mechanism that earns our political system the title “plutocracy.” http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/12/spending-bill-992-derivatives-citigroup-lobbyists

“An analysis of the House vote on Thursday on the $1.1 trillion federal budget bill — which included a contested provision that will roll back a key rule of the Dodd-Frank law — shows that Democrats who voted in favor of the measure on average received nearly four times as much money from large financial institutions as others who voted ‘no.'” http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2014/12/12/?entry=7055&_r=1

Also, the funding bill raises the limit for private contributions to political party committees from about 100k to over 700k, or $1.5 million per election cycle- this is Congress doubling down on the Supreme Court’s ruling in McCutcheon. More corruption (undue influence of the wealthy over political outcomes) to follow. http://www.clcblog.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=585:the-high-cost-to-democracy-of-the-budget-bill Congress says parties need this plutocratic funding provision in order to counter the influence of outside groups (SuperPACs, dark money, etc.) http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/12/14/us/politics/gop-angst-over-2016-convention-led-to-funding-provision.html?ref=politics&_r=0&referrer=

And the drafting of that plutocratic funding provision itself seems corrupt: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/democratic-lawyer-crafted-campaign-finance-deal-113549.html

American Oligarchy: groundbreaking study by Martin Gilens (Princeton) and Ben Page (Northwestern) appears to prove that ordinary Americans exercise no independent influence over law and policy as set by elected officeholders. Our political leadership is accountable to affluent citizens and organized interest groups representing business concerns and unaccountable to everyone else. Yes, progressives have long believed this to be the case, but now it’s rather well established, empirically speaking. Theories of democracy that held that officeholders were accountable to their geographic constituents or the median voter’s preferences have been discredited. Of course the term oligarchy is imprecise given the nature of the data analyzed by Gilens and Page. Oligarchy is government by a small elite group, but if the organizing principle of an oligarchy is wealth as opposed to nobility or standing in religious hierarchy for example, then the precise sort of oligarchy at hand is a plutocracy.

Click to access gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf

Similarly, Thomas Hayes: “I examine Senate responsiveness for the 107th through 111th Congresses. The results show consistent responsiveness toward upper income constituents.” State Adoption of Tax Policy: New Data and New Insights http://apr.sagepub.com/content/42/6/929.full.pdf+html

The most “pernicious” effect of income inequality is that it drains political power from lower- and middle-class Americans and allows the richest to then begin “changing the rules in their favor”: MIT economist, Daron Acemoglu: “when economic inequality increases, the people who have become economically more powerful will often attempt to use that power in order to gain even more political power. And once they are able to monopolize political power, they will start using that for changing the rules in their favor. And that sort of political inequality is the real danger that’s facing the United States.” http://whynationsfail.com/summary/ Commentary: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/03/23/451166/acemoglu-income-inequality-political-powe/

“Washington gridlock helps the super-rich stay rich, and get richer”– how Congress doing nothing benefits the economic elite, another cutting edge academic study with real world explanatory power. http://web.utk.edu/~nkelly/papers/inequality/csqb.pdf “The researchers looked back over 70 years of data, and found that the more dysfunctional Washington is, the bigger the share of the pie the top one percent tends to grab.” Commentary here: http://billmoyers.com/2014/01/06/study-polarization-and-gridlock-work-well-for-the-wealthiest-americans/

And gridlock/dysfunction are the “new normal” http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/political-dysfunction-the-new-normal/2014/12/13/da774e32-82ec-11e4-9f38-95a187e4c1f7_story.html

And of course, Economic inequality so high that revolution looks to be inevitable— Thomas Piketty. The top 10% of US wealth holders own 70% of national wealth, while the bottom half of all Americans own just 2%, and other devastating facts about rising inequality– http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674430006

Plus little hope for environmental regulations in this plutocratic system, meaning little hope of avoiding the climate crisis: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/us/politics/energy-firms-in-secretive-alliance-with-attorneys-general.html?emc=eta1

The Courts are also included within the plutocratic design- “Justice at Risk,” campaign contributions linked to judicial rulings. http://www.acslaw.org/ACS%20Justice%20at%20Risk%20%28FINAL%29%206_10_13.pdf

Please consider coming out to the Book Passage for a discussion of the midterms and American plutocracy– 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco, 94111 http://bookpassage.com/event/timothy-k-kuhner-capitalism-v-democracy

A reflection on these midterms and our increasingly plutocratic system
http://capeandislands.org/post/summing-election-2014-and-examining-campaign-finance#.VFp093GCOIY.twitter

Consider coming out to reflect on elections and the shocking plutocratic trend in our democracy. NYU Book Store (Nov 4th, 6pm) and Columbia University Bookstore (Nov 7th, 6pm). Details here

Peter Bermudes is a terrific host and I believe this interview will be of interest to anyone thinking about the power of money in politics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYzJIu2_bf0

http://stanfordpress.typepad.com/blog/2014/10/a-new-era-of-political-exclusion.html
Published as part of Stanford University Press’ blog series: Constitutional Questions of 2014 http://stanfordpress.typepad.com/blog/2014/09/constitutional-questions-of-2014-a-blog-series.html

(This post comes in advance of my Rhode Island book signing this coming Wednesday evening– http://warwickonline.com/stories/Book-Reading-Discussion-Timothy-K-Kuhner-Discusses-Capitalism-V-Democracy,94875)

Rhode Islanders are poised to decide on campaigns for governor, secretary of state, the General Assembly, U.S. Congress, and even a constitutional convention this November. Although the course of democratic elections never has run smoothly, we can expect a tragedy this time around as candidates and voters pursue civic duty in a free-market wilderness. Lost in this wilderness, democratic actors succumb to a terrible and most confusing spell.

Candidates spend most of their time fundraising, instead of getting to know their geographic constituents, for they must raise millions of dollars each from private donors in order to mount a viable campaign. (And this is to say nothing of the billion dollar sums that presidential candidates must raise.) Officeholders read speeches ghost-written by lobbyists. (Indeed, around half of senators go on to accept lucrative jobs on K Street upon leaving office.) Countless bills introduced into state legislatures begin as model legislation drafted in meetings between business concerns and representatives. Even the public debate takes on the content and tone desired by monied actors, in this case SuperPACs and dark money groups that raise unlimited sums from wealthy donors and corporate general treasury funds. Spending by 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations, which do not disclose their donors, passed the $50 million mark this August, a seven-fold increase from where it stood at that time during the last midterm elections. The money that can be traced reveals that 0.18% of the U.S. population supplies 65% of all contributions to candidates, PACs, and parties, and less than .000001% of the population provides 70% of all SuperPAC funds. Is it any wonder that voter turnout rates suffer, laws serve the private good over the public good, and economic inequality skyrockets?

A large majority of citizens, most candidates, and even a sizeable quantity of wealthy donors and spenders would prefer to get out of this free market wilderness; however, federal and state campaign finance reform laws, have been consistently struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. In Citizens United, the Court called limits on corporate general treasury spending an interference with “the open marketplace of ideas protected by the First Amendment.” It went on to state that corporate influence and access to elected officials “does not mean that these officials are corrupt.” And just this past April in McCutcheon, the Court compared the Koch brothers to the heroes of the American Revolution, declaring that rights of speech and association apply just as readily to “someone who spends substantial amounts of money in order to communicate his political ideas” as they do to “a lone pamphleteer or street corner orator in the Tom Paine mold.”

In the end, the Court’s love for the political market and its biggest investors is as absurd as Titania’s love for the ass-headed Bottom in Shakespear’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. Declaring that money is speech, corporations are citizens, and that congressional interests in democratic integrity and political equality do not warrant reforming the system, the Court condemns all Americans to the nightmare of a democracy imprisoned in a free-market wilderness. “Out of this wood do not desire to go: Though shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.”

http://www.rifuture.org/tim-kuhner-in-ri-wed-for-capitalism-v-democracy-discussion.html

A conversation about political exclusion, the Roberts Court, Thomas Piketty, and the future of American democracy. http://wamc.org/post/capitalism-v-democracy