Today is #J17 – the day Congress gets Occupied. Even as I try to live simply and more sustainably by consuming less and being more self-reliant, I believe it’s critical that We the People take back our government from the oligarchy that now owns it. So this is a blog post in solidarity with today’s action in Washington, DC. In it I take a look at who owns my Congressman and Senators. I would encourage all citizens to do the same with their so-called “representatives”. Let’s really educate ourselves and begin shining a light on the corruption in Washington.
So here we are in mid-January of 2012 and it’s government business dysfunction-as-usual. Our country is staring down Peak Oil, yet we still don’t have any sort of energy policy beyond “drill baby,drill” and “frack baby, frack”. Climate disinformation continues unchecked even as we were hammered by a record 12 extreme billion-dollar weather events in 2011; yet our federal government remains silent on the facts. We’re allowing China and Germany to become global leaders in alternative energy development and production while our “leaders” continue handing out huge subsidies to Big Carbon to maintain the status quo. Our food is still not labeled as to GMO content. Lobbyists designed the most recent school lunch bill – the one in which Congress agreed that pizza is a vegetable. Farm policy is deliberately designed to benefit Big Ag at the expense of small farmers and local food. Monsanto still rules. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Let’s not forget TARP plus the additional secret bailouts of the banksters. Then there’s the dearth of prosecutions of said banksters for the criminal activity that brought our economy to its knees in 2008 and from which we may never recover. Privatized profits/socialized losses (corporate welfare), mega-corporations that pay no income taxes, mortgage fraud that’s gone unaddressed, a 5-4 decision by the Supremes that says corporations are people and money is speech, smoke and mirrors Wall St. “reform”…
Sigh.
Our government is broken. Ninety-one percent of us know it; Congress has an approval rating of only 9%. A greater percentage of Americans approve of polygamy than the United States Congress, according to a set of polls. And I think we all know why: corporate money controls our government. Our elected (so-called) representatives no longer represent us; they answer to their corporate benefactors and the lobbyists that swarm in from K-Street. The rot is so common, so systemic, they no longer even see the need to try and hide it.
We know this intellectually; we see the results of this rotting system in the bills that are passed, the decisions handed down, the squabbling and disingenuous misinformation campaigns of corporate-owned media who spend millions to buy influence.
But it’s not my representatives that are the problem, right? It’s yours. And his. And hers. It’s those other people sent to Washington from the red states or the blue states that are to blame. But my reps are great! They are! Uh…right?
Well let’s take a look, shall we? Let’s follow the money.
I live in the 24th Congressional District, so my Congressman is Richard Hanna. He’s a Republican. He sits on the Education & the Workforce; Small Business; and Transportation & Infrastructure committees. Hanna’s a real newbie having just been sent there in 2010, which means he has no power. (Yet.) His two-year term expires this year. Take a gander, courtesy of Open Secrets, at Hanna’s 2010 top 20 contributors by “industry”:
Note that it’s a mixed bag of relatively small contributions; probably pretty typical for a candidate that is still an unknown quantity to the corporatocracy. At the time the contributions were made, his committee service was as yet unknown. To date, he seems to be rather mealy-mouthed in his statements but seems to be following the Tea Party line of blaming Medicare and Social Security for all our ills. Surprise! In 2010, Hanna received $5,000 from Koch Industries, bankrollers of the Tea Party.
‘Nuff on Hanna. He’s pretty small potatoes at this point I think. Let’s check out New York’s big guns.
Over in the Senate, New York is “represented” by Kirsten E. Gillibrand and Charles E. Schumer. Both are Democrats.
Elected to the Senate in 2009 , Gillibrand sits on three committees: Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry; Armed Services; and Environment & Public Works. She is a politician of some experience having previously served in the House of Representatives from January 2007 – January 2009, when she resigned to fill the vacancy left by Hillary Clinton in the Senate. Gillibrand’s six-year term expires in 2013.
Let’s see Gillibrand’s 2012 top-20 by industry:
Well now, this gets more interesting! Where as greenhorn Hanna’s contributions were all in the 4- and 5-figure range, none of Gillibrand’s campaign totals are less than six figures. And three – from the securities & investment, lawyers/law firms, and real estate industries – are in the millions.
And now for the Big Kahuna.
Senator Schumer is the real powerhouse of my three representatives. A career politician, he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1981 after a 6 year stint in the NYS Assembly. He was first elected to the Senate in 1998. He currently serves on the powerful Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs commitee as well as the Finance and Judiciary committees. He’s also Chairman of the Rules & Administration committee. Schumer’s six-year term doesn’t expire until 2017.
Any guesses as to Schumer’s top 20? Take a look:
Note that Gillibrand and Schumer are neck-and-neck in the race for 2012 loot from the securities and investment, lawyers/law firms, and real estate industries with Gillibrand’s $6.9 million actually giving her a slight lead over Schumer’s $6.2 million. (I haven’t even counted the money from ‘Commercial Banks’ and ‘Miscellaneous Finance’!) Chuck needn’t worry though; he’s taken more money from Wall St. in his long career than any other politician who hasn’t run for President – $8.9 million. (Only Obama – yeah, that “change” guy, Bush 2, McCain, and Hillary Clinton have him beat.)
Now, pardon my cynicism here, but how in the world am I to believe that these two people – Senators Schumer and Gillibrand – can honestly vote their constituents’ best interests when the vast majority of those constituents cannot even come close to the influence that this level of campaign financing buys? Should we be surprised that neither of them has said a word about prosecuting the banksters whose corporate malfeasance sent our economy over the cliff in 2008?
And while we’re at it, take a look at their haul from the TV/Movies/Music and Computers/Internet industries. Should we really be surprised that Schumer and Gillibrand support the latest corporate scam: the badly conceived SOPA and PIPA bills that would censor the Internet?
Oy.
Oh and let’s not forget that our Congress critters regularly engage in insider stock trading based on the legislation they write (at the behest of their corporate masters); as you may remember from this 60 Minutes segment, nearly all of them leave Congress far, far wealthier than they were when they came in. If you and I did that, we’d land in jail so fast we wouldn’t know what hit us. Even “poor” Martha Stewart couldn’t escape that one!
The bottom line?
Party no longer matters. Spend some time on the Open Secrets website and you’ll see that corporations can and will buy anybody. Look up the top donors to your representatives’ campaigns, Dems & Repubs alike. I guarantee you they’re making out like bandits just as mine are. So I ask you, what’s in your elected representatives’ wallets? And who put it there?
I am the 99%. And I want my government back!
Don’t you?
