Almighty Proof: See, it is difficult to prove global climate change, or just how to deal with pharmaceutical companies that gain massive kick-backs from the government in terms of subsidies, money collected from taxpayers that never seems to lower prices on prescription medicine. But it is fairly easy to send the average citizen five links for some pretty provable money distributions lavishly directed toward certain politician’s bank accounts and traced back to a corporation that either has received, or will, a politician’s unethical reciprocation of garnered money? Unethical, is a matter of debate and is a word often used but seldom understood. It is unethical for politicians to continue to deny the will of the people, such as it is, and back a corporation’s desire to monopolize commerce, industry, production, trade, financial lending, or to continue to treat jaded environmentalists or old-school unions with kid gloves. But let us still have debate, for case against McCain, Feingold, Lieberman, etc. of having violated the Constitution is looking like a slam dunk acquittal with each passing day. I think Romney, who bowed out of the republican primary process the first week of February 2008, is still spending money in his dreams.
Historical Finances: I am not sure what is worse- someone who continues to deny the connection between campaign finance contributions that still go relatively unchecked and the level of corruption in politics, or the one who does not fail to see it, but considers it an evil that is so ingrained in the political culture that there is nothing that can be done to further curb its excess. Bush Sr. had vetoed a bill limiting campaign funding 10 years before Bush Jr. signed one into law in 2002. Not sure whether I am more surprised by Bush Jr.s vote or that the supreme court upheld the law’s major provisions in December 2003- 21 months later. The supreme court upheld the decision!!- thought it was important enough to write succinctly. Apparently, the law to reform campaign funding was not all that Unconstitutional. Three other things I find interesting:
1) the bill which the senior Bush vetoed in ’92 appeared to have more teeth than the one passed ten years later and a major proponent of both was John McCain;
2) the bill with more teeth was not supported as strongly in ’92 when the democrats held the congressional majority, but passed in 2002 when the republicans did- so, the conservatives have no one to blame but themselves. (And I know that a president might be more inclined to sign something when he knows the congress has enough support to override his veto, that half the game is about how a politician looks, in terms of strength and leadership, to their constituencies and the populace);
3) in ’92, the senate majority leader was democrat George Mitchell, the same guy that decided after over two years of legal leg-work, advised MLB commissioner Bud Selig not to pursue legal action against cheaters named in his report. I wonder whether politicians who are against campaign finance legislation might be considered cheaters, for they have the technical veto override in political power that silences the speech of the public speaking out for reform. Roscoe P. Coltrane was not as inept in his legendary “hot pursuit[s]” of the General Lee as plenty of the political criminals decrying the injustice of finance reform. I could spend an entire column on the strange connections I could draw between the effects that performance enhancing drugs have had on baseball and the effects that campaign contributions have on politics. By now, I bet you believe that.
For christ’s sake!: Mindful of last column’s presentation of the concern over religion’s role in state affairs- The material in this paragraph is courtesy of “The Buying of the President 2004: Joe Lieberman, The Center for Public Integrity’s quadrennial investigation of how money shapes presidential campaigns.” (http://www.buyingofthepresident.org/index.php/archives/2004/598/) It will then provide me with a jumping off point so that I might conclude the campaign finance reform portion of my gripe on behalf of the middle class. Joe Lieberman, Independent Senator from Connecticut, who between 1998 and 2003, “cosponsored nine bills that Pfizer directly lobbied, varying from tax breaks to patent extensions,” said that “pharmaceutical giant Pfizer” was “ ‘doing the Lord’s work.’ ” Lieberman became an Independent in the fall of 2006 after losing his seat in the Connecticut democratic senatorial primary. To be fair, I still think it abundantly likely that even should a number of Independent candidates become U.S. house representatives, governors, or senators, they will have become so with the persistent backing of millions of dollars in campaign finance contributions and so would also be just as beholden to those that helped get them elected as are their democrat and republican opponents. But I’ve already covered why it is important to begin supporting them.
The article above also mentions these very interesting connections (1-5):
1) Lieberman, in January of 2002, was the chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee who announced that the Enron bankruptcy would be investigated;
2) Enron was the top donor of G.W. Bush’s presidential campaign, and also contributed financially to 71 senators and 187 members of the house of representatives. (so there is no wonder why the next point would be true- think of alienating that many of your colleagues who might otherwise desire to support your political aims);
3) Lieberman never called in “Robert Rubin, the Clinton administration’s treasury secretary who went on to become chairman of Citigroup’s executive committee” before deciding that Rubin could not provide any information and ignored the knowledge that Rubin had "called a former subordinate at the Treasury, asking him to pressure credit-rating agencis not to reduce Enron's debt to junk bond status." (For NFL fans, this is a bit like NFL commissioner Roger Goddell, who after the Jets had proven that the Patriots were taping defensive coach’s hand signals, must have asked the Patriots if they had ever gained a competitive advantage in other games, and then destroyed all evidence they turned over to him. The Patriots have since been accused by a source of allegedly taping the St. Louis Rams walk-through practice, the day before Super Bowl XXXVI in January 2002). Sure, I make a habit of asking a proven cheater (as the Pats were fined $500k and stripped of a first round draft pick) the truth about something. Don't lose sight of the fact that Rubin called a former subordinate at the Treasury and that it appears that Lieberman knew that Rubin had made the request reported in the story from which I quote. Any wonder why I would contend that business and politics are in cahoots;
4) Citigroup was one of many “large money donor[s] to Lieberman” the largest in his political career in fact, and “had helped to build the house of cards that was Enron.”
5) Perhaps out of a sense of guilt and hoping to unburden himself of democratic special interest group money he had received over the years, Lieberman decided to become and Independent in 2006, four years after cosponsoring “an amendment with Senator Fred Thompson . . . to aid prosecutors in enforcing campaign finance laws.” (Incidentally, if the most conservative candidate in the republican field running for president of the United States in 2008, widely acknowledged by conservatives, co-sponsored a campaign finance bill with a then democrat, why in the hell would you give McCain such a hard time. Rhetorical question. Republicans, if you were a walrus sitting on a large rock, just out to sea, attempting to warm itself in the sun, you couldn’t work harder on your posturing. You have less foundation for such a contention that campaign finance legislation is Unconstitutional as Britney Spears, this century’s Isadora Duncan, has on her face when she heads out on the town, harried, panty-less and racing away from the paparazzi . . . Barack Obama doesn’t have so little foundation in his campaign speeches . . . one more- conservatives are the Ramsey Clarke of campaign finance reform . . . Clarke was the attorney who volunteered to defend Saddam Hussein);
Other more interesting connections to be drawn from the recent history of Citigroup specifically:
6) Citigroup contributed $3.7 and $3.1 million to republicans and democrats respectively for the 2004 election cycle as reported by Charles Lewis, “The Buying of the President 2004” which I included in part 19, so they are certainly buttering their bread on both sides, mindful of the link between Enron and Citigroup in #s 2 and 3 above which link Enron to the sitting president and Citigroup to the previous one;
7) Most online articles or books will cite that the democrats actually receive the lion’s share of funding from Wall Street investment companies, hedge fund management companies, law firms, lobbyists, health care and pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and nursing homes, environmental groups and unions (teachers, steel workers, attorneys, etc.) (I will probably get back to the teacher's unions at some point, but I’m on a roll- but see Ryan Caione’s January 10, 2008 column “Fat Cats and Strange Bedfellows,” and Bill Van Auken’s “On the Eve of ‘Super Tuesday’ primaries, Wall Street casts the money ballet,” February 5, 2008, or see Charles Lewis’ “The Buying of the President 2004”- the top 10 democratic donors contributed $95 million while the republicans received $55.2 million; Citigroup was 11th and 30th on the republican and democratic donor lists respectively; AT & T was 5th and 16th).
8) From John Bresnahan’s column on The Politico, “Waxman Eyes CEO Pay During Subprime Mortgage Crisis” (January 14, 2008). Bresnahan writes that the house oversight and government reform chairman wants to question Charles Prince, former CEO of Citigroup, and among other corporate geniuses who “ ‘stand to collect tens of millions of dollars in severance payments’ even as their current or former companies are losing billions of dollars in the subprime mortgage meltdown.” Citigroup would attempt to write off “ ‘as much as $20 billion in mortgage-related investments’ according to the Wall Street Journal, while laying off as many as 20,000 employees. According to the WSJ, Prince left Citigroup with ‘accumulated benefits’ valued at more than $29 million” (Note: there are dozens of investment companies with a business resume and antics such as those dreaded CEO pay package delivery methods favored by Citigroup, but for the sake of consistency and space, believe it or not, I chose to focus on one. Incidentally, Waxman, is the same congressman who led the charge against Roger Clemens’ link to steroids and human growth hormone in mid February 2008. Congress-people are apparently more interested in attempting to maintain that professional sports still have some integrity and the information about holding financial market luminaries such as Citigroup’s former executive accountable for massive lay-offs while receiving incredible pay packages upon their departure from service will happen when? . . . and be televised for about seven hours when. . . ??? More people watched the lunar eclipse on February 21st than will ever see a CEO taken to task for what everyone knows to be true, excessive pay packages);
9) From Jeff Nash’s column “Former Citi CEOs exit pay a not so princely sum” [November 6, 2007] The title is derived from the then expected $29 million pay package former Citigroup CEO Charles Prince obtained for failing the company and its employees (see #s 7 and above, and #s 10 and 12 below);
10) “Shares of Citigroup fell more than 5%” due to the bank warning that “it would take more than $8 billion in new mortgage debt-related write-downs;” Also in this article is the news that Robert Rubin, former U.S. Treasury secretary and co-head of Goldman Sachs, will take over as chairman.” Goldman Sachs is a company named in plenty of the same columns I’ve been perusing for this particular sub topic of campaign finance contributions to the politicians. This Rubin guy with ties to Goldman Sachs, Enron, Citigroup, and the Clinton administration, which is said to have created Citigroup “as an all-purpose financial supermarket and too-big-to-fail banking marvel” (“Citigroup: Too Big to Fail?” William Greider- www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=248817) has his hands in more “stuff” than a proctoligist at a 20-week ultrasound verifying a moose pregnancy. Let us call him Rubin-esque . . . anyone who has ever studied 17th Century Flemish painters knows what I'm talking about. I would make a comment about Pee-Wee Herman, but I'll move on.
11) From Naomi Spencer’s April 13, 2007 article “Banking Giant Citigroup to cut 17,000 jobs”: “over 9,500 US workers are slated for outsourcing to ‘lower-cost’ locations.” Also this: Citigroup CEO “Charles O. Prince III announced . . . ‘You will see a . . . more tough-minded Citigroup than you have in the past.’ ” So, April 13, 2007, CEO Prince announces a job cut of 17,000 and in November of 2007, he is out as CEO of Citigroup, but receives approximately $29 million in a compensation package. Hmm. Should we believe that Prince was out because of the competitive and downtrodden financial market and out despite the elimination of 17,000 jobs, or he was rewarded by saving Citigroup so much money, taking the heat for eliminating so many jobs and therefore compensated the $29 million for having been the mercenary? Inconceivable. We should empower a group of federally funded commissioners to monitor events such as these . . . we might call them the Securities and Exchange Commission . . . what’s that, we already have done that. As Rosanne Rosannadanna (Gilda Radner) would say in her high-pitched little girl voice- “never mind.” We think of almost everything don’t we? Almost;
12) Elizabeth Lazarowitz of http://www.nydailynews.com/, and plenty of others, brought us this story in mid January 2008- “Huge Layoffs Loom at Citigroup; 20,000 Face Firing Starting Tuesday.” The article contains the information: “The job losses would come less than a year after Citigroup said it would cut 17,000 employees . . .” So, 37,000 jobs lost in one year because of a sub-prime mortgage meltdown, and a weakening economy among other reasons. Citigroup again changed its CEO, though this article reveals that they changed from Charles Prince to Vikram Pandit, while another article had led me to believe that Robert Rubin (see #3 above) had been made CEO following Prince’s escape with $29 million. Who can keep track of it all? In anticipation of the January 2008 layoff announcement, Citigroup “shares climbed 1.8%, or 50 cents, to $29.06.” So, the corporation makes good on the loss of the individual. Just the nature of the beast, neither can we be alarmed at every bit of economic news, nor can we be conscious and choose never to react to it. I am no mathematician, but things do add up, if you connect the dots;
13) I get it. Citigroup is a corporation that employs/employed a lot of people and when they are doing well, they can count on the government’s ability to tell people to look the other way. Government can be complicit with business, protecting the amount of taxes a corporation might pay and allow them to offshore, outsource, write-down debt and fire people so that the beloved stock price improves. This is the Play-It-Again Sports version of economics from an employee’s perspective. The employee sells a used hockey stick to a chain store that collects used athletic equipment and receives a 2.5% raise (for the sake of argument- they sell the stick for $6) and the corporation (the middle-man) turns around and raises its prices, selling the stick for $19.95. Just have to love the private market where employees are merely considered the most expensive controllable cost. Nature of the game I guess;
14) Think of this- people might think that if Citigroup contributes $3-$6 million to a candidate or political party that this isn’t coming from the pocket books of employees. So, shareholders are traditionally willing to part with the profits they gathered when the sub-prime lending, and other financial windfall conditions, that went largely unchecked by the federal government until fairly recently, were in full swing? Not likely. Or, the CEOs that are paid the types of salaries that juiced up major league ballplayers earn after hitting 45 homeruns or having an ERA of 6.13 (so, whether they succeed or fail, i.e. no connection to performance), will surely give up some of their $29 million buyout (see #s 6, 8, 9, 11 above) that shareholders cannot seem to curtail- see # 20 below. So, if CEOs and shareholders are not likely altruists (see # 12, the value of their shares increased in anticipation of 20,000 losing their jobs) then where in the heck is the money they donate to one or both of the political parties, and the money spent on additional lobbying, coming from? See # 6 above and 16 below, for a total of $11.8 million in two election cycles and I don’t know how much they gave to the parties directly. A typical, proof-monger would contend- “You’re complaining about $11.8 million, big deal.” These people are trying to disprove a set of postulates that all add up to the subjection of the middle class by political power brokers by the very established, perhaps Newtonian scientific theorem, of collective boredom. They don’t have the information, the will, the energy, or the foresight to see how far-reaching the problem of the middle class is going to be if things continue. These people only see the country’s finances as the completed version of the house on “Extreme Makeover- Home Edition.” They never consider how pathetic the surrounding homes probably look by comparison, and never watched what kind of work was done to the home that was plagued by mold, disrepair, a cracking foundation, and a leaky roof. As Ty Pennington might say if he were talking about building a house or improving the economic prospects of middle class kids- “let’s get to work PEOPLE!”
15) Information coming under numbers 15-17 stems from: www.ethicalcorp.com/content.asp?ContentID=4685. I was unable to find definitive dollar amounts that Citigroup may have contributed for 2006 or for the current election cycle on the Internet, but did find that they helped to contribute to political parties, along with hundreds of other corporations, over $162 million that came from “individuals and PACs connected to commercial banks, insurance companies, and securities and investment firms” (i.e. hedge funds) during the 2004 election cycle;
16) Citigroup made political contributions of $1.6 million and spent $3.4 million on lobbying efforts in 2006. I couldn’t find information relative to how much they contributed to the two political parties in '06 or so far in '08;
17) “Citigroup’s progenitors pulled off the biggest lobbying coup in US financial history by bringing about the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to permit banks to be affiliated with insurance companies.” (A “coup”? Usually that word is restricted to the hostile takeover of a country, but if the shoe fits).
18) A profile of Citigroup can be found at www.coopamerica.org/programs/rs/profile.cfm?id=203 from 11/20/07: “As impressive as its profits may be, the real cost to investors and consumers alike is far less appealing and the scope of Citigroup’s malfeasance is nearly as broad as that of its business operations. Citigroup has spearheaded industry efforts to fight legislation that would restrict bank consolidation. Additionally, Citigroup has engaged in predatory lending practices that prey on the financially vulnerable. One such case resulted in a $215 million repayment settlement for manipulating consumers into buying overpriced mortgages. Investors have not been immune to Citigroup’s lack of ethics either, as evidenced by the company’s involvement in both the Enron and WorldCom scandals.” (It may be time to stage a coup against Citigroup);
19) “In July 2003 the SEC announced that Citigroup Inc. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. agreed to pay a combined $236 million to settle charges that they helped Enron manipulate its books to appear financially healthy.” (The SEC in action, finally! And where might that $236 million have gone? Perhaps it could have been put into an account somewhere so that the combined 37,000 people they let go in April 2006 and January 2007 could all work for a few more years. My math is almost as bad as my ability to be brief- but I think you could pay all of those employees, if they all grossed $40k, for a year to the tune of $148 million. Think of all the taxes that the government might gather from that, but instead perhaps they made out quite a bit better by allegedly collecting the $236 million (I wrote allegedly because didn't they pay a few military contractors for weaponry (see part 9) that was never delivered? But the government's accountants are better than mine, so I better defer. Now, what I did there was pure speculation, but most everything else isn’t, as I have been quoting articles, books, reports, etc. since I started this philippic);
20) “In 2005 Citigroup shareholders brought forth a resolution calling for a cap on executive compensation, not to exceed 100 times that of employees of non-managerial status.” The proposal was voted down. A link to this information is dead within the link to be found in #18.
21) There is plenty more, but I just can’t keep up. There are at least ten more, by this time, not so shocking bits of information injurious to Citigroup’s reputation. Reputation? Citigroup is the Iago of the economic world. Citigroup’s loss of reputation has been long in the making and is well-deserved. (Iago is one of literature’s foremost evil characters, appearing in Shakespeare’s Othello).
22) From Nader’s book, “The Good Fight,” (page 159): “According to Corporate Crime Reporter, thirty-one major convicted corporations gave $9.3 million to the two political parties in the 2002 election cycle.” These companies were convicted of price fixing conspiracies, eliminating competition, environmental crimes, book cooking, falsifying revenue totals, violating insider trading regulations, or “illegal and fraudulent promotion of unapproved uses of one of its drugs products.” From page 167 of the same book: among the fifty brokerage firms covering companies filing for bankruptcy in 2002, “forty-seven continued to recommend that investors buy or hold shares in the failing companies even as they were filing for Chapter 11.” What must it take for the government to convict a business of illegal activities?
These brokerage firms were making these recommendations to average investors. I am aware that Citigroup is not currently filing for Chapter 11, or even alleging that Citigroup is tied up in the violations that Nader cites. I am merely contending that government and business, government and any number of lobbyists, including unions that are heavily pro-democrat, are conspicuously partnered to the detriment of the middle class investor, worker, tax-payer, citizen. There isn’t irrefutable proof of this, for there would be fewer conservative talk-show host clones pretending to be the voice of reason, making contentions that run exactly counter to my assertions, but there are few things that are undoubtedly provable the instant one sits down to investigate. Who would have believed that the president of the United States would end up resigning from office in order to avoid impeachment because five guys were arrested at a hotel complex housing the Democratic National Committee in 1972 (better known as the Watergate scandal)? Again, because of plausible deniability, both government and business and any set of special interest groups, can be thought to be accidentally inept individually that to think they could combine efforts and keep it a secret is beyond comprehension. What we need is an Iran-Contra hearing type of investigation of such scope that we bring out what reporters and researchers know about the corruption of puppet politicians by any lobbyist group and sit our congress people, governors, and presidents before a tribunal and find them guilty. Problem is, not many congressmen or congresswomen would be able to conduct such proceedings without standing as the accused first, and with that, there would be few of the innocent remaining to empanel a legal court of justice. That is why I thought creating a panel of non-government affiliated persons was such a good idea.
Book Review: I checked out Jeffrey Birnbaum’s 2000 book- “Money Men, The Real Story of Fund-Raising’s Influence on Political Power in America.” Early on Birnbaum writes that the reader might be surprised about who is responsible for the majority of the work that places the money in the hands of politicians running for office. He calls these people solicitors, because they are “workaday folks who collect millions of political dollars, a thousand bucks at a time.” (pg. 50) Birnbaum’s credentials are impressive and I’d defer to his knowledge on who are the political bower brokers, but he shouldn’t have written a book about it, because nothing I read was all that surprising. I am surprised that someone with that much experience could seem so taken with the business as usual, almost romanticized version he describes. He may need to change the prescription on his rose-colored glasses.
The reasons people financially contribute “are much more diverse than most people think.” Some want a job in the administration they have contributed to, some for status, some are idealists, are simply rich, and some are “professional lobbyists.” (pg. 8) Not surprised. He writes that the contributors “aren’t who you think they are. For one thing, they aren’t all stinking rich. They also aren’t all interested in bending politics to their own narrow-minded, self-interested views.” (pg. 50) That seems like the set-up for some factual information. We’ll see.
Birnbaum cites a 1997 Joyce Foundation of Chicago survey that determined “the who and why of campaign giving. Not surprisingly, the donors surveyed were people of means. . . . Eighty-one percent of the contributors earned more than one hundred thousand dollars. . . . nine out of ten of the donors were white, four fifths were male, and more than four fifths were forty-five years of age or older.” (pg. 65) I’d be more surprised if penguins could fly while being converted to Buddhism, and penguins are already naturally equipped with wings. So, really, we'd just need to take care of that Buddhism thing while penguins were aviating. Here is a breakdown of the findings from the survey, relative to a contributor’s reason for giving:
19% “were motivated by general ideology or partisanship.”
16% “were focused on promoting some very specific issue.”
16% “gave as a way to enhance their personal contact.” Birnbaum found this interesting and probably surprising
20% “wanted to have the best person in Congress to help the folks back home.” This is not at all related to the other reasons listed directly above. Nope.
14% thought they contributed to a probable winner who would “grant them access once in office.”
Awe Shocks: That is a combined 85% of rich respondents of a non-shocking age, race, sex, or economic status giving money to a candidate who they think can win, and thus push through legislation and an ideology that favors the individual who financially contributes to a politician’s candidacy. Still not surprised. None of the reasons indicated are all that distinguishable from one another. They all want something for their contribution. Now, if the other 15% that Birnbaum didn’t feel compelled to account for, favored a candidate who the contributors were certain would support a legislative bill that scientifically promoted and supported a family of opossums for their interest in clinging to tree limbs right-side up, defying gravity, while learning how to read in brail, and praying to Allah to help cure them of repetitive stress syndrome then that would be surprising. I stopped skimming Birnbaum’s book at this point. I was tired of being shocked by his awe. Some cars I’ve owned have distributed the impact of shock more evenly. (To be fair- I don’t know that Birnbaum ever actually used the word shocked to communicate the irregularity of his expectations being matched with the “truth” at least according to what he perceives is common knowledge among the public, or based on the results of a survey erroneously interpreted, but as he took many liberties with the subject matter, I felt almost compelled to follow suit).
One more source to consult: I began reading Dick Morris’ book, “vote.com” (1999, 236 pages) who was as much of a Washington insider as Birnbaum, having been a political adviser to Bill Clinton, and he came to the exact conclusions as I have, that the representatives, special interest groups, lobbyists, and corporations are destroying representative government. That was as much the reason behind the XVIIth Constitutional Amendment as anything, (which involved voters in the election of senators to political office) an amendment which was not looked down upon by Woodrow Wilson who “warned of the insidious influence of lobbyists on Capital Hill in 1913.” (http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/history/one_item_and_teasers/1878.htm) Morris addresses the possibility of the downfall of big media as an influential component in politics, more referendum voting, politicians advertising on the internet because they get more bang for their buck, online election voting, the potential minimized future role of congress, and the welcome back of actual democracy favored by Jefferson with a desire to listen to the vox populi- which is Latin for, the voice of the people. The politicians, who favor the political climate as currently constituted, are going to have to be significantly muted for the people to be heard. But much of what Morris writes about is decades in the offing or never will come to fruition. His wishful thinking is a political utopia better left to the pages of a futuristic novel than consumed by a pie-eyed public clamoring to combat bureaucratic influence peddlers. Vote.com- a real website, check it out.
Keep in Mind: I could write much more on this sub-topic, but even an ass as stubborn as I am has to move on eventually. I am aware that those who spend the most money in order to win an election, aren’t always those seated in the position of power they sought. However, there is every reason to believe that candidates with the most bloated budgets believe themselves to be in a financial position of power, and must think that it increases their chances of winning, or else they wouldn’t acquire or spend so much.
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