Health & Fitness
What Does it Cost to Buy Public Policy?
All the influence over government that we, as voters, should possess is overshadowed by the enormous piles of cash that are thrown at these candidates.
A recent bill to end oil subsidies proposed by Democrats was voted down in the Senate. Several Democrats voted against it. One was Ben Nelson of Nebraska, a state that has no oil. I met Ben Nelson at the Nebraska State Fair when I was a child. I had been accepting stickers from anyone who was giving them out and he said that I looked confused because I had stickers supporting both Democrats and Republicans.
I believe that someone would have to be confused to vote for either party.
It is clear that our government is little more than a market place for public policy. Companies contribute to political campaigns and hire lobbyists as a bid on public policy that will further their interests. And who would fault them for doing so? If they failed to act on such opportunities their competitors would. If somehow an entire industry were to turn their backs on the legal system of bribery that we have in our country they could be regulated out of existence.
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Here are the three Democrats who jumped the isle and voted to continue oil subsidies and how much money they got from the oil industry by way of individual contributions and PACs last year.
Ben Nelson (D) Nebraska $176,150
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Mary Landrieu (D) Louisiana $406,050
Mark Begich (D) Alaska $140,225
Mark Begich could probably be forgiven as many of the people in his district work in the oil industry and genuinely buy the drill-baby-drill line. However, Ben Nelson comes from a state that produces no oil, and in fact, produces ethanol that competes with oil as a fuel source. Mary Landrieu comes from a state that had it's economy destroyed by the BP/Deep Water Horizon oil spill. Nelson and Landrieu were actively betraying the people of their respective districts by voting this way.
I am not trying to single out Democrats. The Republicans do the same thing. This is just a good illustration of how public policy is bought and sold in our country.
The ugly reality of the situation is that in our two party system politicians are not beholden to voters. Their elections are determined by how much they can raise from corporations. We can call this democracy but we would just be fooling ourselves.