2016 elections - because it's never too early

[Berkut]

Yeah, I hear this a lot. There was this one vote, and it didn't work, so I guess that excuses everyone from trying to do anything ever again. Because that was the only possible lever that exists to address a systemic problem.

Didn't work, too bad, I guess we just have to live with a broken system and keep taking millions from the uber rich to "speak" at their little meetings and vote how they want us to!

Well she hasn't even been in office since the Citizen United decision. Ok you are going on the speaking engagements thing. Well you will certainly not get any argument from me that that should be reformed. I think you are being just a little puritanical about it but hey whatever.

I don't care about the speaking fees in isolation. In the context of a system where it has been proven that the elected officials basically do what those who pay them tell them to do in most cases, it is a rather gross example of legalized corruption.

She is no worse than many in that system, and better than plenty of them, but there is no doubt (in my mind) that she is very much part of that system, and I've seen nothing to suggest that she has any principled interest in actually reforming it. She makes some noises here and there, but they seem to be completely driven by the political need to make those noises, rather than any actual stance based on principle.

Maybe she will prove me wrong, but there hasn't been any evidence so far to suggest it.

[Valmy]

Yeah I tend to hate the game more than the players. Even John McCain had to sheepishly admit he was having to do all that fund raising crap while he was actively campaigning for them to end.

But yeah I am not supporting Hillary because I think she is God's answer to all of our problems. I am actually not sure what she will do. I am mostly supporting her because I am, or at least was, pretty sure what she would not do. I have to say my confidence is a bit shaken but, you know, still the best we got.

[Admiral Yi]

Both parties (really not even the parties per se, but the system in general) are at fault for the systemic failures.

What, pray tell, are te systemic failuries?

[jimmy olsen]

Yeah. I find people who think that if Hillary wins, things will just go back to normal, extremely naive. The phenomenon that propelled Trump to win the GOP nomination will get stronger and stronger each election cycle, and the person it will bring up will be nastier and nastier.

The GOP will just make primaries proportional instead of winner takes all and maybe add super delegates. Problem solved.

[Martinus]

Yeah. I find people who think that if Hillary wins, things will just go back to normal, extremely naive. The phenomenon that propelled Trump to win the GOP nomination will get stronger and stronger each election cycle, and the person it will bring up will be nastier and nastier.

The GOP will just make primaries proportional instead of winner takes all and maybe add super delegates. Problem solved.

Yeah, let's continue to further disenfranchise a growing dissatisfied part of the population. What could possibly go wrong with that? 

I must say that I gotta love, though, how you guys think doing that does not only solve the problem, but actually is somehow a desirable or a commendable solution. I wonder if this is how the French aristocracy felt in 1780.

[Martinus]

Incidentally, I gotta applaud "powers that be" for playing the Bernie bros crowd like a fucking fiddle. They thought they were going not just "changing the game", but perhaps "breaking the game", but they have been played the worst. 

[Sheilbh]

Incidentally, I gotta applaud "powers that be" for playing the Bernie bros crowd like a fucking fiddle. They thought they were going not just "changing the game", but perhaps "breaking the game", but they have been played the worst. 

Good. Bernie Bros are the absolute worst

[Martinus]

I know. It's just funny watching scum like the Young Turks squirm through this.

[Berkut]

Yeah. I find people who think that if Hillary wins, things will just go back to normal, extremely naive. The phenomenon that propelled Trump to win the GOP nomination will get stronger and stronger each election cycle, and the person it will bring up will be nastier and nastier.

The GOP will just make primaries proportional instead of winner takes all and maybe add super delegates. Problem solved.

Yeah, let's continue to further disenfranchise a growing dissatisfied part of the population. What could possibly go wrong with that? 

I must say that I gotta love, though, how you guys think doing that does not only solve the problem, but actually is somehow a desirable or a commendable solution. I wonder if this is how the French aristocracy felt in 1780.

Dis-enfranchise?

The problem, at leat part of the problem, is that this segment of the population has power way out of proportion to their numbers. They are over-enfranchised if anything.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I don't care about the speaking fees in isolation. In the context of a system where it has been proven that the elected officials basically do what those who pay them tell them to do in most cases, it is a rather gross example of legalized corruption.

She is no worse than many in that system, and better than plenty of them, but there is no doubt (in my mind) that she is very much part of that system, and I've seen nothing to suggest that she has any principled interest in actually reforming it. She makes some noises here and there, but they seem to be completely driven by the political need to make those noises, rather than any actual stance based on principle.

Maybe she will prove me wrong, but there hasn't been any evidence so far to suggest it.

I'm going to question largely everything you've said here. Do you actually have any strong evidence that when a politician receives campaign donations, or when they do work as a private citizen and receive money from a corporation, you're asserting it has been proven they "basically do what those who pay them tell them to do in most cases." I've actually not seen such proof, at least at a systemic level. Just to take President Obama as an example, he took a ton of Wall Street money in his campaigns, and if you actually read the business journals it'd be a stretch to say they've loved Obama. Jamie Dimon for example, who was an outright political supporter of Obama's, eventually started expressing a great deal of frustration at what he perceived to be a DoJ "witch hunt" directed at Chase, that ultimately required billions of dollars in legal settlements to make them go away.

I don't deny there are some individual cases of corruption and graft, but I think extrapolating it to the entire system, frankly ignores a lot of political realities. I can think of a couple issues easy to explore--take coal mining for example. Throughout Southwest Virginia, West Virginia, and  Eastern Kentucky, most of the local politicians and the congressmen from those districts (and the Senators in WV, which is an entire state beholden to coal) receive significant donations from coal companies and are significantly "in bed" with them. So these guys are just bought and paid for by big coal? Well, maybe. But let's also take a step back--if you're running for U.S. Senate in West Virginia, or Congress in Eastern Kentucky, you can either take coal money or not take coal money. That's a choice. What isn't a choice is being anti-coal. You simply won't be elected in any of these places if you're anti-coal, just doesn't happen. So are these guys "bought" by the coal industry, or are they holding the only electable positions in their constituent areas, and taking coal money because it'd be stupid not to take money from companies that support the type of votes they were going to cast anyway because they represent the coalfields?

The NRA is a similar one, there have been a lot of articles showing that in terms of percentages, the actual money that goes from the NRA to campaigns is quite low. While the NRA isn't a "corporation", it does represent some corporate interests (like those of arms manufacturers) and it's seen as a major "influencer" of public policy. And yet, in most places where the NRA directs money to State & Local and Federal campaigns, gun culture is extremely strong. No one in rural Wyoming is running a gun-control platform, probably on either side of the aisle. So again, it's not so obvious to me that for many of these issues the money is buying behavior.

I think instead money buys access, which allows for a closer partnership between vested interests and elected officials who hold political positions amenable to those vested interests. I doubt there are many examples out there of a politician being say, anti-coal or neutral on coal, who magically has a "come to Jesus" moment when a coal company makes a big donation. I think instead it's more the case that these vested interests seek out the candidates who have views they agree with, and then give them money to make sure they win elections and so they have preferential access once that person is in office.

Speaking fees are a whole different matter--I literally have no idea what you guys are asserting in re speaking fees. Report after report has shown, that for example, Hillary's speaking fees of around $200,000 to $250,000 an appearance, were largely in line with professional speakers. Some make more, some make less, she's in the higher end, but not the highest end. Only about 8% of her speaking appearances were at private events hosted by financial services companies. And, of course, during this time, Hillary was a private citizen. By far, no other activity offered her a potential for higher income than speaking fees. The idea that high speaking fees are paid out to curry political favor seems specious to me, especially since many of the highest paid public speakers are people who are permanently out of politics or non-political celebrity figures.

Now, if I was hosting a corporate event I have no possible idea why it'd be worthwhile for me to pay $500,000 to have some famous actor attend and give remarks, but for some reason this is something big rich businesses feel they ought to do. Guys like Giuliani still make significant sums from speaking fees--and there's no serious belief Giuliani is going to materially be involved in political power again. He actually made $40m in speaking fees prior to his 2008 White House run, something that was largely ignored by the press. But what was also ignored is he continued making significant sums after that. Big checks aren't being written to speakers because of political influence that I can see, it's instead more a reflection of celebrity status. The bigger your celebrity, the bigger your speaking fees.

[CountDeMoney]

Professional speakers invited by corporations more often than not speak about nothing to do with what the company does; it's all rah-rah bullshit.
When I was at Shareholder Value, Inc., they spent a shitpot of money to bring in Brian Billick (while he was relevant) to talk to the management types.  Topic: teamwork.  Nothing to do with the energy commodities market at all.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Yeah, I've never directly observed one of these speeches but I'm not too shocked that a guy like Billick is a paid speaker or that his speech had nothing to do with the actual industry the business was in. I've read there are over 100 people at a major firm that represents professional speakers who earn equal to or greater than the per-appearance fee of Hillary. That to me suggests this is just a huge industry that most people aren't super aware of, I've always known a lot of people who don't have any obvious value make a ton of money on the public speaking circuit but some of the digging I've done during this election cycle suggests the number of people involved and the money involved is about an order of magnitude bigger than I thought.

When relatively unknown Olympians like Rulon Gardner own massive multi-million dollar mansion outside Salt Like City built almost entirely on speaking fees (he later blew all the money and ended up  bankrupt, and now is a pharma rep), it suggests there's just a lot of money out there even for people whom you might question why a company is shelling out 5 or even 6 figures to have at an event.

Given the time, money, and effort Hillary has put into her political career, it is absolutely asinine to suggest that in exchange for what totaled only 8% of her total speaking income she'd agree to some corrupt bargain, that if revealed, would end said political career. Why did she give these speeches? I suspect, because of the fact it's widely done and she, like any human being who had the time and ability to generate a lot of money took that option to do so. She didn't invent the speaking fee business, and because Bill had been raking it in doing paid speeches for years post-Presidency, she was obviously personally acquainted with the process. She was also acquainted with the fact former Presidents and top political leaders on both sides of the aisle had been cashing in on paid speeches for decades, and had never gotten dinged for it--as I mentioned, Giuliani made $40m from paid speaking in the time between leaving public service and his 2008 Presidential bid. He paid no political price for that at all. Clinton, perhaps naively, thought that she could play by the same rules as every other politician. She forgot, that unfortunately, there are two sets of rules: a set for everyone else (especially Republican men) and a set for Hillary only.

[Berkut]

I don't think the corruption is Corruption, in the strictly legal sense, which the SC has defined incredibly narrowly - basically it has to be "Here is a bunch of cash in return for you voting Yeah on Bill XYZ".

I think it is simply companies funneling money into political groups with the understanding that this will give them access and the politician will look after their interests.

Honestly, I find the idea that his is NOT happening jut ludicrous. Businesses are not stupid, they don't give money to people who they don't expect to get a return from - the argument that the millions in PACs and lobbying and speaking fees and cushy jobs post political career is all money thrown away because it doesn't get the politicians to do anything different than they would do otherwise? It is ridiculous.

Plenty of politicians have talked about this, how their entire job revolves around getting money from the wealthy. Studies have shown that in most cases, politicians make decisions that favor those who fund them. It isn't hard to go out and find the evidence, and frankly it is pretty obvious from a rational sense.

A given politician at any level is making dozens of decisions, few of which are in the public eye at all. The idea that in a system that demands, first and foremost, that you come up with a lot of money all the time in order to stay in your job, will NOT result in this low level "corruption" is simply (IMO) naive.

The results, indeed, speak for themselves. It isn't an accident that the ultra wealthy use their incredible discretionary income to fund politicians who will then look out for their interests.

[Berkut]

I don't deny there are some individual cases of corruption and graft, but I think extrapolating it to the entire system, frankly ignores a lot of political realities. I can think of a couple issues easy to explore--take coal mining for example. Throughout Southwest Virginia, West Virginia, and  Eastern Kentucky, most of the local politicians and the congressmen from those districts (and the Senators in WV, which is an entire state beholden to coal) receive significant donations from coal companies and are significantly "in bed" with them. So these guys are just bought and paid for by big coal? Well, maybe. But let's also take a step back--if you're running for U.S. Senate in West Virginia, or Congress in Eastern Kentucky, you can either take coal money or not take coal money. That's a choice. What isn't a choice is being anti-coal. You simply won't be elected in any of these places if you're anti-coal, just doesn't happen. So are these guys "bought" by the coal industry, or are they holding the only electable positions in their constituent areas, and taking coal money because it'd be stupid not to take money from companies that support the type of votes they were going to cast anyway because they represent the coalfields?

Why would conmpanies give money to politicians if they were going to vote in their favor anyway? You think companies just throw money away for no expected return on that investment?

That is just naive.

Of course they expect something back. They expect that politician to represent their interests. This has always happened, and always will happen, but the degree that it influences political choices varies based on the relative necessity of that money, which now has become absolutely essential. You *might* lose an election if you piss off the electorate - you won't even BE in the election if you piss off the donor class.

[Valmy]

Why would conmpanies give money to politicians if they were going to vote in their favor anyway? You think companies just throw money away for no expected return on that investment?

That is just naive.

Of course they expect something back. They expect that politician to represent their interests. This has always happened, and always will happen, but the degree that it influences political choices varies based on the relative necessity of that money, which now has become absolutely essential. You *might* lose an election if you piss off the electorate - you won't even BE in the election if you piss off the donor class.

I am reminded of that quote by Steel Magnate Henry Clay Frick with regards to his contributions to Teddy Roosevelt's campaign:  "We bought the son of a bitch and then he didn't stay bought."

Eventually we will have to change the system but nothing short of a Constitutional amendment will do that at this point. I haven't really heard anybody moving for that.