Close to Home: Easing money’s grip on politics

We hear it every day: 70% of Americans favor stricter gun laws, 70% want to outlaw assault weapons, 70% favor maintaining a woman’s right to choose. David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, appeared on the morning news recently, describing rallies to secure background checks and reasonable gun regulations as “the largest in history.” Andrea Mitchell, the news anchor, pointed out that despite such numbers, there is no federal legislation on the issue and asked him how he felt about “the political stalemate in this country.”

In such a context, any query that includes the word “politics” is a fig leaf lofting the comforting image of principled men and women debating policy and nuances of the law, struggling together to create a more perfect union.

That is a mental pet that Newt Gingrich dragged out into a field and shot 25 years ago, creating a diversion to disguise the hidden cancer metastasizing in our political system — money — the Gordian knot binding together most of our political dysfunctions.

Apparently, it is taboo to mention publicly that the entire system is organized around raising, hoarding and spending money.

When the Supreme Court declared political contributions to be free speech, capital was afforded ownership of the soapbox and megaphone. Its desires now trump human needs.

As a consequence, our political system forces the most principled public servants into draconian choices to remain in office. The least principled simply open their suitcases to receive the bundled money. Donations are repaid with legislative favors and tax fiddles invisible to the average citizen.

Over the past 50 years, these creative fiddles have resulted in the middle 60% of American earners (what economists call the middle class) owning only 26.6% of the national wealth, according to Bloomberg News. The top 1% control 27%, which is to say more than the entire middle-class.

A three-step solution could transform our government from a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street into an agency operating for the public’s benefit:

— Full federal funding of elections. Taxpayers hire the legislators; let each receive the same amount.

— Prohibit corporate donations. They are donating to alter public policy to benefit their shareholders.

— Prohibit all gifts and emoluments from lobbyists. According to Reuters, 12,553 federal lobbyists in Washington spend more than $3.5 billion annually on Congress.

Recent decisions facilitating unlimited anonymous political contributions have enfeebled the power of voters, transforming our founders’ system into a corporatocracy.

Anxious to deliver a death blow to voter resistance, Republicans now seek to guarantee victory in future elections by making it legal for secretaries of state and legislatures to overturn the people’s electors.

In the face of this death sentence to democracy, Democrats lull themselves to sleep maintaining the charade that we still live in the imagined nation founded and forged by George Washington, Ben Franklin, James Madison et al.

What a sorry, indulgent, spoiled pack of children we’ve become.

Parkland survivor David Hogg, half the age of my own children, said it best: “If the system fails to protect young people, it endangers the future of our republic.” A child can see that, but the Supreme Court and legislators dependent on donations to survive, cannot.

Peter Coyote is an actor, the narrator of 11 Ken Burns films and an author. He lives near Sebastopol.

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