Read the McCutcheon v. FEC decision here
“Marketocracy” means the overpowering and replacement of democratic, one-person-one-vote sovereignty by corporate sovereignty, without the consent of the governed and without civil society’s access to redress. Replacing the rule of constitutional law with trade group laws and treaties is changing government functions, from serving the public and the common good to serving the corporations. The conflict between civil society and the marketocracy is likely to define the future of the earth.
The McCutcheon decision formally acknowledges and legitimizes a long-standing fact. Now we can be sure that Congress is a market economy. Its purpose is to diminish the sovereignty of citizens and it works.
The Republicans are happy because they will receive the majority of the “free speech” largesse; but more, as astute observer Judge Steve Russell points out, the Republican party believes it will be able to outraise not just Democrats but also the Tea Party. That means that, at the ballot stage of politics, the public will no longer have to vote Democratic because the public perceives D’s as less crazy than R’s. It means that R’s will be perceived as less crazy than TP.
Under Citizens United and McCutcheon, bribery of Congress (and state legislatures) has become a much more organized and predictable game. We have to learn the rules of the game and of game-rigging. There are lots and lots of teachers available. Talk to financiers, retired congressmembers, retired presidents, heads of corporations. Invite them to address a Netroots Nation assemblage. Our challenges are overcoming anger and disgust and learning how to beat a rigged game. But our challenge is not lack of informants or information.
A significant part of the public have already dropped out of voting because why bother, we can't possibly get our interests represented by the candidates from Koch, Carbon and Credit. This simplifies things; now candidates only have to work the die-hards markets. Note to Candidates and financiers in re voters: Some you can block from voting. Some you can count on. Some you can spend the money to get them to the polls. But just remember: what matters is who counts the votes.
Will that be the next SCOTUS case, is it permissible to bribe the electoral college?
Now you might ask, but who will represent the people?
Apparently, the U.S. Supreme Court thinks that if people are too stupid, inept, preoccupied with raising their families and trying to make a living, and weakwilled to form a combine, a corporation, or a political organization, to raise a bunch of money to fund candidates, what can you do?
There is a great deal of precedent for the commodification of governing. In April 2001, the Guardian UK reported on All The President's Businessmen.
The Republican election campaign was the most expensive in history and required big donations from big business. Since moving into the White House, George Bush has had only one concern - returning the favours. Julian Borger on how corporate America bought itself a president.
Funding for Favours: Bush's Paybacks
Table shows amount paid (in millions of dollars) to the Republican election campaign and that amount as a percentage of each industry's election spending.
Industry $ in millions % The payback
Tobacco 7.0 83% Killing off federal lawsuits against cigarette manufacturers
Timber 3.2 82% Restrictions on logging roads scrapped
Oil and gas 25.4 78% Restrictions on CO2 emissions abandoned; Kyoto scrapped; moves to open Arctic refuge to drilling
Mining 2.6 77% Scrapping of environmental clean-up rules; arsenic limits in water supply
Banks and credit card companies 25.6 60% Bankruptcy bill making it easier for credit card companies to collect debts from bankrupt customers
Pharmaceuticals 17.8 68% Medicare reform without price controls
Airlines
4.2 61% Federal barriers to strikes; backpedalling on antitrust legislation
Suppose you are a member of Congress, and your constituents want environmental protection laws. You call a big meeting of major enviros and you tell them "You raise me a quarter million dollars and I'll sponsor a bill for you."
The enviros say wait a minute. You spend more than that on your clothes every year. Why don't you raise us a quarter million dollars so we can do our jobs?
You say fine, have it your way. No enviro legislation gets past this desk. And the price is going to go up, because the next congressmember you ask to carry legislation for you already knows you won't pay a measly quarter mil, and the opposition knows you're broke and limpdick. So now it's going to cost more to break the anti-environmental combine.
You might think that's an unlikely scenario. But it is pretty much what happened when Willie Brown was speaker of the California Assembly.
Brown is definitely a person to ask about how to work a rigged game. This man is a genius at politics. Even when he lost, he won. To cite his Wikipedia article,
Brown gained the vote of a few Republicans to maintain the Speakership when the Democrats lost control of the Assembly to the Republicans led by Jim Brulte. Brown regained control in 1995 by making a deal with Republican defectors Doris Allen and Brian Setencich, both of whom were elected Speaker by the Democratic minority.[16] During their tenures, Brown was the de facto Speaker. ..
And, Brown had great boss chops. Republican State Senator Ken Maddy of Fresno noted Brown’s ability to “size up the situation and create, sometimes on the spot, a winning strategy.” According to Hobson, "He was a brilliant day care operator. ... He knew exactly how to hold the hand of his Assembly members. ..”
So again, nothing much new coming out of McCutcheon. We have seen this movie before.
How to change it?
Senator Bernie Sanders says we need a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and then we need to do what all the other civilized nations of Earth have done, institute public funding of elections.
A logical person asks how the Senator would propose to get a boughten Congress to pass a constitutional amendment to overturn the power of the elites that put them in office? Under Article V of the US Constitution, Amendments may be adopted and sent to the states for ratification by either:
Two-thirds (supermajority) of both the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States Congress;
OR
By a national convention assembled at the request of the legislatures of at least two-thirds (at present 34) of the states.
To become part of the Constitution, an amendment must be ratified by either (as determined by Congress):
The legislatures of three-fourths (at present 38) of the states;
OR
State ratifying conventions in three-fourths (at present 38) of the states.
That’s a lot of unlikelihoods.
In the meanwhile, what could be done to reduce some of the power of Big Money over the elected representatives of the people? How do we cut out some of their money?
One possibility: Get your state legislature to pass a law banning your state from doing business with companies that use slave labor.
In 2000, California State Senator Liz Figueroa, chair of the Senate Select Committee on International Trade Policy and State Legislature, authored a bill that made it illegal for the state to do business with companies that employed slave or forced labor. Figueroa explained to the city councils and constituents in her district that foreign trade imports produced by slave labor could undercut the local economy. (But as practical and ethically incontestable as the bill sounds, it could potentially be challenged under the WTO's rules.)
Other possibilities are out there, in the realm of serious and profound, and hopefully, others can bring them to light.
Meanwhile, to quote Dave Edmunds and RockPile: I know the rules of the game, but what have I got to do to win?