Ownership of a corporation is represented by a number of ‘shares’. Each share represents a unit of ownership in the company and those that own shares are known as shareholders. Therefore, the more shares of a company that one owns, the more authority over that company one has.
Corporations are, for this reason, privately owned. Politicians running election campaigns are not. The purpose of democracy is to ensure an equal voice for individuals and not let them get crowded out by big money donors. And yet, the contrary often seems to be the case.
During the 2016 presidential election cycle alone, the oil and gas industry donated over $88 million to the Republican Party and its candidates either in the form of direct contributions, Super Political Action Committees (Super PACs are private nonprofit political funding organizations independent of any individual campaign) or soft money. Could this be why the GOP generally oppose the idea that climate change is caused by man? To avoid committing the causality fallacy, I’d like to clarify that I am not necessarily saying that the Republicans don’t genuinely disbelieve man made climate change and that they only pretend to at the command of their donors (although this is a possibility).
Disregarding all that, there are still a number of issues with the enormous amount that the oil and gas industry have donated (along with many other industries, no doubt) to the Republican Party. The mere fact they aid the Republicans so much means one and only one thing for sure: they support them. This may not sound like a problem, but when Republicans receive so much funding from oil companies, it would make sense for many to appease them to avoid losing their contributions by pushing climate change denial and other pro-oil policies. Once again, I am not making an argument for or against oil companies right now; that will be saved for a later post. Another, less likely possibility is that the GOP truly supports them and as a result have received contributions from them. This is still a bad scenario, however, as the immense amount of money that they can afford to provide the party with prevents the progression of the party’s ideology.
Basically, politicians refrain from saying certain things to displease those that they are funded by. And although it is possible to raise funds through exclusively small money donors, it would be difficult for politicians to remain competitive if they do.
It should also be noted that this does not only apply to the Republican Party and the oil and gas industry. The same could be said of the Democrats and, say, the law or media industry. I will not delve into this further, but it should now be obvious why focused sources of donation are at least principally the antithesis of democracy. But if it is so obvious, why is this allowed to continue? There have been two monumental Supreme Court cases in the USA over the past ten years on the topic of campaign finance. Both have contributed to its gradual deregulation.
The first of these three is perhaps the most famous: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. This case arose shortly before the 2008 US Democratic Party primary round. Citizens United, a conservative Super PAC, created a documentary critical of candidate Hillary Clinton, who was polling dominantly as the front runner for the upcoming primaries in the 30 days leading up to them. According to a law passed in 2003, it was illegal for corporations, nonprofits or any other independent entities to do this within that specific time frame. Thus, the movie was banned, but Citizens United appealed the decision all the way to the Supreme Court. They overturned the original decision, along with two related preexisting laws, on the grounds that independent bodies that receive corporate donations cannot be corrupt. For posterity, they also scrapped an arguably outdates law from 1990 that prohibited corporations from making political contributions at all.
On February 19th, 2013, the second of these two cases ended. Its case name was McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, and without getting in to much background detail, the outcome deemed aggregate limits on campaign contributions unconstitutional under the First Amendment and the freedom of speech. This means that although, for any given election cycle, there may be donation limits for individuals on other individual entities, there may never be a limit on how many different individuals one can donate to.
My main issue with this is twofold; firstly, the lack of a spending limit on Super PAC is worse than it seems. Just because there is no direct quid pro quo between donors and campaigns, candidates still try to appease them to keep the money flowing. In other words, the quid pro quo is heavily implied.
Secondly, although I believe in the constitution and the second ruling was made on the grounds of the First Amendment, I believe the issue extends beyond that. The problem lies with the very principle of the purpose of government itself. To refer to a clichéd quote, isn’t government supposed to be by, of and for the people? If we allow those who run the government to accept and be beholden to large money contributions, the voice of the people gets drowned out. As a result, government itself does not work for the public, but rather for those who fund them.
In a true democracy, I feel that it is antithetical to the most core principles we hold to allow such corporate style funding. Of course, the First Amendment and the constitution should be adamantly defended, especially at a time where the freedom of speech is being greatly hindered, but I am not entirely convinced that the freedom to spend money in this way is protected under the same clause.
Regardless, assuming it is, one must ask themselves the following: is it ethical, reasonable or justified in any way to sacrifice our government’s purpose in the name of the First Amendment?
Common Sense 