America we need to talk

Is the entire American political system, awash in mountains of campaign cash, now for sale to the highest bidder?

But wait. It’s actually just a bit more complicated that. Sometimes the candidates with the most money lose, including Jeb Bush, who, in his 2016 race for the presidency, raised and spent more than $140 million (including $84 million on positive ads about himself, $15,800 for parking, and $4,837 for pizza),³⁸³ spending about $1,376 per vote.^a In 2012, the super PAC run by Republican strategist Karl Rove,^b American Crossroads, spent $104 million, but failed to elect any of the candidates it supported and helped defeat only two of the candidates it opposed, achieving its desired result only 1.29 percent of the time.³⁸⁴

In 2010, Republican Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay, spent $175 million of her own money on a losing race for California governor, and Linda McMahon, a former executive at World Wrestling Entertainment, spent $49 million of her own money on a failed campaign for US Senate in Connecticut. Self-funded candidates mostly lose: in 2012, 11 out of 12 such candidates for US Senate lost and, over the previous decade, only 14.5 percent of self-funded Congressional candidates won.³⁸⁵ Fortunately, America, sometimes you are a little bit discerning with your love.

Despite that, the candidates with the most overall money usually still win. Why the paradox? Because, when candidates raise lots of campaign cash (from people and entities other than themselves), that is usually a sign of—as much as it is a cause of—broader political strength.

America, even though you claim to hate Congress as a whole, 95 percent of the members of the House won reelection in 2014, about in line with historic trends. Yes, most of the incumbents have massive piles of campaign dough, but most of them would likely get handily reelected without it, so people donate to them to curry favor more than they do to influence the outcome of elections.

In many state legislatures, the elected officials have such high reelection rates that they are more likely to be removed in handcuffs or a coffin than through competitive elections.^c A third of state legislative candidates face no campaign opponents at all.³⁸⁶

If having the most money doesn’t always obtain or preserve political power, then why is our political system so controlled by it?

Why do so many politicians claim to be the friends of their voters, but time and time again shower the real benefits of their power on the moneyed elites instead of their rank-and-file constituents?

Why do leaders who could win elections without lots of money spend goldmines worth of it on campaigns anyway? Why do they buy the voter when they can get the milk for free?

Congress is full of very wealthy people, who almost always get far richer while in office. In 2015, half of those entering Congress for the first time were millionaires upon arrival. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the median net worth of a member of Congress was $1.029 million in 2013, and 271 of the 533 members were millionaires. The average lawmaker has as much money as 18 average US households.³⁸⁷ The prosperity is bipartisan: six of the 10 richest members of Congress are Democrats.³⁸⁸

In 2016, while the base Congressional salary, $174,000, was more than triple the median US family income, that equaled only 2 percent of the salary of CEOs at the nation’s 500 largest corporations.³⁸⁹

Members of Congress get to keep their outside investments while they serve, and oh, do they have investments! For instance in 2014, 66 members of Congress (26 Dems and 39 Republicans) owned stock in General Electric, which is both a large defense contractor and a builder of nuclear power plants; 47 (14 Ds and 33 Rs) owned stock in Chevron,^d the energy giant.³⁹⁰ And—you guessed it—there is no rule that requires them to recuse themselves from voting on bills that could directly impact the value of their investments.^e

Wait, it gets better. Many members of Congress use their vast campaign accounts to essentially subsidize lavish lifestyles. The House Ethics Committee (a phrase that is funny in and of itself) explains,

Here’s my English language translation for that: House members can use campaign funds to pay for lavish meals and drinks, first-class plane travel, luxury hotels, gifts, etc., just as long as they claim (and few ever check on such claims) that the spending is necessary for either their campaign or to support their official duties. The Federal Election Commission (comprised of both Democrats and Republicans) makes it clear that campaign funds can even pay for congresspeople to take spouses and children along on travel, as long as they can make some vague claim that the travel is related to official or political duties.³⁹² Sweet deal. Many state and local elected officials are similarly allowed to use their campaign accounts to subsidize luxurious lifestyles.

It’s no wonder that so many elected officials spend so much of their time raising money—night and day, week after week, year after year—even if they never face any serious competition for their jobs.

There are other reasons that elected officials in non-competitive seats keep raising gobs of cash. They want to use the funds to scare off potential opponents, springboard themselves to higher office, or prepare for the possibility that their district lines might be changed (remember gerrymandering from the last chapter?) in case they someday might face a tough challenge. Some use the money to make donations to local charities, whose officials often then turn around and donate to their campaigns. Others give money to general campaign committees or other candidates in their party, thereby increasing their leadership roles and the chits owed them. Others use the funds to keep family, friends, and/or campaign workers on their payroll year-round, whether they are needed or not, just to keep them loyal.^f Members of Congress often raise money for themselves at events from coast to coast, usually in treasured hot spots like New York, California, Florida, and Texas. That’s why the greatest expenses are often for the money search itself, paying for the salaries and commissions of professional fundraisers, and for venues and food for events nationwide. Yes, they raise tons of money to pay for raising more tons of money.

In 2014, there were 31 members of Congress (16 Ds and 15 Rs) who ran unopposed in the general election. One of those was Rep. Ted Deutch (a liberal Democrat from Florida) who only faced a token primary challenger that year, winning 92 percent of the vote in the primary. Robert Aderholt (a conservative Republican from Alabama) was entirely unopposed in both the primary and the general election. Yet in the two-year period leading up to the 2014 election, Deutch raised $1.05 million and spent $1.01 million, and had $530,000 left over by the time of election (because virtually all members of Congress have significant cash in their campaign accounts even after election years). Aderholt raised $1.175 million, spent $910,000, and had $419,000 left over at the end of the cycle.³⁹³

Deutch’s money came largely from a mix of business interests, labor unions, employees of the Disney Company, and supporters of Israel; Aderholt raised much of his money from agricultural interests, lawyers, and employees of the Boeing Company.³⁹⁴

And how did these unopposed candidates manage, over two years, to spend nearly two million dollars between them? The Deutch campaign committee gave over $300,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (which funds Democratic candidates for the House) and directly to other Democratic candidates. His campaign paid $225,000 to the Katz Watson Group for “fundraising consulting services,” spent $975 for florists, and spent thousands for lodging in DC, Dallas, Beverly Hills, and New York. The Aderholt campaign account gave over $300,000 in “dues” to the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee (which funds GOP candidates for Congress), paid $60 grand to Hooks Solutions for “fundraising consulting fees,” reimbursed his wife for more than a thousand dollars of travel expenses, and spent $258 at a gift shop in Vail, Colorado. In addition to 51 individual payments for “event food,” the Aderholt account also paid for “food” or “food and beverages” an additional 141 times, meaning that the congressman used his campaign account to purchase 192 meals during one two-year period.^g

That doesn’t even include when lobbyists or event hosts paid for his meals directly. Thus, it is likely that Congressman Aderholt rarely pays for his own food. Yet Congressman Aderholt voted to cut $40 billion from SNAP nutrition assistance for low-income Americans. As you may recall from earlier in this book (there will be a quiz), the very same Congressman Aderholt also introduced a bill to require the drug testing of SNAP recipients, saying, “This bill provides states with the ability to identify those who are gaming the system . . . The goal is not only to break welfare recipients’ dependence on government programs but also on their addiction to drugs.”³⁹⁵

Of course, large sums of money are indeed spent on actual campaigning. When the politicians do have contested races, they deem massive campaign spending to be even more vital. In 2008, in 93 percent of House of Representatives races and 94 percent of Senate races, the candidate who spent the most money ended up winning.³⁹⁶ Those statistics are slightly deceptive since many of those races weren’t really competitive, in part because the candidate with the most money often scares away a strong challenger.

Part of the reason campaign spending is so out of hand is what I call the “campaign-consultant-media-industrial-complex.” Journalist Jacob Weisberg explained, “The presidential campaign of 2016 will most likely cost upward of $5 billion, more than 10 times the one that elected Reagan in 1980. A lot of people get rich in a $5 billion industry, and some are politicians.”³⁹⁷ Well-funded campaigns hire full-time campaign staff, as well as media consultants to create TV and radio ads, media buying consultants to place the ads, direct mail persuasion consultants to send direct mail intended to win votes, direct mail fundraising consultants to send a different kind of direct mail intended to raise money, individual donor consultants, Spanish-language outreach consultants, political action committee fundraising consultants, pollsters, voter targeting consultants, and turnout consultants. They often also hire “general consultants,” whose job it is to coordinate all the other consultants. Many of the people in these roles are friends, former colleagues, lovers, ex-lovers, frat-mates, etc., and they often recommend each other for high-paying gigs on campaigns, in party campaign committees, in consulting firms, and (when their candidates win) in government. Many of these consultants and aides are also drinking buddies of—and/or insider sources for—the political media, who breathlessly report that campaigns will only be taken seriously if their friends, the “star” consultants or aides, are hired and if the campaigns raise boatloads of money to pay for their services and broadcast their ads. This incestuous circle goes beyond back scratching—it is back _________. (Fill in the blank with your gutter gerund of choice).

As the Washington Post reported about Charlie Dent, an unopposed Republican from Pennsylvania with a huge campaign war chest, “Without being able to see the specifics, David Wasserman, who handicaps House races for the Cook Political Report, said the generous support for Dent is more symbolic because he is representative of interests that reach far beyond his district. ‘He doesn’t need help (winning reelection), but what he needs help at is building influence as the de facto leader of the Main Street mind-set,’ Wasserman said.”³⁹⁸ How’s that for twisted Beltway logic? A congressman needs to raise lots of money from Beltway special interests—money which he doesn’t even need to get reelected—just to be credible with “Main Street.” That’s tortured thinking, a specialty of the DC elite.

Perhaps the most insidious contribution to soaring campaign spending is the fact that most media consultants are actually paid on commission, as a percentage of all the TV and radio ads bought. In a hotly contested House race, media consultants can earn 10 to 15 percent of all ads purchased; in presidential races the commission can be as high as 6 percent of all ad spending.³⁹⁹ That means that in a House race, media consultants can make hundreds of thousands of dollars; in expensive governor, US Senate, or presidential races, they can personally take in millions. They have a built-in incentive to advise the candidates not to worry about paying people to go door-to-door, or even worse (to the consultants), recruiting lots of volunteers, because either cuts down on the need for ads and thus the commissions they will pocket. Even though door-to-door operations can be more effective than blanket advertising blitzes, which often become overkill, few top-rank media consultants would ever admit that because it won’t fill their pockets. They also have a built-in incentive to convince losing presidential primary candidates to stay in the contest—raising more money to buy more ads—far after the rest of the world understood they had no chance of winning.

In the middle of the 2012 campaign cycle, the Huffington Post calculated that the top 150 campaign consulting companies—media, fundraising, digital/social, direct mail, and others—had grossed $465.76 million, out of a total of $1.24 billion spent on campaigns. They estimated that, by the end of that campaign year, they could rake in three billion dollars.⁴⁰⁰ Media consultants—many of whom are, first and foremost, wily and adroit salespeople for themselves—play on the insecurities of politicians by telling them that their careers will be dead—simply dead—if they don’t spend all their time raising money to provide the astronomical sums of cash they need. Because politicians spend their whole lives seeking public approval—for a living!—most are insecure at heart, and when the consultants say “jump,” the politicians ask “how high?” and “should I bring my trampoline?”

It’s illegal to make fundraising calls from federal offices, and most state and local government facilities as well, so even incumbent elected officials, including very high-ranking ones, must often leave their government offices to travel to “call rooms” to spend hours and hours of “call time” begging and cajoling donors for support. Actually, many of these rooms are little more than Dilbert-like cubicles. Here’s how returning Congressman Steve Israel described the demeaning process in an illuminating and brutally honest op-ed:

I’ll be leaving Congress at the end of this term—sentimental about many things, but liberated from a fund-raising regime that’s never been more dangerous to our democracy.... There were hours of “call time”—huddled in a cubicle, dialing donors. Sometimes double dialing and triple dialing. Whispering sweet nothings and other small talk into the phone in hopes of receiving large somethings. I’d sit next to an assistant who col-lated “call sheets” with donor’s names, contribution histories and other useful information. (“How’s Sheila? Your wife. Oh, Shelly? Sorry.”) . . . Since then, I’ve spent roughly 4,200 hours in call time, attended more than 1,600 fund-raisers just for my own campaign, and raised nearly $20 million in increments of $1,000, $2,500, and $5,000 per election cycle. And things have only become worse in the five years since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which ignited an explosion of money in politics by ruling that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in elections.⁴⁰¹

As blogger Georgia Logothetis reported, “Senator Al Franken explained that a candidate’s time isn’t spent ‘kissing babies or shaking hands or having serious policy debates. It’s spent on the phone, raising money.’”⁴⁰² She continued, “A consultant (who desired to remain anonymous) disclosed the maxim of modern campaigns: ‘I stress they can never do enough call time. Dialing for money is going to be 80 percent of their role as a candidate.’ Indeed, on many days and in the hardest fought races, 100% of a candidate’s time can be devoted to call time.”⁴⁰³ The Huffington Post broke this depressing development in 2013:

A PowerPoint presentation to incoming freshmen by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee . . . lays out the dreary existence awaiting these new back-benchers. The daily schedule prescribed by the Democratic leadership contemplates a nine or 10-hour day while in Washington. Of that, four hours are to be spent in “call time” and another hour is blocked off for “strategic outreach,” which includes fundraisers and press work. An hour is walled off to “recharge,” and three to four hours are designated for the actual work of being a member of Congress—hearings, votes, and meetings with constituents. If the constituents are donors, all the better. The presentation assured members that their fundraising would be closely monitored.⁴⁰⁴

It’s fairly amazing that a major political party would be so seemingly unembarrassed by this and so matter-of-fact that they would actually put it in writing.

Fundraising requirements turn all politicians, no matter how esteemed their offices, into pathetic supplicants. In 2014, I received a fundraising e-mail from then-US Senator Kay Hagan with the subject line, “Joel, I’m begging.”

All campaigning and governing is now indistinguishable from fundraising. The vast majority of e-mails and letters that I now receive from elected officials are either thinly veiled fundraising pitches or overt ones.

For all the media handwringing over campaigns promoting fluff instead of substance, the media spends far more time reporting on how much money candidates do or do not raise than they do on their records or their policy positions. It’s like having a lover who is indignant that you support ending government funding for PBS, but all they want to actually watch is celebrity cooking shows.

America, if you were ever able to put Washington on trial for the crime of placing the interest of donors above that of the people, then federal agriculture subsidies, which mostly go to huge agribusinesses and are widely reviled, would be “Exhibit A.” The right-wing Heritage Foundation has slammed them as “corporate welfare” and the Libertarian Cato Institute wrote that “farm subsidies make no sense.”⁴⁰⁵ In general, I agree with them, making this just about the only issue on which I and other progressives agree with the far right.^h

Six liberal-to-conservative Washington think tanks that prepared major deficit-reduction plans with grants from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the organization founded by a centrist budget hawk, all proposed abolishing or greatly reducing these payments.⁴⁰⁶

The agricultural subsidies status quo is opposed by the Left, the Right, and the Center—a truly rare point of ideological agreement—but the last time Congress considered a Farm Bill, in 2013, it made only cosmetic changes in the subsidies. USA Today editorialized, “The House bill retains lavish subsidies for an agriculture sector that is doing much better than many other parts of the economy—so lavish that they make a mockery of House Republicans’ attempts at cost cutting. The measure would cost roughly $200 billion over the next decade. That’s nearly 10 times the much-maligned bank bailout, which is now expected to cost $21 billion.”⁴⁰⁷ The vast majority of newspaper editorial boards nationwide—across the ideological spectrum—also condemned continued corporate agriculture subsidies, pointing out that they both help explode the deficit and promote obesity by making sugar cheaper than produce.

“It’s hard to understand how anyone in the House who calls himself a conservative could support this, but many did,” said Chris Chocola, president of archconservative Club for Growth, which opposed the bill and lobbied against it. “With the federal debt and deficit we have, to be subsidizing millionaire farmers makes absolutely no sense,” he said.⁴⁰⁸ Again, I shockingly agree with the Far Right on this issue.

So how is it that a corporate welfare regime condemned by the Left, the Right, and the Center—and the vast majority of newspapers nationwide—continues on, year after year, virtually unscathed?ⁱ

If you guessed the answer was lobbying—and the accompanying giant piles or cash and favors—you’d be a winner.^j

Agribusinesses donated a total of $505 million ($169 million to Democrats and $333 million to Republicans) to federal campaigns from 1990 to 2016, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, while, in 2015 alone, 1,033 lobbyists spent $131 million lobbying Congress on behalf of 435 agribusiness clients. In contrast, anti-hunger advocates spent a pittance on campaign donations and lobbying to oppose the accompanying Farm Bill SNAP cuts. So if you are surprised that the Farm Bill which eventually passed favored corporate agribusinesses over hungry Americans, I have a bridge to sell you or at least a bridge on which Chris Christie can block traffic so you can take the day off.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) proposed an amendment to the Farm Bill that would have avoided the SNAP cuts by instead cutting corporate welfare to crop insurance companies, a number of which are foreign-owned. Under normal circumstances, a vote to fund food for hungry Americans—instead of corporate welfare for foreign companies—should have passed the Senate easily. Yet this common sense amendment was defeated by a vote of 70 to 26. Not a single Republican voted “yes,” and half of Senate Democrats, including liberal stalwarts such as Tom Harkin, Barbara Mikulski, and Al Franken, voted “no.” The dominance of big money in politics and the undue deference to Tea Party demands doomed the amendment.

But even the minor cuts in farm subsidies were too much for some. US Senator Steve Daines (R-MT), who has received over half a million dollars in campaign donations from agribusiness, delivered a speech on the Senate floor in which he indicated that, after a lengthy business career, he was elected to the Senate to “get Washington, DC’s reckless spending and record debt under control,” and that the first bill he introduced was to mandate a balanced budget. Then he segued to complain about cuts in agribusiness funding: “The crop insurance program was gutted as a way to make this deal work. Where was the voice of Montana? Where was the voice of rural America as this backroom deal was cut?”⁴⁰⁹ Oh gag.

Agribusiness donations and lobbying spending is only the tip of the iceberg. In 2015, Congressional lobbyists spent $525 million on behalf of miscellaneous business interests, $509 million lobbying for the healthcare industry, $487 million representing finance, insurance, and real estate interests, $382 million on behalf of the communication and electronics industries, and $325 million for energy and natural resources companies.⁴¹⁰

As for campaign contributions, between 1990 and 2016, donations to federal campaigns were gobsmackingly enormous: $2.3 billion ($1.278 billion to Republicans, $970 million to Democrats) from the finance and real estate sectors, $607 million ($319 million to Rs, $283 million to Ds) from the securities and investment industry, and $350 million ($213 million to Rs, $133 million to Ds) from insurance interests.⁴¹¹ Are you seeing any patterns yet? This vast spending was surely an investment for these industries, which received far more back in tax breaks and corporate welfare than they ever spent on donations and lobbying. Politics, like any relationship, is really all about give and take—but what the donors give is dwarfed by what they take.

In a tweet, I once accidentally spelled “U$ Capitol” with a dollar sign, and then realized that it was totally appropriate, even if subconscious.

Remember that old Saturday morning cartoon about how a bill becomes a law (“I’m just a bill, here on Capitol Hill . . .”)? As my two charts on the following pages prove, that civics book version of good government is sadly outdated.

In state legislatures, city councils, and county legislatures across the country, big money also sloshes around indiscriminately and bills become laws in similar, undemocratic ways.

At every level, power and money seem interchangeable. When two campaigns spent massive amounts of cash to flood my mailbox to win a State Assembly seat that officially paid $79,500 per year, the cynic/realist in me thought, “Hmmm.”

While a top reason wealthy voters support campaigns is to obtain policy outcomes that benefit them, sometimes the top motivation for big donors is to simply flatter themselves with the notion that they are truly Big Shots. How else can you explain how two gay businessman, who were high-profile supporters of marriage equality and owned a hotel that catered mostly to the gay community, hosted an event at their home for virulently anti-gay presidential candidate Ted Cruz?⁴¹² People will do anything to feel like they are movers and shakers—and to be perceived as such.

But most give the big bucks because they want a tangible payback. Former Louisiana senator John Breaux once said, “My vote can’t be bought, but it can be rented.” Lots of his colleagues in politics continue to make boatloads of money off such rent payments, and, the vast majority of times, it results in policies that favor the wealthy at the expense of everyone else, even if it requires lawmakers to do backflips to reverse their previous stances. America, your so-called friends are giving you no benefits.

Right-wing legislators claim over and over again that the more local—and closer to the people—that government is, the better. But Republicans in state legislatures entirely ignore such federalism when localities pass laws banning fracking or raising the local minimum wage, and then moneyed interests who would be harmed by such moves get the state legislatures to overturn the will of the localities.

State lawmakers in Alabama, Idaho, Illinois, Minnesota, Montana, Pennsylvania, and Washington introduced legislation in 2016 to curb or outlaw local minimum wage increases. In Indiana, Kansas, and New Mexico, state legislators tried overruling local fair-scheduling laws, which require employers to give reasonable notice of workers’ hours.⁴¹³ In Alabama, the governor signed a bill to nullify the Birmingham City Council’s vote for a citywide minimum wage of $10.10 an hour. Birmingham City Council President Johnathan Austin responded, “The very people who have refused to expand Medicaid in the state to help the most vulnerable amongst us receive critical medical care are once again keeping their boots on the necks of people in desperate need of financial relief. People cannot pull themselves up by their bootstraps if they can’t afford to buy boots.”⁴¹⁴

The cable TV industry relies heavily on government-approved monopolies, so it spends an especially large amount of money and effort on influencing government, as Robert Reich explained:

It’s key to again note, America, that such corruption is legal. That’s because the people who engage in such practices pay the politicians to pass laws to ensure that they stay legal.

There are now so many revolving doors in DC that the average power brokers spin their heads more than that demon-plagued kid in The Exorcist.

One time I was on an Amtrak train leaving Washington, DC, and some loudmouth near me, obviously a lobbyist, bragged that the only people who stay working for government instead of going into lobbying are those that are too lazy to find lobbying clients. He repeatedly dropped the name of a senator he used to work for, but the idea that someone would voluntarily and/or altruistically devote their life to public service was a truly foreign concept to him. Unfortunately, that mindset is all-too-typical in modern politics, yet that wasn’t always the case, as lobbying was essentially illegal in much of the country for much of our history. In some states, such as Georgia, lobbying was a crime. And even where lobbying was not outlawed, courts often refused to enforce contracts for lobbying on the ground that such conduct was contrary to public interest.⁴¹⁶

The notion that we should disallow any practice that places a private good over a public good seems almost quaint today. One politician I worked for asked for my advice on how he should vote on a bill that pitted one group of campaign donors against another group of campaign donors. When I responded, “Do what you think is best for the American people,” he just laughed.

In 2015, in what the Miami Herald called a rare show of unity, all but one of the US House members from Florida (Republicans and Democrats alike), including then-Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, fought federal regulations on the nefarious payday loan industry. It’s probably only a coincidence that they received significant funding from that industry, including $31,250 received by Wasserman Schultz over the previous two years.⁴¹⁷

A favorite goal of business interests is to get Congress to shield them from any legal liability, no matter how much they screw up. Vaccine manufacturers paid Congress to protect them from being sued, even if their vaccines make people sick.⁴¹⁸ Nuclear power plant builders also convinced Congress to give them total immunity, even if one of their plants melts down and wipes an entire city off the map.

The pharmaceutical industry used its lobbying might—spending $272,000 in campaign donations per member of Congress in 2014, paying for more lobbyists than there were Congressional members—to prevent the government from bargaining for drug prices in Medicare. That result equals a $50 billion annual gift to drug companies.⁴¹⁹

It is no shock that the top goal of ultra-wealthy campaign donors is to pay less in taxes. “There’s this notion that the wealthy use their money to buy politicians; more accurately, it’s that they can buy policy, and specifically, tax policy,” said Jared Bernstein, who served as chief economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden. “That’s why these egregious loopholes exist, and why it’s so hard to close them.”⁴²⁰

In the 2016 campaign, just 158 families, along with companies they own or control, contributed $176 million in the first phase of the campaign, about half of all early campaign spending combined.⁴²¹

At the top of this heap is the Koch family. Family patriarch Fred C. Koch, the father of billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch, helped construct a major oil refinery in Nazi Germany that was personally approved by Adolf Hitler. Fred also financed the extreme right-wing John Birch Society, even though the founder of the society called President Eisenhower a “communist” and the group was deemed too wacky-out-of-his-mind-conservative by even William F. Buckley.⁴²² The sons, who built on daddy’s wealth to earn their billions, didn’t fall far from the ultra-right-leaning tree. With campaign spending unencumbered after the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” ruling, the Koch brothers planned to personally spend and raise about $900 million in 2016 alone to impact the campaigns; in comparison, in the previous presidential election, the Republican National Committee and the party’s two Congressional campaign committees spent a total of $657 million.⁴²³

The Kochs are so influential among conservative lawmakers that in 2011, then-House Speaker John Boehner visited David Koch to ask for his help in resolving a debt ceiling stalemate.⁴²⁴ But now the Kochs want to tackle poverty, so they say, as Politico reported,

Charles and David Koch [are] quietly investing millions of dollars in programs to win over an unlikely demographic target for their brand of small-government conservatism—poor people.

The outreach includes everything from turkey giveaways, GED training, and English-language instruction for Hispanic immigrants to community holiday meals and healthy living classes for predominantly African American groups, to vocational training and couponing classes for the under-employed.

The efforts include a healthy dose of proselytizing about free enterprise and how it can do more than government to lift people out of poverty.

“We want people to know that they can earn their own success. They don’t need the government to give it to them,” [said] Koch network official Jennifer Stefano . . .

“Sometimes, we have not been as good at explaining the virtues of economic freedom and individual liberty to people who are struggling,” said Americans for Prosperity’s president Tim Phillips. . . .

In post-election strategy sessions, Charles Koch and his inner circle fixated on an exit poll finding that highlighted a so-called “empathy gap” that plagued GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. . . . [Koch] concluded that winning over empathy-seeking voters could help them tilt the electoral map in their favor.⁴²⁵

What is a proper reaction to the idea of bribing hungry people with turkeys to get them to vote against their own interests? “Splendid, simply splendid, Smithers.”^k

As is often the case, the Onion nailed it best: “Koch Brothers Get Each Other Same Election for Christmas . . .. ‘After he got me Wisconsin’s right-to-work bill last year, I knew I had to get him something really good this Christmas,’ David added. . . . According to reports, the brothers agreed they would avoid making the same mistake next Christmas by simply giving each other a $25 million gift card that could be spent at any lobbying firm in the United States.”⁴²⁶

The central role of money in politics is so overwhelming that it trumps the will of the people. In 2015, nearly six in 10 Americans said government should do more to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor.⁴²⁷ The public clearly wants policies to reverse inequality, but the donor class wants the opposite. We know who wins. That’s why at no time in modern history has our public policy-making been more detached from the public will than today. America, you know you’ve been sold out.

When the stakes are low, public opinion matters a bit. But when the stakes are high regarding money, the wealthy almost always win, shafting everyone else. Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin I. Page of Northwestern found that, in policy-making, views of ordinary citizens mostly don’t matter. They examined 1,779 policy issues and found that attitudes of the rich and of business organizations significantly impacted the final outcome—but that preferences of average citizens were almost irrelevant. “The majority does not rule. Majorities . . . actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts.”⁴²⁸

Because our entire political system is so oriented towards the money—and thus the needs and concerns—of the wealthy and the upper middle class, even liberals generally rarely think about poverty issues anymore. Journalist Thomas Edsall pointed out,

Democrats now depend as much on affluent voters as on low-income voters, Democrats represent a majority of the richest congressional districts, and the party’s elected officials are more responsive to the policy agenda of the well-to-do than to average voters. The party and its candidates have come to rely on the elite 0.01 percent of the voting age population for a quarter of their financial backing and on large donors for another quarter. . . . The gulf between the two parties on socially fraught issues like abortion, immigration, same-sex marriage, and voting rights remains vast. On economic issues, however, the Democratic Party has inched closer to the policy positions of conservatives, stepping back from championing the needs of working men and women, of the unemployed, and of the so-called underclass.⁴²⁹

In 2016, I received a mailed questionnaire—i.e., fundraising ploy—from the national Democratic Party signed by Nancy Pelosi. Not one of the 19 issues queries on the questionnaire was about poverty, wages, hunger, or homelessness. Of course, we can totally forget about the Republicans raising these issues in any serious way.^l When these concerns are literally out of mind and sight of both parties, it’s easy for both to agree on cuts to housing and food for struggling families.

America, you should be far more upset that the top activity and top priority of your elected officials is raising money. Priority number two isn’t even close. It is the corrosive role of money that has caused one side of our political system to be evil while the other side is soulless.

That’s what happens when average voters give away our love (and votes) to our leaders, but demand little in return. We’re not even getting the milk anymore. Later in the book, I’ll propose a specific Constitutional Amendment to fix all this.

But, in the meantime, damn it, America, let’s at least demand that our friends give us the benefits they promised in the late-night, drunken text!

^a In contrast, when I ran—and lost—a race for New York State Senate when I was 22, I spent 24 cents per vote, and drove around the block a lot so I got all my parking for free.

^b The only mystery greater than why so many French people think Jerry Lewis is a genius is why so many political journalists and insiders think Karl Rove is.

^c In New York State, between 1999 and 2010, 96 percent of the legislators were reelected. The top leaders of each of the two houses of the legislature were convicted for felonies, as well as many rank-and-file members.

^d A Congressional investment at work.

^e The House Ethics Committee advises, “Since legislation considered by Congress affects such a broad spectrum of business and economic endeavors, a Member of the House may be confronted with the possibility of voting on legislation that would have an impact upon a personal economic interest. This may arise, for example, where a bill authorizes appropriations for a project for which the contractor is a corporation in which the Member is a shareholder, or where a Member holds a kind of municipal security for which a bill would provide federal guarantees. Longstanding House precedents have not found such interests to warrant abstention.” Translation: “Ethics. We don’t need no stinkin’ ethics.”

^f Fun fact: Members of Congress can’t use campaign funds to mail holiday cards to family and friends unless these family and friends donate to, or volunteer for, their campaigns. Can you imagine getting that Christmas card: “Dear Dad: Merry, jolly Christmas! Please don’t forget to send me that campaign donation.—Your loving son, Congressman Bob Spends-His-Holidays-Alone-A-Lot.”

^g In just those two years, he used his campaign account for 27 meals at Bullfeathers, a delightful Washington, DC, eating and drinking establishment on Capitol Hill.

^h I do support some aid to small farmers to promote conservation practices and growing fruits and vegetables. What I oppose is the status quo of massive amounts of taxpayer dollars going to gigantic agricultural concerns to support growing grains, cotton, and sugar-producing plants—or to wealthy landowners who’ve never even visited their properties.

ⁱ Rep. Paul Ryan—then Budget Committee Chair—voted for the bill, under pressure from then-Speaker John Boehner, even though Ryan said he opposed it. Wha?

^j You can pick as your prize (from left to right) either a very angry horse, a penguin in a Rastafarian hat, or a befuddled stuffed dog.

^k I actually wrote a respectful e-mail to the Koch “anti-poverty” initiative asking whether we could talk over the phone or meet in person to discuss areas of potential agreement. They never responded.

^l Bernie Sanders did talk about poverty a fair amount in his campaign, but other than calling for minimum wage hikes and new government jobs programs, he offered few specific anti-poverty proposals. While Hillary Clinton did, in the primaries, propose a fairly significant anti-poverty agenda under the rubric “Breaking Every Barrier,” her campaign did little to promote that.