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Comment by windexh8er | Hacker News Reader

While I've been meaning to read Noam Chomsky's: "Understanding Power" I ran across the documentary: "Requiem for the American Dream" over the weekend and this is clearly showcased within the first 5 minutes as he begins to describe "The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power" and starts out with this infographic: http://imgur.com/QVcagot.

Quoting Chomsky from this portion of the film: "Concentration of wealth yields concentration of power. Particularly so as the cost of elections skyrockets which forces the parties into the pockets of major corporations. And this political power directly translates into legislation that increases the concentration of wealth. So fiscal policy like tax policy, deregulation, rules of corporate governance, and a whole variety of measures - political measures designed to increase the concentration of wealth and power, which in turn yields more political power to do the same thing."

The documentary has spurred me to start reading the book, but falls in line with what's coming to light in the mainstream media today unfortunately.

Edit: Honest question - why the downvote? Directly falls in line with the original post.

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It's changed so much since Carter's day:

>Carter compared elections now-a-days to those when he was running for office, saying, “In those days when I ran against Gerald Ford, who was incumbent president or later Ronald Reagan, who challenged me, we didn’t raise a single penny to finance our campaign to run against each other. We just used the $1 per person checkoff that every taxpayer indicates at the end of his or her income tax return."

Guess things could be changed back?

With the Citizens United decision, that's no longer possible without either a Constitutional Amendment or the Supreme Court overturning their own decision - neither one is very likely.

With Scalia gone you still think it's unlikely?

Regardless of the ideology of the court majority, they very rarely directly overturn previous decisions. It's not impossible (Brown vs. Board of Education) but it isn't just a matter of getting a challenge before a liberal court. The previous decision is binding, they would have to justify why they would be going against authority equal to their own.

I don't claim to understand SCOTUS - but they are extremely conservative institution. I mean dictionary definition of conservative - upholding the status quo. And they prefer to not get involved in the day to day affairs of the country.

So even a bad SCOTUS decision could stay on the books for a long time - just to save face and uphold the credibility of the institution.

They look to rock the boat the least. Even in their current hyperpartisan state.

Saying that the Court upholds precedent to "save face" shows an complete and total lack of understanding of the body.

With the Senate refusing to do its constitutional duty and confirm Obama's (very conservative) pick, it'll depend on who wins the presidential election. If it's Trump it'll probably be someone from left field completely unpredictable. With Hillary it'll probably be a middle of the road jurist not really willing to overturn things too much.

Or if Bernie wins, it might be someone left of Ginsberg...

> With the Citizens United decision, that's no longer possible without either a Constitutional Amendment or the Supreme Court overturning their own decision - neither one is very likely.

Citizens United has implications for campaign finance, but the demise of publicly financed campaigns that GP is referring to began before that.

In fact, it began with Obama's first election (2008), in which McCain agreed to take public financing. Obama, on the other hand, broke his earlier promise to take public funds, becoming the first candidate in history to do so[0][1]. Because accepting public financing means limiting total spending, Obama vastly outspent McCain by November. Obama won the popular vote, spending $10.94/vote, whereas McCain spent only half as much total money (amounting to $5.97/vote in the end.)[2]

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/us/politics/20obamacnd.htm...

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/us/politics/20obama.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_for_the_2008_Unite...

Though with Trump the favourite to be the Republican candidate we could see a Dem landslide which might allow something to be done.

The partisan composition of Congress will not have any immediate (or even short-term) effects on SCOTUS rulings.

I don't imagine that the primary campaigns were funded by public money - and in the case of the presidency, they are just as important as the actual campaign.

Actually, many primary campaigns were funded by public money. There was an interesting episode of Planet Money recently [0] where they talked to Senator Fred Harris who got the US system started. A few years after getting it going, he used public funds to run against Jimmy Carter for the 1976 nomination by the Democrats. He lost to Carter and then Carter used public funds to run his presidential campaign against Ford. But Harris got ~$600,000.00 to run his nomination campaign.

[0] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/03/25/471905383/episo...

It's really surprising how often something trends on HN and there's a relevant Planet Money episode from within the last few weeks. I wonder if that's because in some cases other news outlets are spurred into covering it because of Planet Money (it's reach is relatively small compared to the Guardian, so the Guardian covering the topic will be seen as new to most), or if there's some journalistic social network (in the traditional sense, not the Facebook sense) that some outlets are better are responding to quickly than others?

In Canada we used to have something called the "Per Vote Subsidy".

Every political party got $2 of taxpayer money per-vote, per year.

It was, sadly, killed by the Conservative government (along with corporate donors) to prioritize an individual-fundraising-oriented system like you have in the USA.

> In Canada we used to have something called the "Per Vote Subsidy". Every political party got $2 of taxpayer money per-vote, per year.

We have that in the US as well. It has existed since Watergate (1976). In 2008, Obama became the first candidate to opt out of the system, despite an earlier pledge to use them (McCain, his opponent, did not - he used public funds).

Amusingly, Romney said that he'd prefer to use public funds, but the reason that he did not (in 2012) is that Obama did not, and he believed he couldn't be competitive against an incumbent president who would potentially be spending three times as much as he would be legally permitted to[0][1][2].

The system still exists, for any candidate willing to use it. Though I would not be surprised if McCain became the last candidate to take advantage of it. After 2008, no candidate who wants to be competitive will take public funds if their opponent isn't as well, and that's unlikely to be the case for both candidates in a race simultaneously.

[0] Accepting public funds comes with limits on total spending

[1] http://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-now/2012/08/romney-ab...

[2] And frankly, he was right - ultimately, he spent about the same amount as Obama did. If he'd been limited to the amounts that public financing would have restricted him to, he'd have lost in a landslide.

Is the money/opt-out party-wide or is it tied to a specific candidate for a specific office. When you say "Obama" and "Romney" are you talking about them in their role as leading the entire party in the election or just their individual presidential runs?

> Is the money/opt-out party-wide or is it tied to a specific candidate for a specific office. When you say "Obama" and "Romney" are you talking about them in their role as leading the entire party in the election or just their individual presidential runs?

It's for the candidate in the presidential race. Though that comparison makes less sense between the US and Canada, since the latter has a parliamentary system, which the US does not. Both the US and Canada have political parties, but the nature of the roles of political parties are very different, in terms of how they interact with the system.

If the US did what you're suggesting (provide money to parties, not to candidates from the two leading parties), it would have a very different effect. One could make the argument that it would be better, but it wouldn't really be the same as Canada doing it, because the political systems in which those policies exist are very different.

I remember my co-workers at the time thought that it was a brilliant move that Obama opted-out and defeated Mccain because he wasn’t limited by funds.

Now that we have Republican candidates using this to their full advantage, it needs to be stopped.

It needs to be stopped not because it's a different party, but because of who is donating the money. In the Obama campaign his fundraising records were set by small, individual donors. The GOP on the other hand is using a few mega donors (along with candidates like Clinton). This kind of unlimited funding from a couple hundred people is what should scare every democracy-loving person.

Edit: I write this as a nominal Clinton supporter here, so I really feel my opinion is unbiassd here.

> It needs to be stopped not because it's a different party, but because of who is donating the money. In the Obama campaign his fundraising records were set by small, individual donors The GOP on the other hand is using a few mega donors (along with candidates like Clinton)

It's not so simple.

First of all, it's hard for us to accurately compare 2008 and 2016, because there's a lot of data about the 2016 race that won't be released for a while. On top of that, the way data is broken down has changed, so not all of the buckets are 1-1 comparable. That said, most (53%) of Obama's money came from donations of over $200, and almost a third (27%) came from donations of $2,300 or more.[0]. In January, 95% of Clinton's money came from donors under $100.

You can say that we need to look at PACs as well. But actually, most PACs are still limited in the amount of money they can accept per person as well. It's only independent-expenditure-only committees that can take unlimited contributions. Even then, you'd be surprised how little money they actually raise. For example, only 25% of pro-Clinton money went to PACs, and that's counting all PACs, including ones subject to contribution limits[2].

Also, I'm not sure what you mean by 'candidates like Clinton' - in the presidential race, there's only one candidate who's not in the GOP and not Clinton. Is that meant to be a comment about Sanders?

[0] http://www.factcheck.org/2008/07/average-campaign-contributi...

[1] http://time.com/4208386/hillary-clinton-fundraising-bernie-s...

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/electio...

"It needs to be stopped not because it's a different party, but because of who is donating the money. In the Obama campaign his fundraising records were set by small, individual donors. The GOP on the other hand is using a few mega donors (along with candidates like Clinton)."

So, the Democratic Party then too?

It's not enough to control the funding, you have to control the political speech. Basically, candidates would get fixed slots of tv and radio time to spread their message, and all other political speech would be forbidden. Otherwise money can dominate the conversation as it does with the pacs. However, such a thing could never be done in the US due to the core belief that free speech is a fundamental right that cannot be curtailed.

> It's not enough to control the funding, you have to control the political speech. Basically, candidates would get fixed slots of tv and radio time to spread their message, and all other political speech would be forbidden. Otherwise money can dominate the conversation as it does with the pacs.

So you would prevent candidates from tweeting, or posting on Reddit, or updating their personal blog?

Hmm. Carter may be telling the truth as he knows it - but Robert Caro's biographies of LBJ make it quite clear that there has been enormous monetary corruption in US politics - going back to well before LBJ. See especially how his first senate race was financed in "The Path to Power"

Forget monetary corruption: it was flat out political corruption. If anything the insurgent candidacies of Sanders and Trump show that being able to get media attention, raise money directly from the people, and in the case of Cruz (who is by no means a party favorite), raising money through super pacs, etc. Are a de-corrupting influence by opening up options outside of the anointed choices.

You mean "Landslide Lyndon"? That was overt and egregious ballot box mismanagement. Common as dirt in Texas politics.

Political contributions work more like "rock and roll fantasy camps" than they buy access. Not always; sometimes they do, but the candidate will usually not have the bandwidth to give you their undivided attention.

It's worth reading the book. Ballot box mismanagement, especially on that scale isn't free - and it seems quite clear that he was not only receiving cash handouts for his own campaign, but he was also acting as a channel for money to other democrats campaigns - and this was what allowed him to gain the influence he held within the party and especially the senate.

Oh, absolutely. It's a master work. I did not mean to cast aspersions on Mr. Caro's work.

We could certainly do even better nowadays. Rather than get campaign funds from taxpayers, we could have the state run a web service for candidates to debate, posit positions, etc. You would need to expand library computer access to let those without technology access the information, but the status quo is already bad enough its an improvement all around.

Then you abolish private campaign funding and advertising.

If wealth and power are being concentrated anywhere, it's in the hands of the state:

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/include/usgs_chartSp03t....

Oligarchy

There's a point where the distinction between the state and the super-wealthy blurs or disappears entirely, and there are many cases where the super-wealthy dictate policy to the state rather than vice versa.

Which gets to the core of what libertarians really want: not to abolish the state per se -- but to winnow it down and neuter it to a point where it is more pliable to their interests.

> their interests

Please don't tell me you're this naive.

They argue that the state is inherently a corrupt institution and that nobody should have that kind of power.

I've been observing that crowd for a very long time.

And have prudently concluded that it's best to assess their ideology based on the actions they've chosen to take (specifically, the political alliances they have formed in the past 20 years, after it became manifestly clear to them that both their platform and their candidates were basically unelectable on their own) -- and the goals they can realistically hope to achieve through these actions -- rather than on the sentimental platitudes they pretend to believe in.

Would you mind clarifying a few points with examples:

* political alliances they have formed in the past 20 years

* sentimental platitudes they pretend to believe in

I generally agree with the sentiments that you've portrayed, but this is just way too vague to be useful. I don't put much stock in libertarians in the general sense since any given libertarian could idealize anarchy, socialism, communism, or capitalism.

In the early years, they could claim (with some basis) to be "neither left nor right", but somewhat off the generally conceived political grid altogether. Appealing equally to peaceniks and potheads as to entrepreneurs and laissez-faire economists, and all that.

But in recent decades they've basically thrown their lot (solidly) with the political far right in the U.S., both ideologically and strategically. This shift was already in place well before their paramount candidate actually chose to run under the GOP ticket (and libertarians started to register Republican en masse), but by now the tacit alliance is pretty obvious, and fundamental to their strategy.

As to sentimental platitudes I mean of course "the state is inherently corrupt" and all the other anti-state rhetoric. They can say that all they want, but when they go so far as to (overtly) align themselves with Republican Party and everything it stands for -- I just don't buy it.

>And have prudently concluded

It's really hard to take an argument seriously when the person making it, regardless of who they are, opens with "I have made a prudent conclusion."

You can browbeat all you want. The core point I'm making, though, still stands.

It's a misunderstanding of the history of civilization. Civilizations always have the king balanced against the power of the rest of the aristocracy. A strong king is necesary to protect the peasants from feudal type slave lords. Likewise the absolute king must be balanced by the aristocracy, who today would just be called billionaires. Democracy adds more check and balances to the equation but humanity has not figured out a better system than a strong central government that follows the rule of law and has some accountability.

I am not a libertarian, but I can tell you that you are confusing generic corporate capitalists with libertarians because they often sound the same. Real libertarians believe some junk about ideal world with minimal government. Corporate capitalists are sometimes libertarian but usually just spout libertarian stuff because it sells better than being honest about their power ambitions.

Basically, don't confuse corrupt power-mongers who use libertarian propaganda at times with actual libertarians.

Regardless of political meaning, it's not the infographic, it's a sad excuse for a caricature. _Info_graphics are supposed to have much more actual information that that.

I agree. Thats a political cartoon, not an infographic.

Sorry for the mixup of terminology. While I will agree it's not an infographic it's a representation of the ideas being explained in the context of that portion of the film. It's not a "cartoon" by any means and it does represent, at a very high level, the distinct notion of the original content of the thread. Money yields power and power yields legislation that yields money.

My point is that I found it interesting Chomsky has succinctly been defining these problems for quite some time.

It not a big deal. Calling something a political cartoon isn't an insult. Political cartoons are meant to illustrate a position, not support one. An infographic is a visual presentation of data that supports an argument. Political cartoons aren't bad, but they don't substitute for supporting evidence.

People can always find reasons to downvote opinions they disagree with. I think it's officially discouraged but impossible to prevent.

Maybe the downvote is because the linked image isn't very helpful?

Power accretes and wealth flows uphill. Seems a settled thing at this point.

I'm also in the process of reading 'Understanding Power'. Interesting indeed, my friend!

I have trouble finding the documentary, do you mind letting me know how to get access to it?

http://requiemfortheamericandream.com/the-film/

It's in select screenings and available on-demand via the popular pay-to-stream video services.

Bluray + DVD coming this August according to Amazon.

I suppose because these arguments always assume the premise - that money everywhere and always corrupts politics - that they then conclude. Chomsky's old enough to know better, too. All this being said, short of that, Chomsky's scholarship is otherwise impeccable and a great place to get a larger view of the vents of history. But even going back to Vietnam, accusing the US of imperialism just because of the French doesn't hold up very well. In the case of the Dulles Brothers' coups in South and Central America in the 1950s, the documentation that this was the case is intact; in Vietnam it simply isn't.

If it were well known that money always corrupts, then regulatory legislation would involve a debate on those costs rather than just going ahead with it. And what you'll find is that it nearly never does.

Chomsky and Howard Zinn are important to read, but please understand that nobody's able to empirically line up all the "facts" There's very thin slice of speculative fiction at the end of the derivation of those arguments.

Hah! Yeah, right.

Money corrupts more than you think. Just look at Ricky Hendon, for example. He contracts his "services" to mayoral candidates and charges a heavy, heavy penny. Hell, there's a conversation on facebook where he talks to Dock Walls and Willy Wilson in the same post about how he worked at getting Amara Enyia kicked out of the election. He did this after Enyia's team kicked him out of their offices because of his incredibly shady practices and stopped paying him. The inside folk I talked to at the time all agreed - he's a scumbag, ex Senator who should've been sent to jail for corruption charges. So, because of his selfish, monetary reasons, Chicago's candidate pool completely thinned.

You can make the argument, "Yeah, that's just one person.", sure. But that one person fucked Chicago's election.

Later on in that election, Bob Fioretti, who used Amara's campaign manager, dropped out of the race and gave his public support to Rahm - Because he received 50k to do so. Even though throughout that entire election, he was a hugely public critic of Rahm.

If anyone thinks that money doesn't corrupt, or that it doesn't have strong negative influence, they're a god damn naive fool. "It never does", my ass.

I'm taking the skeptical line.

There's an old saw - "the plural of anecdote is not data." Those are extremely good examples but in the larger picture, the effects aren't nearly measurable.

This could be nothing more than a lack of reporting. But social scientists have never been able to thoroughly prove that money matters in significant ways. And I never said "it never does." That'd be foolish. My point is more subtle - we don't much know. Actual stories of corruption are rare enough to be noteworthy.

I'm not sure why you wouldn't consider this noteworthy.

No, the effects aren't directly measurable. But why does this necessarily need to be an academic persuit? Trust me, I completely understand why purity of information/data/research is needed, but there's a certain point where "Yep, this signed document shows they're gaming the system for money" is all that should be enough. My "anecdata" is a clear example where money and collusion directly affects the lives of 2.6 million people. When four out of five candidates are swayed by money - directly or indirectly - in a way that effects that many people, it's significant!! Yes, thinning the candidate pool is god damn significant.

Mind you, this isn't something that I saw or heard in the news. This was told to me out of the horse's mouth while sitting in Fioretti's office with his campaign manager and Amara's old campaign manager. This meeting was done about a week after two of my FOIA requests proved exactly what Hendon said over Facebook.

Want to know why you don't see anything about this in the media? They never report it since they're dumbfoundedly not interested in any of it. Chicago's newspapers are the most disinterest group of asshats I've ever had the pleasure of talking to. Of course you're not going to hear anything from them. I know you love anecdata, but I'm going to give you an example of more, anyway. After the Chicago Tribune published an article that made national news on how they were simply suing the mayor for his mail/texting records, I called them and said I was suing for mayor's phone records. The journalist who wrote the article had zero care for his own article and basically said, "I'm just doing my job" and sent me to the person who did the research. I never heard a single thing from him. If these guys are supposed to be renowned journalists and this is the shit we get, of course you're not going to get anything that's researchable.

Use your bayesian reasoning skills instead of naively throwing away "anecdata". Christ.

I do consider it noteworthy. I hadn't heard it, and I appreciate the info very much. It is utterly shocking. I apologize; I didn't mean to come off as dismissive. And rereading, I did. It kind of didn't sink in properly.

And the "meh" you've run into ( dude, you filed FOIAs - holy schnikies! ) is also rather appalling. Including mine.

These guys are doing this out in the open? Damn. You'd think they'd be open for predation after something like that.

Yep!

Check this out. I'm not the owner of the site, but it's pretty indicative of the situation in Chicago and blows my mind away. I didn't see any news from this, either. http://thamovement1.blogspot.com/2015/02/is-willie-wilson-fi...

FOIA's pretty interesting. You should seriously use it to look into things that interest you. I've learned more from it than any newspaper, magazine or website, and that's considering I'm not even trying to be involved that much. If you want to see what kind of things you can do with it, check these out:

The city's legally obligated to fulfill [0] after a phone call tomorrow where they're going to try to simmer down the request.. They forgot to respond initially, so they're no longer allowed to use "unduly burdensome" as a rejection reason.

[0] "Please provide any and all information, log files, log backups, documentation, code, reports and data that used for or by the City of Chicago, third parties, or any affiliates for the the use or analysis of CANVAS, its logs, log files, documentation, code, log backups, and all data since Jan 1, 2009 (excluding the data from my previous request)."

The FOIA officer I'm working with is pretty great, too: "Great. (And I can neither confirm nor deny whether I’ll be filtering the “editorializing” from the people who were helping me understand your request.)"

Another example which resulted in a disk with 18m parking ticket records: https://github.com/red-bin/chitickets

(And sorry if I sounded too aggressive there. Grumpy day, I guess D:!)

No, perfectly fine - I had that coming completely. I'm glad you got me to reread things.

Downvoted because of the edit.

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