TomPaine.com
Beyond K Street
Lee Drutman
January 18, 2006
Lee Drutman is the co-author of The People’s Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy.
In the wake of lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s recent guilty plea, Republican congressional leaders are rushing to give a big bear hug to lobbying reform. With the media spotlight on full blast, both House and Senate leaders are talking in bold promises . They want to increase disclosure. They want to ban lobbyists from giving gifts and providing travel. One Republican congressman has even floated the idea of barring former members of Congress from becoming lobbyists (though the chances of that becoming law have to be about nil).
Certainly, almost any version of lobbying reform currently proposed would be an improvement. However, there are some big problems with the way the current debate over lobbying reform is moving forward.
Problem number one is that while Jack Abramoff’s duplicitous double-dealing may make for great copy, it’s really not all that representative of how lobbyists work. Focus too closely on preventing more Jack Abramoffs, and you miss much of the bigger picture, including the fundamental inequality inherent in who gets represented in the lobbying process and why.
To gain some perspective, it helps to remember that Jack Abramoff was just one of 35,000 registered lobbyists in Washington. And unlike Abramoff, who flew way too close to the sun for too long, most lobbyists actually do play by the rules. (Though that isn’t saying much, given the current laxity of lobbying restrictions.)
Abramoff appears to have been an equal-opportunity exploiter, often cheating his clients out of millions of dollars with great epithets of disrespect. In contrast, the vast majority of lobbyists dutifully serve their clients all too well, using their connections and experience to skillfully present their clients’ positions before elected and appointed decisionmakers.
Another problem is that super-connected lobbyists like Abramoff—who know how to get stuff done—charge an awful lot of money for their time. We’re talking here about the kind of rarified six- and seven-digit fees that only the specialist of special interests can (and do) pay for.
No wonder, then, that of the 100 groups who spent the most on lobbying between 1998 and 2004, 98 were businesses or business trade groups (the only two exceptions were the AARP and the AFL-CIO). Three companies—Verizon, Altria and General Electric—shelled out more than $100 million apiece during this period. The real scandal, then, is that these wealthy special interests are spending millions of dollars to influence the political process largely without any significant countervailing forces.
So what of the proposed reforms?
How about more disclosure? Well, it would undoubtedly give us more facts and figures on how unequal the system of lobbying is. But we already know this. Sure, we could know it in more detail and quicker. But how much more detail do we need before we realize we've got some real problems of political representation in this country?
What about banning gifts and travel? Because Abramoff’s signature style of lobbying involved lavish gifts and trips, much debate over lobbying has focused on this practice. But gifts are already capped at $100 per year and $50 per occasion. Lobbyists are already prohibited from paying for travel, and all privately funded travel must be disclosed within 30 days. Sure, lunches and trips can help make congressmen more receptive to lobbyists, but, come on—how many congressmen are so fickle as to be bought for fancy lunch?
The real problem here is not that politicians are selling their votes for a choice cut of filet mignon, a side of garlic mashed potatoes and a glass of Zinfandel. The real problem is that they were bought long ago by a corrupt system of campaign finance.
Consider, for a moment, what it takes to get elected these days. In order to run for a seat in the House of Representatives, you need to raise, on average, a million dollars. A seat in the Senate takes about $6 million. And to run for president? Well, you’ll need at least $200 million, probably $300 million. And where can you get this kind of money? Well, you can turn to businesses and wealthy donors, who can make those $2,000-a-pop donations like nothing and then get 50 of their friends to do the same. All told, about three-quarters of campaign cash these days is business-related.
What this means is that if you want to get elected, you’re going to have to find a way to appeal to these donors, whether by promising favors or, even better, being a free-market ideologue who believes with missionary zeal that doing away with almost all regulation and setting business free to do as it pleases will make America great again. No wonder so many elected leaders are so sympathetic to business interests and happy to meet with their lobbyists. Without that kind of pronounced sympathy for business, it’s hard to get elected. \Yet, there are rumblings of hope. In Connecticut, where the old governor, John Rowland, wound up in jail after a corruption scandal, the new governor, Jodi Rell, recently signed a bill introducing public funding of elections, making Connecticut the seventh state to enact some version of public funding of elections. The idea of candidates running “clean” (i.e., without any outside money) seems to be catching on in the states (the so-called laboratories of democracy)—a welcome antidote to the special interest money chase that so distorts the political process at the federal level.
As the debate over lobbying reform moves forward, it will be all too easy for politicians and pundits make Jack Abramoff into the easy villain, the darkly lit fedora-wearing gangster who doesn’t know the meaning of the word “ethical.”
Yet, as is often the case in Washington, the true scandal is what is legal. And what is legal is a campaign finance system and a lobbying system where wealthy corporations can open their treasuries, utterly overwhelm what few countervailing forces still exist anymore, and often get a hundred-fold return on their investment in terms of tax breaks, subsidies and other favors.
More disclosure can tell us more about the problem, but it won’t solve anything on its own. Reducing the limit on gifts from $100 to zero is fine, but mostly cosmetic. But until we stop looking for quid pro quo corruption (which is rare and hard to find) and instead start focusing on the fundamental inequalities in the system of political representation, we will continue to miss the big story. And the state of our democracy will be all the worse for it.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/01/18/beyond_k_street.php
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Abramoff was just one of many
Abramoff was just one of many
By LEE DRUTMAN
The Providence Journal
14-FEB-06
BERKELEY, Calif. -- In Washington these days there is great speculation about exactly how intimately President Bush and super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff were acquainted.
According to the Associated Press, Abramoff and his associates logged almost 200 White House contacts during Bush's first 10 months in office. Reportedly, Abramoff's personal assistant became a senior adviser to Bush adviser Karl Rove. And Time magazine claims to have seen five photos of Bush and Abramoff that "suggest a level of contact between them that Bush's aides have downplayed."
Not surprisingly, White House spokesman Scott McClellan has pooh-poohed the Bush-Abramoff relationship as nonexistent. "The president does not know him," says McClellan, "nor does the president recall ever meeting him. What we're not going to do is engage in a fishing expedition that has nothing to do with the investigation."
Many people in Washington _ Democrats and Republicans _ are dissatisfied with McClellan's evasions. Calls for fuller disclosure on White House contacts with Abramoff are now coming from both sides of the aisle. Many Democrats see this as a great opportunity for guilt by association, and many Republicans are sure that a little honesty would clear up the misunderstanding and speculation that always surround such scandals.
Yet while I want to know as much as anyone else exactly how involved Jack Abramoff was in formulating White House policy, I am also somewhat sympathetic to McClellan's warnings of a "fishing expedition" _ although for very different reasons. The danger in focusing too much on Abramoff's progress is that it turns this into a scandal about one very bad lobbyist, instead of a scandal about the thousands of lobbyists who spend their days prancing around the White House, sprinkling generous cash donations in choice places, and then making not-so-subtle hints about tax loopholes and energy policy _ mostly perfectly legally.
According to the Center for Public Integrity, over the last six years more than 1,300 registered lobbyists have given more than $1.8 million to Bush. Fifty-two of them were major fundraisers for the Bush campaign. When Bush was first elected, he placed 92 lobbyists on his transition advisory team.
Since 1998, 273 former White House staffers have registered as lobbyists, representing more than 3,000 companies and interest groups (and charging more than $1 billion for their collective time). Since 1998, more than 4,600 companies, trade associations, and interest groups have directly lobbied the White House.
And so on.
What these numbers should tell us is that even if Jack Abramoff is the frowning face of capital corruption, he is really only a bit player in a larger drama of moneyed special interests buying their way into policymaking pre-eminence.
It may be that we will soon see photos of Bush and Abramoff shaking hands, smiling, looking like the best of friends. But if so, the real scandal is that every time Bush and Abramoff posed for the camera, another hundred lobbyists were probably waiting in the wings for their turn at the very same photograph.
(Lee Drutman, a frequent contributor, is co-author of "The People's Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy.")
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.)
By LEE DRUTMAN
The Providence Journal
14-FEB-06
BERKELEY, Calif. -- In Washington these days there is great speculation about exactly how intimately President Bush and super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff were acquainted.
According to the Associated Press, Abramoff and his associates logged almost 200 White House contacts during Bush's first 10 months in office. Reportedly, Abramoff's personal assistant became a senior adviser to Bush adviser Karl Rove. And Time magazine claims to have seen five photos of Bush and Abramoff that "suggest a level of contact between them that Bush's aides have downplayed."
Not surprisingly, White House spokesman Scott McClellan has pooh-poohed the Bush-Abramoff relationship as nonexistent. "The president does not know him," says McClellan, "nor does the president recall ever meeting him. What we're not going to do is engage in a fishing expedition that has nothing to do with the investigation."
Many people in Washington _ Democrats and Republicans _ are dissatisfied with McClellan's evasions. Calls for fuller disclosure on White House contacts with Abramoff are now coming from both sides of the aisle. Many Democrats see this as a great opportunity for guilt by association, and many Republicans are sure that a little honesty would clear up the misunderstanding and speculation that always surround such scandals.
Yet while I want to know as much as anyone else exactly how involved Jack Abramoff was in formulating White House policy, I am also somewhat sympathetic to McClellan's warnings of a "fishing expedition" _ although for very different reasons. The danger in focusing too much on Abramoff's progress is that it turns this into a scandal about one very bad lobbyist, instead of a scandal about the thousands of lobbyists who spend their days prancing around the White House, sprinkling generous cash donations in choice places, and then making not-so-subtle hints about tax loopholes and energy policy _ mostly perfectly legally.
According to the Center for Public Integrity, over the last six years more than 1,300 registered lobbyists have given more than $1.8 million to Bush. Fifty-two of them were major fundraisers for the Bush campaign. When Bush was first elected, he placed 92 lobbyists on his transition advisory team.
Since 1998, 273 former White House staffers have registered as lobbyists, representing more than 3,000 companies and interest groups (and charging more than $1 billion for their collective time). Since 1998, more than 4,600 companies, trade associations, and interest groups have directly lobbied the White House.
And so on.
What these numbers should tell us is that even if Jack Abramoff is the frowning face of capital corruption, he is really only a bit player in a larger drama of moneyed special interests buying their way into policymaking pre-eminence.
It may be that we will soon see photos of Bush and Abramoff shaking hands, smiling, looking like the best of friends. But if so, the real scandal is that every time Bush and Abramoff posed for the camera, another hundred lobbyists were probably waiting in the wings for their turn at the very same photograph.
(Lee Drutman, a frequent contributor, is co-author of "The People's Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy.")
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.shns.com.)
Whom to knuckle under to? -- Google may be the least of three evils
Lee Drutman: Whom to knuckle under to? -- Google may be the least of three evils
01:00 AM EST on Thursday, February 16, 2006
Providence Journal
BERKELEY, Calif.
Google, that wondrous little Internet start-up whose market capitalization is now roughly twice that of the entire national newspaper industry (depending on its stock price on a given day), created a bit of a stir recently by capitulating to the Chinese government's demands for censorship.
But what made the move especially striking was that Google did so just a few days after -- in an apparent act of heroic civil libertarianism -- it had stood up to the U.S. government's demand for information about all the searches conducted on Google's Web site during one week, plus a random sample of 1 million Web-page searches.
The U.S. government wants the data so that it can determine how many people searched for child pornography during that period. The government hopes that such data will help it build a case for reinstating the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, which in 2002 the Supreme Court ruled to be over-broad, a violation of the First Amendment -- but also sent back to a lower court for an eventual retrial. (The legislation is actually quite restrictive, from a freedom-of-speech perspective.)
But Google is playing hardball. And good for Google. After all, this government fishing expedition for private information is getting frighteningly out of control. Somebody up there is becoming addicted to knowing too much about your private life, and it's about time someone stood up to this.
China, however, is a different story. The government there has a penchant for pretty blatant censorship; it doesn't like people knowing about things like human rights and Tibet and Falun Gong. So any company that wants to operate a search engine for the country's 100 million (and growing!) Internet users has to ensure that those users will not be able to use the World Wide Web to learn about the wonders of democracy.
Not a happy situation for a company that has as its motto "Don't Be Evil."
Predictably, Google's decision to go along with China's censorship did not sit well with folks who value things like "human rights" and "freedom of the press." Reporters Without Borders, the international organization that pushes for freedom of the press, called it "a black day for freedom of expression in China."
Even Wall Street was less than enthusiastic. A UBS analyst told clients, "We are concerned that the inevitable negative PR will damage Google's brand." Indeed, Google's stock price has plunged to around $340 from above $475 a few weeks ago.
Sure, we would expect rival Microsoft to go along with the demands of the Chinese government (as it has done), and the U.S. government (as it has done). But Google -- the company that provides its employees with heated toilet seats and brings delightful doodles to Web searches? How could Google be complicit in Chinese censorship? Could Google, too, be evil?
Okay, let's stop and think. Google is a publicly traded company, with fiduciary obligations to its shareholders (that is, it has a duty to make money). In China, it had two choices: 1) stay out of the fastest-growing economy in the world and a country with one-sixth of the world's population; or 2) give in to the Chinese government and gain access to a giant emerging market.
No matter how much Google wants to spin things, asserting that it's doing a service by providing some information -- which is better than no information -- this was still a stark choice between principles and profits. The potential profits were simply too large to maintain the principles.
In the United States, meanwhile, it is less clear how Google's tussle with the Justice Department will hurt the company's profits. According to court documents, Google argued that in releasing the information demanded by the government, it would be divulging trade secrets (never a good business plan).
Additionally, Google may be betting that a popular stand against the privacy-infringing Justice Department is good for public relations. At worst, the company would face an expensive legal battle. But the chances of Google's being barred from operating in the United States are about zero. (The last time a major American company got its charter revoked was in the mid-19th Century.)
Moreover, underlying the whole debate are three basic facts: 1) There is an awful lot of information available through the Internet; 2) search engines such as Google collect an astonishing amount of personal information on their users; and 3) control of all this information is real power. The Chinese government wants to control content; the U.S. government wants to know what you've searched for. And yet it is Google, the publicly traded gigantic company that knows exactly what you searched for, and gets to filter and rank the world's content, that we seem to trust here.
Perhaps Google really is the least of three evils. Or perhaps it has just done a better job of making us think it is.
Lee Drutman, a frequent contributor, is the co-author of The People's Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy (Berrett-Koehler). He is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of California.
Online at: http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/projo_20060216_16goog.179e639d.html
01:00 AM EST on Thursday, February 16, 2006
Providence Journal
BERKELEY, Calif.
Google, that wondrous little Internet start-up whose market capitalization is now roughly twice that of the entire national newspaper industry (depending on its stock price on a given day), created a bit of a stir recently by capitulating to the Chinese government's demands for censorship.
But what made the move especially striking was that Google did so just a few days after -- in an apparent act of heroic civil libertarianism -- it had stood up to the U.S. government's demand for information about all the searches conducted on Google's Web site during one week, plus a random sample of 1 million Web-page searches.
The U.S. government wants the data so that it can determine how many people searched for child pornography during that period. The government hopes that such data will help it build a case for reinstating the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, which in 2002 the Supreme Court ruled to be over-broad, a violation of the First Amendment -- but also sent back to a lower court for an eventual retrial. (The legislation is actually quite restrictive, from a freedom-of-speech perspective.)
But Google is playing hardball. And good for Google. After all, this government fishing expedition for private information is getting frighteningly out of control. Somebody up there is becoming addicted to knowing too much about your private life, and it's about time someone stood up to this.
China, however, is a different story. The government there has a penchant for pretty blatant censorship; it doesn't like people knowing about things like human rights and Tibet and Falun Gong. So any company that wants to operate a search engine for the country's 100 million (and growing!) Internet users has to ensure that those users will not be able to use the World Wide Web to learn about the wonders of democracy.
Not a happy situation for a company that has as its motto "Don't Be Evil."
Predictably, Google's decision to go along with China's censorship did not sit well with folks who value things like "human rights" and "freedom of the press." Reporters Without Borders, the international organization that pushes for freedom of the press, called it "a black day for freedom of expression in China."
Even Wall Street was less than enthusiastic. A UBS analyst told clients, "We are concerned that the inevitable negative PR will damage Google's brand." Indeed, Google's stock price has plunged to around $340 from above $475 a few weeks ago.
Sure, we would expect rival Microsoft to go along with the demands of the Chinese government (as it has done), and the U.S. government (as it has done). But Google -- the company that provides its employees with heated toilet seats and brings delightful doodles to Web searches? How could Google be complicit in Chinese censorship? Could Google, too, be evil?
Okay, let's stop and think. Google is a publicly traded company, with fiduciary obligations to its shareholders (that is, it has a duty to make money). In China, it had two choices: 1) stay out of the fastest-growing economy in the world and a country with one-sixth of the world's population; or 2) give in to the Chinese government and gain access to a giant emerging market.
No matter how much Google wants to spin things, asserting that it's doing a service by providing some information -- which is better than no information -- this was still a stark choice between principles and profits. The potential profits were simply too large to maintain the principles.
In the United States, meanwhile, it is less clear how Google's tussle with the Justice Department will hurt the company's profits. According to court documents, Google argued that in releasing the information demanded by the government, it would be divulging trade secrets (never a good business plan).
Additionally, Google may be betting that a popular stand against the privacy-infringing Justice Department is good for public relations. At worst, the company would face an expensive legal battle. But the chances of Google's being barred from operating in the United States are about zero. (The last time a major American company got its charter revoked was in the mid-19th Century.)
Moreover, underlying the whole debate are three basic facts: 1) There is an awful lot of information available through the Internet; 2) search engines such as Google collect an astonishing amount of personal information on their users; and 3) control of all this information is real power. The Chinese government wants to control content; the U.S. government wants to know what you've searched for. And yet it is Google, the publicly traded gigantic company that knows exactly what you searched for, and gets to filter and rank the world's content, that we seem to trust here.
Perhaps Google really is the least of three evils. Or perhaps it has just done a better job of making us think it is.
Lee Drutman, a frequent contributor, is the co-author of The People's Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy (Berrett-Koehler). He is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of California.
Online at: http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/projo_20060216_16goog.179e639d.html
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