Sheldon Whitehouse: Clean Out Corporations From Government
Sheldon Whitehouse stepped into the well of the Senate just after Rep. Joe Barton's ridiculous apology to BP and laid out how deeply "corporate tentacles" have reached into our regulatory agencies. Unlike Republicans, his argument was not to argue for deregulation, but to remove corporate influence from regulatory agencies and build a wall between them. His argument was remarkable in its simplicity, passion, and truth.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The scope, the extent, the insidious nature of corporate influence in regulatory agencies of government--this question of regulatory capture--is something we should attend to here. It is the lesson, and it raises the question beyond the Minerals Management Service: How far does this corporate influence reach into our agencies of government?
The wealth of the international corporate world is staggering. The five biggest oil companies just this quarter posted profits of $23 billion--that is a 23 with 12 zeroes behind it--in just one quarter.
Sen. Whitehouse' example of corporate resources available to influence elections puts it into perspective:
The Republican appointees on the Supreme Court just overturned decades of precedent and 100 years of practice to give these big corporations freedom to spend unlimited funds in our American elections.
Put it to scale. Consider $23 billion of pure profits just in one quarter by big oil, and compare: The Obama and McCain campaigns together spent about $1 billion in the last election. Do the math. For 5 percent of one quarter's profits, big oil could outspend both American Presidential campaigns. That may be some politician's idea of a happy day because that is who they work to please, but it is wrong and it needs to be stopped.
He then looks at how deeply that influence is nestled into our agencies right now:
But think, if that is what corporate influence could do in a national election, think of what those vast, powerful tentacles of corporate influence can do to a little government agency such as the Minerals Management Service: Revolving doors to lucrative jobs in the industry so you are set for life; sports tickets, gifts, drugs; constant, relentless lobbying pressure and threats of litigation; steadily inserting operatives in regulatory positions.
Inch by inch, the tentacles of industry reach further and further into the regulator, until it silently and invisibly comes under industry control and becomes the industry's puppet, until it is serving the special interests and not the public interest.
How it happens:
This is no new phenomenon. Marver Bernstein wrote about regulatory capture more than 50 years ago. He explained that a regulator tends over time to ``become more concerned with the general health of the industry and tries to prevent changes which will adversely affect it,'' to become ``passive toward the public interest.'' This, he said, ``is a problem of ethics and morality as well as administrative method,'' and he called it ``a blow to democratic government and responsible political institutions.''
Ultimately, this leads to what he called ``surrender: the commission finally becomes a captive of the regulated groups.'' If you don't want to go back half a century for a discussion of regulatory capture, look to last week's Wall Street Journal editorial page where a senior fellow at the Cato Institute writes: By all accounts, MMS operated as a rubber stamp for BP.
It is a striking example of regulatory capture: Agencies tasked with protecting the public interest come to identify with the regulated industry and protect its interests against that of the public. The result: Government fails to protect the public.
After using the MMS as an example of a "captive agency", he launches into one of the most eloquent and passionate arguments I have ever heard for what our government should be, what good government can do for the people who are governed, and what steps we need to take to return to that standard.
This government of ours, founded in a revolution pledging the lives and fortune and sacred honor of those early patriots; this government of ours, which has raised for more than two centuries the promise of freedom in human hearts; this government that lifts its lamp aloft to brighten the darkness of chaos and despair in far distant corners of the globe; this government, whose finely tuned balance, crafted by the Founders, has seen us through Civil War and World War, through westward expansion and Great Depression, through the light bulb and the Model T and the Boeing 747 and the iPod; this government of ours, formed by Washington and Madison, Jefferson and Adams, and led by each of them, and later led by Abraham Lincoln and by Harry Truman and by Theodore Roosevelt and by Franklin Roosevelt and by John Fitzgerald Kennedy; this American Government of ours should never be on its knees before corporate power, no matter how strong. It should never be in the thrall of corporate wealth, no matter how vast.
This American Government of ours should never give the American citizen reason to question whose interests are being served. Never.In this complex world of ours, government must protect us in remote and specialized precincts of the economy. In those remote precincts, few people are watching, but big money is made. We must be able to trust our government, both in plain view in front of us, and in corners far from sight, to be serving always the public interest, not doing the secret bidding of special interests, of corporate interests because that is where the big money is at stake.
Have we now learned, have we now finally learned, with the financial meltdown and the gulf disaster, the terrible price of all those quietly cut corners? Have we now learned what price must be paid when the stealthy tentacles of corporate influence are allowed to reach into and capture our agencies of government? I pray let us have learned this. Let us have learned that lesson. I sincerely pray we have learned our lesson and that this will never happen again. But let's not just pray.
He concludes with a solution: Clean it up.
In this troubled world, God works through our human hands, grows a more perfect union through our human hearts, creates a beloved community through our human thoughts and ideas. So it is not enough to pray. We must act. We must act in defense of the integrity of this great government of ours, which has brought such light to the world, such freedom and equality to our country.
We cannot allow this government that is a model around the world, that inspires people to risk their lives and fortunes to come to our shores--we cannot allow any element of this government to become the tool of corporate power, the avenue of corporate influence, the puppet of corporate tentacles.
I propose a simple device in this country of laws--not men, of rule of law--and that is to allow our top national law officer, the Attorney General of the United States, to step in and clean house whenever an agency or element of government is no longer credibly independent of the industries and businesses it is intended to regulate.
When a component of government is deemed no longer credibly independent of the corporations or industry it is supposed to regulate, I suggest that the Attorney General be allowed to come in and clean up, hire and fire and take personnel action to ensure the integrity of the personnel; to establish interim regulations and procedures to ensure the integrity of the process; to audit permits and contracts and ensure they were not affected by improper corporate influence, and if they were, to rescind them where they are not in the public interest due to that improper corporate influence; to establish an integrity plan for that component of government, all subject to appropriate judicial review where private rights are affected. Then the Attorney General can get back out, with his or her job done, sort of like an ethics trusteeship or receivership.
And reminds of the damage already done:
If the financial catastrophe and the gulf catastrophe and whatever other catastrophes lurk have any meaning at all, it is that business as usual is no longer enough to stem the tide of corporate influence--insidious, secret corporate influence--in agencies of the U.S. Government. It is an institutional problem--relentless, remorseless, constantly grasping and insinuating corporate influence. It will never go away. It will only worsen as corporations get bigger and richer and more global, and there has to be an institutional mechanism in place to resist it so that it no longer takes a catastrophe to call the failure of governance of an American regulator to proper attention.
Judges recuse themselves from issues in which they have an interest.
Members of the executive branch park their wealth in blind trusts.
But members of congress daytrade stocks in the companies they regulate.
Alyona talks with Thom Hartmann:
Inside Trading Legal for Congress
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
When insanity over takes a country or a party. We had 8 years of the worst people to ever occupy the whitehouse. They did everyting in their power to destroy America and almost succeded.
Get rid of republican in government. They have no morals or honesty and do not deserve a seat at the table!
The Republicans invited the crazies into their party years ago.
The Evangelicals.
The racist Dixiecrats who bolted the Democratic Party after LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act.
The secessionists.
The paranoid "Second Amendment" gun nuts.
Those are just the ones I can name off the top of my head.
And it worked .. for a while.
They put Republicans into key positions of power.
Now it's unravelling for them; it's turned upside down.
The crazies now run the Republican Party.
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
But this is not a Republican problem alone. Look at the Blue Dogs who are captives of corporations. Frankly, Obama's behavior in the health care legislative process also demonstrated that he was more concerned with the wishes of the industry than he was his constituency. The Dems are no better. I am afraid some power shifting as suggested by the speaker in this post is not enough.
The only solution to the influence of corporate power on government is the public financing of elections. That is it. If it doesn't happen, this chaos will continue.
Candideinnc
and I must admit this is the first time I've ever heard of him. That being said you might take a different view of corporate profits if your pension plan was wise enough to invest in these companies. You might actually have a chance to retire. I don't really have a problem with profits per se. The ROI for oil companies is good but not spectacular. The incestuous relationship between regulators and regulated (or not regulated as is lamentably the case) is where Sheldon nails it. That completely and utterly sucks.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
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made his acquaintance, so to speak. This is my idea of a righteous man.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
is speaking out against the concept of profit per se. It's all a matter of where those profits are coming from. Say from that pension plan you mentioned as is quite common. Or from environmental safety, some retirees like their beaches unsoiled not oil covered.
Like Ron White said about hurricanes; it's not that the wind blows it's what the wind blows. It's not that corporations make profits, it's what they do with them. Hell, they're not even spending profits to influence regulators and regulations. All those funds are treated as expenses, the cost of doing business.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
Who the hell has a pension plan? ;-)
For that matter, in the last 10 years or so, my 410k has done nothing but lose money, thanks to the misdeeds of Merrill Lynch (thanks for nothing Eliot Spitzer) and the RepubliCON "economy".
Man, that 401k idea sure solved the problem of retirement planning for us little people. Thanks Plutocrats!!!
They also support disenfranchising voters through various programs, and fling dirt on ACORN, which tries to register minority voters. Have they no decency? AT LAST, have these money-grubbing lawmakers no decency?
out of control. The GOP and its minions like Fox, need to go away until they can purge themselves of all the radicals who have invaded and pirated their party. That goes for the phonies and wolves in sheep's clothing in the Dems, too. "Blue Dog Democrats?" Are you kidding me? I learned from a pro years ago that infiltrating the opposition party was the way to totally corrupt it and own it. It was my first political lesson. Thanks, Don. The man was a genius. He was also a Democrat. He knew how to fight.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. Most so-called 'moderate' Democrats that vote in lockstep with the FAR RIGHT Republicans are in fact part of a vast false flag operation.
When you think about it, it's the dirtiest trick you could play in politics, literally stealing the voters' franchises away from them en masse. Plus it's very cost effective. You can win both the Democratic and Republican primaries in most instances for a fraction of what it would cost to win the general. Then when the election is held it doesn't matter how many funds you raise on either side because either a D-Republcan or an R-Republican is assured to win.
Once elected a D-Republican incumbent is nearly impossible to get rid of -- much like a 'headless nail' embedded in the civil service. Think of Blanche Lincoln or the execrable Joe LIE-berman for examples.
"In theory theory and practice are alike. In practice they are very different."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN1uwboE70c
a Gonzalez like AG with that power. Needs work.
If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.
- Adolf Hitler (R)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lhF4LVGfXg
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
The lies are just as bad as the money. And the two together spell doom to all hope for a government with even some integrity.
until he got to his 'remedy'. As the Attorney General is a political appointment of the President (the party currently in power), what is to prevent him/her from prosecuting the folks who give only to the other party? or who don't give 'enough' to his/her party?
Our government has been in the grip of the elitist, uber wealthy, corpora-fascists for many, many decades. The main difference now, is that all of us peons have access to myriad sources of information, so we who pay attention started catching on a while back. I expect we'll see new efforts to control (or even shut down) the Inter-tubes in the next few years for that reason.
As Obama says, this whole mess is 'complicated' - not the oil disaster, the government disaster. It's taken several decades to get here, it will not be easy to unravel. But, I hope Whitehouse and other concerned members of Congress who still have some integrity will continue to speak out and offer ideas about how
we can All work together to take back America for All of the People.
"Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of Stupidity" - Frank Leahy
The charter of the agency with which I am most familiar, the Federal Aviation Administration, makes it responsible for promoting the safety AND economic strength of the airline industry. That is a built-in conflict of interest. The concept is widespread among regulatory agencies.
Its because our congressmen/senators are brought and paid for. They need to somehow stop companies from being able to take them on exotic golf outings, etc. Stop campaign contributions as well. I know its never going to happen, but unless it does, this stuff will continue and probably get worse.
he would realize that the "U.S government", like all other "governments" of the past 5000-10,000 years, is a magnet to psychopaths and sociopaths. If that has not been corrected in all of those thousands of years, it never will be.
You're right , human nature will never change .The turds rise to the top , dominate and contaminate all .
Insanity , it is what it is , there is no understanding it .
I find it interesting that so very few of the politicos from the Gulf with prominence, neither Democorrupt or Republicorrupt has given a speech like this .. cuz they understand 'ya'll need to go along to get along'..
But of course one of Whitehouse's points was that there is a constant tension within our system between public and private interests.. I suggest that the moral path is to side with what we consider right even when it doesn't look good.. that 'go along to get along' is the way of the turd.
Yeah , like that will ever happen . Save for a few , the politicians ( not only the Repugs and Blue dogs ) are so corrupt they will not let it happen , like voting term limits for themselves ... good luck ! If it were feasible I would love to get the hell out and leave for good , any attachment that I used to feel for this country and " my home " is long gone .
Insanity , it is what it is , there is no understanding it .
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Is BRIBED spelled with a "$1K", "$1M" or a "$1T"?
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Starve the WAR Beast...
... Save the World.
Nothing short of a populist revolution could make this reality. The USA is a Corporate Entity.
SCOTUS sealed the deal in December 2000. The final nail in the coffin of democracy was the bipartisan "Help America Vote (Our Way)" legislation of 2002. The precinct voting booth was replaced with electronic vote manipulation, nationwide -- no established open standards, no proper testing regimen, no possibility of recount, no accountability -- by design.
The winners were the incumbents of both parties and their party machines, the losers were average Joe and Jane Citizen. Democracy in America is dead. A biannual memorial anniversary service is scheduled for early November, 2010. This wake is strictly BYOB ...
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
-- John F. Kennedy
Everything sounds great except for the feeble idea to allow a POTUS appointee to regulate the regulators. Feigned outrage by someone probably trying to kill the possibility of actual reform.
He's a lawyer who actually practiced law. Not all lawyers are weasels. Some have integrity, and take their obligations seriously. I could be wrong, but Mr. Whitehouse seems legitimate and sincere to me. The best person for the job would be an honest lawyer. I have always thought that the best lawyers want to win by being right. That type is very hard to beat.
Sheldon is one of the smartest men in the Congress...bar none.. This logic is so flawless he'll NEVER get a single republican puke to support ONE sentence of legislation Whitehouse may produce..
legislation, he'll be perfect.
it's unlikely that a single republican was a) listening or b) smart enough to comprehend what he was saying...
"I could give a flying crap about the political process.... We're an entertainment company."
- Glenn Beck - Forbes interview; April 26, 2010
"We must act in defense of the integrity of this great government of ours..".
"We" already did, Whitehouse.
On the first Tuesday in November, 2008, "We" fulfilled our part of the bargain.
It must be raining.
Either that, or someone is pissing on my leg.
Who created the corporation and consistently whores out for corporations especially management? As long as the Supreme Corruption is there as a back stop good luck.
but the crying IMO. Barry and his slight of hand is about the last straw for democracy. The big story within the last few days has been how the White House backed off on derivative banking reform and now I see over at Huff Post a report that Blackwater got another hundred million plus contract. Get a grip anyone who thinks Obama is going to make things better, because your delusional.
a 23 with 12 zeros is 23 trillion.
Are we reaching Critical Mass?
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010...
now if he just mentioned the AHIP written health care bill
or the bank written financial reform bill
etc...
It's nice pie-in-the-sky boilerplate, but the reality is that the US Government exists in order to serve business interests in this country and elsewhere. You can't expect the foxes guarding the henhouse to give up their power. Only revolution or cataclysm will fundamentally change anything.
the harsh punishment of the politicians, public officials and corruptors who have subverted an office or agency. The Senator is right, but he must realize that the entirety of Congress (not to mention the White House and the Extreme Court) are captive entitites. None of them, or the entities they control, any longer exist to serve the People. They exist, by and large, to serve a plutotocracy and to create a fascist/totalitarian state that the Plutotocracy requires in order for it to function and prosper. They will not allow any of these institutions, or the government agencies and offices they control, to be cleaned up. It isn't going to happen, not if there is anything at all they can do to prevent it.
Effectively, we have 3 choices left to us.
Choice #1, we can call a Constitutional convention run by citizen appointed delegates to produce the several amendments it will take to overcome the influence and power of the corrupt and subverted institutions. amendments that must be produced and ratified, include specific and permanent denial of the status personhood and the rights pertaining thereto to anything other than human beings born into this world, a mandate that congress shall be the only financier of elections at any level or scope in the US, establish a mandate that the only legal way to conduct any business in front of Congress is through public hearings and petitions where any closed door activities will be a felony. Further adopt an amendment that equates any kind of gifts or donations to any elected or appointed government official as a bribe wherein the giver and the receiver are punished using the harshest penalties at law. Adopt anotheramendment allowing any government official, most notably Supreme Court judges to be removed from office by simple majority vote of the public, for any reason that can garner a simple majority; such voting to take place under citizen petitoned national referendums. Make nother amendment spelling out the differnce between legitimate journalism and propaganda, wherein propaganda is fraud and antisocial behavior subject to criminal prosecution(free speech is protected, fraud is a crime). Reinstate the original practice of limiting the term of existence of any corporate charter to no more than15 years or so, requiring approval of the community for renewed approval of articles of incoporation, contingent upon demonstrated good that the corporation does the community in which it exists; also designate any corporation that moves headquarters or jobs off-shore as foreign corporations who shall pay extreme customs, etc. Establish term limits through another amendment, politics should not be a career, it should be a service and a duty that is reluctantly undertaken. Adopt yet another amendment that denies Congress the ability to delgate away it's obligation to declare war using such illegitimate devices like was powers resolutions. Adopt another amendment that allows no administrative or executive office, department or agency to exist for longer than 20 years without ratification to allow further existence being granted directly by the People through national referendums, to be held every 20 years for any such entity; any entity that fails to garner a simple majority in any referendum would then be immediately disbanded, and it's role would not be permitted to be assumed by any other agency, pending specific enabling legislation. Enact another amendment abolishing the Federal Reserve, and explicitly making a central bank unconstitutional, including the Fed's bogus fractional reservre system; permanently return those function to the government; nationalize all banking and finance. Term limits. Make it illegal for congress, the courts or the President to fashion any law, issue any exectutive order or produce any finding or decision that pproduces things like the Patriot Act, "Homeland" security, the military commissions act, FISA, and the like. Consider abolishing the Senate. The list is long, and it is certain that Congress will never work to straighten out any of this mess. It is too far gone, too corrupt, to subverted.
Choice #2, we can have another revolution and settle thing on the battle field. Not good option, but when government become willfully and resolutely unresponsive and indifferent to the will and desires of the people, it kind of drastically narrows the options for getting things done.
Choice number 3, accept the rule of oligarchs and plutocrats and allow ourselves to transformed into the subjects they require, instead of the citizens we should be. Passively watch as America becomes Amerika, a totalitarian and repressive fascist state. We're steadily heading in that direction now, in a peicemeal fashion. We will certainly get their if nothing is done.
Just my two drachmas' worth.
At least there's still a few people out there telling the truth...
Sheldon exist in government. His solution is not
a concrete one though, needs work. Can we rally around this
speech? Could we actually get the public to listen
and react to it?????
It won't be popular, but Thomas Frank (The Wrecking Crew) outlines the problem... the revolving door. If a bureaucrat will do industry's bidding at a regulatory agency he/she can then cash out for a great salary in the industry (or lobbying business.)
The only solution to the problem is to make government employment a lifetime career track that makes individual government bureaucrats at least as wealthy on a personal basis as the people they supposedly regulate.
This requires that you either regulate industry salaries (unlikely) or tax industries at a level sufficient to create enormously high government salaries, so that a qualified person can look forward to decades of lucrative employment as a regulator of an area of the economy.
Government cannot succeed if it is a second best career.... as it has been for decades. It MUST be a place where the smartest most ambitious people go for careers and where they are rewarded at a level sufficient to keep them there throughout their lives.
How do you pay for it? Simple: you tax the salaries and stock dividends of the regulated at a level sufficient to pay the regulators the same salary. You pass a salary equivalence law that pegs salary rates in government to the salary/benefits/stock options that are provided to people in the private sector of the industry.
People in oil industry regulation must be enormously well paid, or they will be corrupted by the possibility of future employment. On the other hand, people regulating other less lucrative sectors may not need to be as well paid, unfortunately. But whatever it takes to make government a career, regulation a calling, you do. You pay for it, and the people who can do it... or you get what we've got, regulatory capture and corporate kleptocracy.
Of course with Congress already captured by industry, good luck passing such sensible laws.
The solution is public funding of elections and consecutive term limits. That would address both the demand and supply side of government prostitution.
I have no idea how that would address regulatory capture... but if it makes sense to you, go for it.
More and more (see Olbermann's exodus from Daily Kos and the widespread dissension at Democratic"Underground") Democrats of principal are growing disgusted with the abysmal and embarrassing boot licking of childish Obama worshipers and the clear and deafening two-faced act that is the Democratic Party apparatus.
Democrats feigned helplessness as a minority and continue to as the majority for one reason and one reason only--they are owned. Well meaning and sincere Congressional Democrats can be counted on your fingers. They pose little to no real threat to corporate domination of the entire Federal system.
With every passing day of this supposed Hope & Change administration it is ten steps forward into corporate domination and one step backward for people who vote and work. People who have the wisdom to see this and have seen it for the last decade are only just now inching forward and growing in number.
It remains to be seen just how far, how bad, how much destruction and how much backroom deals will have to continue before a critical mass of outrage and a commensurate response to this invasion takes place--or if it ever does.
America is in deep trouble, I know the sky is still blue and the birds still sing but so did they as planes flew into the World Trade Center. All of the signs are present. All of the information is available. The question is, do you care? Do you believe? Will you act?
http://TheFrankFactor.com
Aggressive Progressive and Vertebrate
Hear! Hear!
We are now owned by corporations and its now just a race to the bottom for the rest of us.
Clean Elections.
Imagine the damage Alberto Gonzales (or Karl Rove through Gonzales) could have done if he had this power.
This would be funny if it was not so serious.
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/871.html
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