Occupy Campaign Finance Reform

For tactical reasons, the Occupy Wall Street movement is disorganized. That has made it difficult for them to come up with goals that can be agreed to by a majority of those involved in the movement. One issue, though, is gaining wide acceptance across the Occupy movement. Opposition to "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission" and an advocacy of Campaign Finance Reform in general is increasingly advocated by the Occupy movement.

The ire is understandable given the focus of the Occupy movement. In the corporatist collusion between big business and big government, they focus on the business half of the partnership. The goal, as it is forming, is to prohibit all third party campaign activities. The target is Super PACs as well as corporations, and when pressed on the issue there is grudging agreement that unions are covered as well. The only form of donation that would be considered acceptable would be directly to the campaign.

Although the intent is good this will achieve the exact opposite of the desired goal, making it quite the same as every preceding campaign finance reform law. Those pushing this particular change are not well versed in economics, especially the law of unintended consequences, in spite of how the history of campaign finance law is a glaring example of it in action. Ever preceding law was put in place to reduce the importance of money in politics, and money is now more important than ever in politics. The Super PACs are the end result of a long line of those laws.

The basic campaign finance reform law is a limit on how much an individual can donate. This would prohibit the wealthy from bankrolling a candidate at the expense of the masses. What actually happens is that it shuts out competing views. Suppose there are two parties, one fifty times larger than the other. While both would benefit from a few big contributions, only one would benefit from many small contributions because it has the donor base to do so.

One might think that this would therefore encourage those who want actual change to work within the party to tap into that fundraising machine, but the party leadership controls who the party helps. The leadership will then share mailing lists and donor lists with candidates the leadership likes. This has the effect of binding candidates tightly to the party.

A way around the tight control of party leadership was developed, the PAC and then the Super PAC. And the solution to the problem of money in politics is to eliminate the only way left that actual advocates of change might use to get elected? The end result of this is something else that is also suggested often, full public financing of campaigns. When pressed on how someone would qualify for that financing, the suggestion was made of petitions, which would be recruited by the party binding the candidates even more closely to the party.

The way to eliminate the Super PACs and to reduce the influence of money in politics is to eliminate the cause. That means removing all the campaign finance laws that led up to the point where the only way outside of the tightly controlled system is by people pooling their money in PACs. People forget that a campaign donation is indeed a form of political speech, and it was political speech in particular that was supposed to be protected by the freedom of speech clause of the first amendment (the freedom of religion clause covered religious speech).

That does not mean that only the rich would have a voice, contrary to the claims of those who cannot imagine another way of doing things. Just as attempts to limit money have increased its importance, removing the limits would decrease its importance giving more people a greater voice in the political system.

The Progressives Did It to Themselves

It is a rather humorous take on Occupy Wall Street - the corporations control the government, so therefore we need more government to control the corporations. It would seem to indicate a flaw in progressive thinking, if the goal of progressivism was to regulate the economy for the benefit of the people.

But a look at history, when liberals and progressives were considered to be something different instead of today's misunderstanding which considers them the same, reveals a different picture of what progressives stand for and why.

When the so-called "Gilded Age" gave way to the "Progressive Era" the succession of William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft show the actual motives of the progressives, and why they actually sought to increase government power in spite of claims that it was for the good of the masses.

A significant portion of United States history can be explained by the conflict between the Rockefeller family and the Morgan family, with each family backing political candidates. The goal was to use the government to attack the interests of the other. Theodore Roosevelt was sponsored by, and acted for, the Morgan family. William McKinley and William Howard Taft were candidates of the Rockefeller family.

With all three, the appeal was made to give the government more regulatory powers, while the motive was to use those powers to attack the interests of the other family.

Libertarians and progressives both have a product to sell, and the target audience of both is liberals. Right now progressives are the more successful salesmen. They know how to frame their ideas in terms that appeal to liberals. They are able to frame the issues more successfully, because control for the sake of control isn't a liberal value.

The combination of Occupy Wall Street and Ron Paul preparing to face Barack Obama in the general election has thrown the whole issue of progressivism's true values into sharp relief. It is getting harder and harder for progressives to sell their poisoned product to liberals, and that is why progressives really are more terrified of libertarianism than ever before and so staunchly oppose the candidacy of Ron Paul.

To Be a Real Radical

It disconcerts progressives to learn that libertarians enjoy and appreciate Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. For a very long time they have tried to equate the term "progressive" with "radical" - but only sometimes - to try to portray their demands as daring, avant-garde, leading edge, or in some other way innovative.

For an example of this viewpoint, just peruse any comparison of the Occupy movement and the Tea Party movement that is written by a progressive. Libertarians understand that the two movements, when at their best, are very nearly identical in meaning. The demands of those Occupiers that are less appealing to libertarians are the same demands progressives have been making for decades, and are considered "revolutionary" by the progressives commenting on the Occupy movement.

From a progressive point of view Saul Alinsky is supposed to be "left" and libertarians are supposed to be "right," whatever those terms mean. Plus libertarians support capitalism, therefore libertarians "can't be radical," ignoring the many and profound differences between corporatism and capitalism.

This must be made clear: the twentieth century was the century of government. That means advocating government is advocating what currently exists. That means there is nothing radical about seeking governmental solutions to society’s problems.

Everything that the progressive has to offer is a governmental solution to society's problems. Their only defense of that single track argument is to engage in the fallacy that if the government is not acting then nobody is acting to solve those problems.

The radical wants something different from the status quo. The conservative is comfortable with the status quo. The political and economic situation of the United States is a mix of mercantilist and Keynesian economics with a near-limitless government. The status quo is "progressive," and that means progressives are not only conservatives, they are arch-conservatives.

The real radical doesn't support more of the same. There are real radicals in both the Occupy movement and the Tea Party movement. Anyone who claims that one is good and the other bad is in support of "keep them divided" and thus in support of the 1% of the population that is composed of elected and appointed government officials with actual power - the real ruling class. The real danger is that the radicals in each movement might discover a common cause with each other.

The Occupy Wall Street Tea Party

Watching the activities of Occupy Wall Street is quite like watching the history of the Tea Party played at high speed.

Both movements started out grass-roots, comprised of a diverse range of ideologies. Both are spurred by the excesses of the collusion between the banking system and the government and the abuses contained therein, and therefore have appeal to libertarians. Both started under presidents that it is assumed the movements would support. Both were ignored by the media at first, until the country's political leadership decided it was time to co-opt the movement by sending in a stooge to claim to be in charge of and represent the movement. Both have a big name partisan speaking for the group, Michael Moore as the analogue to Sarah Palin. Both are being fully Astroturfed, with the Tea Party being taken over by theocons and Occupy Wall Street being taken over by unions.

Whereas this is working faster, Occupy Wall Street has already reached certain end conclusions that took the Tea Party years to achieve. Already leaders have appeared to present lists designed to discredit any participants who aren’t amenable to being steered in an appropriate direction. Given the two party paradigm, the effort is to shoehorn them into the Democratic Party.

Apparently the Tea Party proved to be a lesson for those in charge. It was ignored too completely, and became an actual movement before there was an opportunity to capture it and control it. Diligent work was required by Sarah Palin and Glen Beck in order to slowly co-opt the movement, and for a while there was a strong conflict between the "Sarah Palin faction" and the "Ron Paul faction" over control of the Tea Party. Even then the Tea Party did partially steer the 2010 mid-term elections, although they did “deliver the vote” as required by the Republican Party,

The Tea Party movement was ignored for one year, and it took two years to tame. Clearly the political elite do not want to go through that again. After ignoring the Occupy Wall Street movement for one week and determining that it is not going way, they moved in quickly to ensure that this movement doesn’t get away from them. Until then, the Democrats finally have their own Tea Party to go to.