JERRY BROWN ON THE CAMPAIGN MONEY HEARINGS
That's the Way I See It"
The hearings in Washington on the campaign money system will
probe into the so-called China connection, into the violations of campaign
laws. But they are just a diversionary tactic. When they're over, I predict
the result will be no different than after the Watergate scandal when the
President himself had to resign from office. Right after the "reform"
of Watergate, Reagan and Bush committed perjury, obstructed justice, and
got away with it. They were not deterred by what happened to Nixon and the
prison sentences imposed. They were not deterred insofar as the government
integrity is concerned and observance of the Constitution and the oath of
office.
After seven years, Special Counsel Lawrence Walsh-a prosecuting official,
a Republican, a person Nixon himself was favorable to-came up with a very
clear finding that Reagan knew about illegal arms sales to Iran, in fact,
committed an illegal act, an impeachable offense. Edwin Meese then organized
a meeting with Casper Weinburger, George Schultz, and others, and they prepared
the lies, the deceptions, the perjuries, the coverup. The media and the
Democratic and Republican parties went along with the Iran Contra coverup,
went along with tearing up the Constitution for those illegal arms sales.
Now, they tell you that's history. But today the Clinton administration
will not respond to the Honduran government's request to disgorge CIA documents
that implicate certain generals and other individuals in Honduras and human
rights violations including murder and torture. So there's a complicity
in the White House in abetting crimes against human beings, a continuing
coverup. The money game is just another aspect of the Big Lie.
These reforms are really ways to strengthen the very abuses that they purport
to be correcting. That is the real irony here. The hearing on the China
money connection strengthens the system by focusing on interesting and exciting
and exotic detail without getting to the heart of the matter. The heart
of the matter is the way politics and government are organized. Those who
succeed are those who've learned to sell themselves, to lie, to carry on.
No proposed minor or major change will have any impact on anything.
What we have here is a profusion of information, a torrent of data. Tracking
down the money flow doesn't make a difference. There's so much of it that
nobody can digest it. If you are on Internet, you can go to the Center for
Responsible Politics for more articles. If you print them out, you'll fill
an entire paper box. It's all the money given to all the members of Congress,
all the donors from all the different sectors.
I compare this stuff to the labeling on cigarette packages and on the billboards.
You're told what's happening, and it doesn't make a damn bit of difference.
We know cigarette smoking causes cancer, but it's still addicting people.
The meta-message inside is strong enough to get a third of the U.S. people
smoking and addicted, not to mention all the people in foreign countries.
Analogously, we have the information about the bribery, about the criminal
behavior of the Congress, the President, the Republicans, the Democrats,
and still-even though it's right out in front of our face-it doesn't make
a damn bit of difference the way it's all contextualized. It's business
as usual.
Many people believe that American politics can be cleaned up through investigation
and amendments to the laws of Congress or the federal code. But no conceivable
law is going to make a difference. There's a great deal of focus now on
soft money, the money that goes to the parties. The parties can use this
money in ways expanded by interpretations of the Federal Elections Commission,
which is really just a barking dog for the President and for the old bulls
in Congress. It really doesn't protect the people, it just makes a lot of
noise. Even if you eliminate soft money, it would not alter the fact that
the Political Action Committees-the $1,000 donors, the $25,000 donors to
the party-are legal.
One percent of the American people give amounts greater than $200-adding
up to a vast sum, the key impact of political influence on the government
itself. That one percent is in the driver's seat. That one percent is going
to be there without any soft money at all. It's built into this system with
Congress, with the elections, with television, with the computer, with mailings,
with the post office, with the elections every couple of years, with the
two-party system-it's all interlinked. So by cracking down on soft money,
they can buy many more years, if not decades. But I predict they're not
going to eliminate it-they'll just restrict it. Maybe in ten or twenty years,
with a new bunch of scandals and maybe a few presidential impeachments,
they might eliminate soft money, but they would still have the $1,000 donors.
They would still have the independent expenditures. Only a constitutional
amendment would bar that.
Whatever way you look at it, money is in charge, and that money represents
the increasing subversion of democracy by the corporate global system. Corporations
cannot directly give the regular $1,000 checks, but in the real world, it's
people-presidents and CEOs and boards of directors and managers-who have
the megabucks and are prepared to give them and to engage in all sorts of
financial activities by way of lobbying, by way of public relations campaigns,
by way of funding think tanks, by way of funding all sorts of experts who
then appear on television, which itself is owned by the same narrow but
very powerful corporate interests. The money system undermines any reasonable
meaning of democracy and actually prospers by the prosecution of a few people
on the outer fringe who get caught-a Rostenskowski who spends a year or
two in jail because of some money he took, or a few people who are going
to go to jail around the Clinton business. The way the wrong-doing by the
White House will be examined in the hearings will totally divert attention
from the wrong in the system, the larger reality of money and power controlling
and subverting democratic reality.
Here's a point from the website of Center for Responsible Politics. Nine
out of every ten U.S. House candidates who won at the polls in the last
elections spent more than their opponents. And nearly eight out of ten Senate
candidates who won at the polls spent more than their opponents. So there
it is. If you spend more, your chances are 9 out of 10 or 8 out of 10 that
you are going to win. Nobody in power can get there without mortgaging themselves
to the tune of several million. That's what a campaign requires. Unless
we alter some key conditions, it's not going to change.
In the early seventies, I proposed that free television be made available
in TV spots and that privately paid-for TV spots be banned, but the FCC
didn't even dignify my petition with a response. Far more modest proposals
have been essentially laughed out of Congress. Why would a mafia in charge
of the most powerful machine in the world willingly yield? Certainly democratic
rhetoric or the pious propaganda provided in the schools is not going to
weigh against the hard reality of billions of dollars flowing to Boeing
or to Gallo or to General Motors. A lot of companies that do business in
China are spending all the money needed to buy Clinton and the Congress.
Let's look at the conclusion of the first day of the Thompson hearing-the
high-level Chinese government had a plan to influence U.S. politics. So
what? We've got a plan too. The U.S. has been running campaigns to influence
politics and spend money in Nicaragua, in El Salvador, in Italy earlier
in this century after World War II. There are literally dozens and dozens
of examples of the United States breaking the law, spending money in political
campaigns around the world. If it is a serious matter that the Chinese are
trying to influence and funnel money into our campaigns, what about the
U.S. policy of doing the same thing? Does the United States get to do what
it doesn't believe anyone else can do? Is that the policy? Or is it the
policy that the American people will be lied to, will not be told that the
tactics being condemned when done by the Chinese, are the same tactics adapted
and employed by the United States? If that's the case, then there's no credibility.
Certainly the Chinese can't take it seriously, and other countries can't.
I don't think any American citizen can take it seriously either.
It is against the law for a foreign donor to give money to an American campaign;
therefore some people can be arrested for that. So what? Where's the credibility
when the same thing is being done in Central American countries by the United
States? We know, for example, in the NAFTA effort that went on for a couple
of years, the Mexican government, through various intermediaries-the Mexican
Chamber of Commerce, the hiring of American law firms, public relations,
artists, and all the rest-literally pumped an identifiable $25 million into
influencing Congress. So there is a foreign influence. We know that Israel
through the APAC committee, which is American-run but very much influenced
by the interests of Israel, has a tremendous impact on American elections.
Tens of millions of dollars are being spent. Even if technically, as far
as we know, the laws are being upheld, it's still the same kind of influence.
You can look back to South Korea, you can look back to Indonesia, and on
and on. You will find that power is for sale in the American system and
in democracies all over the world. Look at the scandals in Italy, look at
the scandals in Japan, look at the scandals in Mexico, look at the scandals
in Spain. The way politics is organized-even under the so-called banner
of representative democracy, the party system, and all the rest-money buys
power, even though as a principle, that is condemned.
There was a great to-do about reforming the law for campaign spending and
the Federal Election Commission-all that Watergate reform stuff-and here
we are: the issue of money in politics is bigger than ever, in part, precisely
because so much of it is out in the public. Some hearings in Washington
may fool you into thinking that the problem is secret money. No, the money
is there for all to see. You can go to the Center for Responsible Politics
and find every donation, just like you can find that cigarettes cause cancer.
Knowing the facts doesn't stop it because of the absolute pervasive quality
of this particular system. Through the glut of information we're actually
deprived of an intelligible opportunity to reflect and consider and curb
what's going on.
The way the system is organized, the reforms are like perfume-they cover
over the odor of corruption, but they don't get at the heart of the beast.
The beast is institutionalized greed. Through the aggregate power in a few
hands, it kills democracy. Unless you can break up big aggregates of power,
or otherwise hold them open to great accountability, all these little reforms
are just very sophisticated ways of bolstering the system.
I'm talking about how we're governed, and what we ought to understand if
we're going to reclaim power over our lives and our neighborhoods and our
communities. We need to delegitimize by our conversation, by our behavior,
this grand illusion. Until these people own up to exactly what's happening,
they don't deserve any kind of serious support or respect. The news, the
conversation about national events, is mostly diversionary movies. We ought
to be focusing on what's in our grasp, those things closest to us which
are subject to impact.
I haven't given up hope here. There's still space to do a lot of things
in society. At some point, the legitimacy of those who rule can be undermined,
and if there's a vigorous neighborhood and local political culture, positive
change can result. It's going to take a restructuring of government itself,
a devolution of power to localities, stripping from the federal government
the power that it now enjoys.
There's so much news now, so much information-the glut is part of the coverup.
In fact, it's the essence of the coverup to overwhelm people, to discourage
anyone except experts from knowing what's going on. Instead of trying to
keep up, we have to unplug and support a dismantling when the time is right.
There's too much power in Washington and in the corporations. We don't get
at the influence that exacerbates the inequality and wrecks the environment-the
two central problems looming over the country. Our prosperity itself is
now linked to the corruption and the oppression. We need to alter that structure
by becoming more self-sufficient, by working where we are, by being in a
position to support a more decentralized kind of future when the crisis
comes. I believe we are in a plateau, the calm before the storm. A lot is
happening. We want to keep our eyes open and prepare for the change
Material for Jerry Brown's article was excerpted and edited by NCX, with
permission, from Jerry Brown's "We the People" radio broadcasts..
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