Corruption

Captured Government’s Increasing Irrelevance Shows #Occupy’s Importance

Dave Johnson — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 06:05:17 -0400

Our captured political institutions make themselves increasingly irrelevant by not addressing the problems of the 99%. Each day we see more examples of our government being "captured" by and serving the interests of the top 1% against the rest of us. Even as more and more people take to the streets in protest, Washington ignores We, the People, continuing to serve only the top few. Here are just a few examples, just from this week, showing what our 1%-captured government is doing even as the 99% of us protest.

Lobbyists Tell Senate To Keep Unhealthy School Lunches

This week the Senate sided with lobbyists and voted to block science-based recommendations protecting our kids’ health. The Dept. of Agriculture had proposed a rule promoting healthy food for kids in federally-subsidized school lunches, limiting starches and increasing healthy vegetables served to increasingly obese kids. But as always happens now with our goverment, lobbyists swarmed and the Senate voted to block the science-based health rules. Senate votes for unlimited potatoes in schools,

Amended was a spending bill that includes dollars for the Agriculture Department. The House passed a similar bill earlier this year including language that would ask the department to rewrite its school lunch rules entirely. Republicans have singled out the potato proposal in criticizing the rules, saying the government shouldn't be dictating what kids eat.

Yep, there it is again: Republicans saying that corporations, not government, should be making the decisions. And they tried to deflect people, saying this is only about "potatoes" to make it sound silly and delegitimize science. Continuing,

"USDA's proposal was about helping kids to eat a very wide variety of vegetables and I think that point has been lost in all this," said Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest, which pushed for the standards. "Other vegetables have a hard time competing with potatoes."

This is about our kids' health! But the Senate votes with the lobbyists. What is wrong with us that this can happen in our country? But this is just the kind of thing we have come to expect daily from DC.

Fed Caputured By Big Banks

It's not just Congress that's captured. This week the Fed is letting Bank of America transfer the risk of derivatives onto taxpayers. This is a stealth bailout, moving an unknown amount of risk onto the books of a government-insured entity. Business Week explains, in Bank of America Bosses Find Friend in the Fed,

Bank of America, which got hit with a credit- rating downgrade last month by Moody’s Investors Service, has moved an undisclosed amount of derivative financial instruments from its Merrill Lynch unit to its biggest commercial-banking subsidiary. The latter is loaded with insured deposits and has a higher credit rating than Merrill or the parent company.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is objecting to the transfers. That part is easy to understand: More risk for the retail lender means more risk for FDIC-insured deposits, which ultimately are backstopped by the U.S. government.

... Shifting the derivatives to the commercial lender may let Bank of America avoid collateral calls and termination fees stemming from the rating downgrade. Some Merrill clients may prefer having their contracts with the higher-rated unit. In short, the Fed’s priorities seem to lie with protecting the bank-holding company from losses at Merrill, even if that means greater risks for the FDIC’s insurance fund.

If these derivatives go bad and the FDIC runs out of money, guess who has to pay up. Hint: It's us, the 99%, not the 1% at the top of B of A. This kind of thing is why people are in the streets. And even with people in the streets, it still happens.

Settling Instead Of Prosecuting

This week the government "settled" fraud charges against Citibank – with no criminal charges for the fraud. The "punishment" was for Citibank to pay a $95 million fine, plus restitution of some of the defrauded amount, amounting to a tiny fraction of a single quarter's profits. This "settlement" was not even the first time Citibank was allowed to "settle" for fraud committed during the runup to the crash. NY Times: Citigroup to Pay Millions to Close Fraud Complaint,

Citigroup on Wednesday agreed to pay $285 million to settle a civil complaint by the Securities and Exchange Commission that it had defrauded investors... The transaction involved a $1 billion portfolio of mortgage-related investments, many of which were handpicked for the portfolio by Citigroup without telling investors of its role or that it had made bets that the investments would fall in value.

... Neither the S.E.C. nor the Justice Department would say whether the case raised questions about whether Citigroup had been involved in any criminal wrongdoing. But the case highlights a growing frustration felt by foreclosed homeowners, investors and Wall Street protesters alike that few, if any, senior banking executives have faced criminal charges for losses growing out of the financial crisis.

Slaps On Wrists

Also this week a former Senate Republican staffer, caught in the Abramoff lobbying/payoff corruption scandal received … wait for it … a whopping 5 hours jail time for his crimes. (Note – he did cooperate with prosecutors.) As a Republican Senate staffer he traveled to the Mariana Islands with Abramoff, and received other payoffs, then became a lobbyist.

Not Just Government

Those are just a few examples of our esteemed government in full-capture operation from just this week. But it isn't just our political institutions that are captured. Our major media has been captured -- purchased actually -- by a very few giant corporations.

Here is just one example of what that corporate control means. In a democracy the public needs accurate information, so they can make the right choices. But our corporate-owned major media does not provide the information that a functioning democracy demands.

Last week Republicans in the Senate filibustered the President's "jobs bill." The filibuster didn't just block the President's bill, it blocked the Senate from debating any jobs bills. But media coverage of the filibuster avoided informing the public that Republicans had again used the filibuster to obstruct action.

Here are a few examples of America's corporate media avoiding informing the public that Republicans filibustered the jobs bill that the public overwhelmingly approves of. Note as you read these headlines that a majority of the Senate voted for the bill, which was filibustered.

"Turned Back" - NY Times: President’s Jobs Measure Is Turned Back in Key Senate Test
"Stalls" - Politico: Obama jobs bill stalls in Senate
"Rejects" - ABC News: Senate Votes to Reject Jobs Bill
"Kills" - Time: Senate Votes to Kill Obama's Jobs Bill"Votes Down" - USA Today: Senate votes down Obama's $447 billion jobs package

So voters are fed enough information to decide that "the Senate" rejected, killed, stalled, rejected the bill -- not that the Republicans filibustered it. That would be "too much information."

Ignore We The People, Occupy Results

Last week, in Washington Ignored The People, And Now You’ve Got #Occupy, I wrote,

What did the politicians in Washington think would happen? They forgot about the "We, the People" part of our Constitution. After bailing out the banks and bankers and interests of the top 1% they fiddled while our jobs burned and mortgages defaulted. With people losing their incomes, pensions and healthcare they worried about deficits instead of jobs and cut back on essential services. They smugly spouted slogans at us and thought we'd be fooled and pacified. People voted for change and they didn't get change. And now people are in the streets.

Over at naked capitalism, the post David Graeber: On Playing By The Rules – The Strange Success Of #OccupyWallStreet explains the importance of #occupy. Please read the whole thing if you have time - this is history.

After all, how could there have been a more perfect alignment of the stars than happened in 2008? That year saw a wave election that left Democrats in control of both houses of congress,[5] a Democratic president elected on a platform of “Change” coming to power at a moment of economic crisis so profound that radical measures of some sort were unavoidable, and at a time when popular rage against the nation’s financial elites was so intense that most Americans would have supported almost anything. If it was not possible to enact any real progressive policies or legislation at such a moment, clearly, it would never be. Yet none were enacted.[6] Instead Wall Street gained even greater control over the political process, and, since Republicans proved the only party willing to propose radical positions of any kind, the political center swung even further to the Right. Clearly, if progressive change was not possible through electoral means in 2008, it simply isn’t going to possible at all. And that is exactly what very large numbers of Americans appear to have concluded.

Is Scott Walker John Doe?

Mary Bottari — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 20:43:00 -0400

Wisconsin has been riveted in recent days by reports that more of Governor Scott Walker's top aides may be implicated in a secret "John Doe" investigation into potentially illegal campaign practices during Walker's 2010 gubernatorial race. Although the investigation has been underway for at least a year, recent revelations that the governor's spokesperson has been granted immunity and that another top aide had her house raided by the FBI, has the state abuzz with speculation about the target and scope of the investigation.

Governor's Spokesperson Mum

Mum's the word for Walker Press Secretary Cullen Werwie. When the story broke that he had been granted immunity in the ongoing investigation back in April, Werwie had no comment.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that former Appeals Court Judge Neal Nettesheim, who is overseeing the investigation, acknowledged that he had granted immunity to three people, Werwie, a railroad lobbyist and low-ranking Republican official. Werwie joined Walker's campaign after the September 2010 primary and stayed on when Walker was sworn in as governor. His involvement moves the investigation directly into the governor's office and into a more recent time frame than previous revelations.

"It is a big deal," Milwaukee criminal defense lawyer Stephen E. Kravit told the Journal Sentinel. "He recognizes he's got (criminal) exposure and he negotiated for a proffer to get immunity, and that's a big deal."

FBI Raid

The latest news comes on top of the September 14 raid on the home of another top Walker aide, Cindy Archer. About a dozen FBI agents and other law enforcement officers descended and seized boxes of materials. Archer's neighbor said FBI agents also confiscated a hard drive he bought from her at a garage sale a few weeks ago.

Archer is at least the third Walker aide to have computers seized as part of the investigation led by Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, who has a track record of locking up politicians on similar charges. Chisholm has apparently been investigating whether county staffers in Walker's office did unlawful campaign-related work while at their county jobs. Before he was governor, Walker was the Milwaukee County Executive and Archer was a top aide running his county Department of Administration.

In multiple media interviews, Archer has denied any knowledge of the John Doe proceeding and has denied any wrongdoing. Similarly, Walker has also denied any knowledge of the investigation telling a local news channel, "We don't know what exactly is involved there until we know any more." But the governor's campaign has retained former U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic.

The investigation has resulted in at least one conviction. In April, Walker campaign contributor, William Gardner, president and chief executive officer of Wisconsin & Southern Railroad, pled guilty to felony violations of Wisconsin campaign law. In January, Wisconsin & Southern Railroad's Ken Lucht was also granted immunity.

Apparatchik Archer

Until very recently, Archer was Deputy Secretary of Administration (DOA) under Secretary Mike Huebsch. In Wisconsin, Huebsch is the second most powerful man in state government after the governor. The DOA not only runs the state, it was the chief architect of Scott Walker's "budget repair bill," which was introduced February 11 and stripped public workers of their collective bargaining rights.

Emails obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy demonstrate that Archer played a key role with the DOA "Swat team" in preparing the policy and organizing the "contingency planning" for public reaction.

In one email from February 7, Archer instructs Walker Cabinet Secretaries on how to deal with possible protests: "We have talked about external building security for employees entering and exiting our buildings. If the situation warrants, you should be prepared to limit the number of entrances and exits you have open in your buildings. In the event you experience problems (unruly picket lines, harassment of incoming employees, blockage of your entrances,) you should call 911. We will rely on local law enforcement to assist us." The DOA's decision to lock down the capitol and limit access for months after the protests was the subject of litigation.

Disappearing Staff

In her DOA job, Archer made about $124,000 a year, but in mid-August she mysteriously quit to become a lower level "legislative liaison" at the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families. Now it is becoming clear that the new job was organized by the governor's office. She will be paid $99,449 a year -- $39,129 more than the $60,320 the last person to hold the job made -- a 65 percent increase. Nice work if you can get it.

Archer has not yet shown up for her new job and is apparently using some of her banked sick leave from a previous stint with state government to take some time off. But all is not well in the Walker inner-circle. This week, it was revealed that Walker administration lawyers petitioned the courts to withdraw an affidavit filed by Archer in a lawsuit brought by the unions against the collective bargaining bill. Apparently, Scott Walker no longer agrees with her sworn testimony or no longer has faith in one of his chief lieutenants.

Archer joins other top Walker aides that have quietly slipped off the radar including Tom Nardelli, Walker's Chief of Staff when he was County Executive who gave up his job in the state's Division of Environmental and Regulatory Services at the end of July. According to one criminal defense attorney, "everyone in the state is lawyering up."

The drip drip drip of daily revelations has the state abuzz. All will be watching to see if Werwie will be at work on Monday or if he too will find himself suddenly feeling unwell. Perhaps Walker's inner-circle will reconsider their homicidal opposition to good benefits for public workers.

Paul Ryan On Limited Government

Joseph M. Firestone — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 00:23:31 -0500

In my last two posts I reviewed the deficit reduction aspects of Paul Ryan's Republican response to the SOTU. But Ryan also placed considerable emphasis on the idea of “limited government” in his response. In this post, I want to evaluate what he had to say on this theme.

So I’d like to share with you the principles that guide us. They are anchored in the wisdom of the founders; in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence; and in the words of the American Constitution.

They have to do with the importance of limited government; and with the blessing of self-government. . . .

We believe, as our founders did, that “the pursuit of happiness” depends upon individual liberty; and individual liberty requires limited government.

I find myself in complete agreement with this position; but I think it raises a very big issue, and that issue is: in exactly what ways ought the Government to be limited? Unfortunately, the Constitution doesn't tell us that in a completely clear way. It leaves it up to us to figure it out. So let's see what Congressman Ryan thinks about this issue?

Limited government also means effective government. When government takes on too many tasks, it usually doesn’t do any of them very well. It’s no coincidence that trust in government is at an all-time low now that the size of government is at an all-time high.

There are a lot of factors that determine the effectiveness of Government. It's pretty clear that Government won't be effective if it's badly led and managed. So, since 1977 we've seen that Government wasn't very effective in many of its functions when managed by Ronald Reagan and the two Bushes. I wonder why. Could it be that these Republican Presidents wanted Government to be effective in the various areas of Government activity established by legislation they disapproved of?

It's also clear, that Government won't be effective if the people chosen to lead intend for it to perform poorly. So, when the Republicans have appointed Secretaries of Labor who were anti-labor, it's not surprising that the Labor Department performed poorly. Nor is it surprising that when they appointed people to head the FCC, or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that the work of these agencies suffered. Or take the EPA, the Republicans keep appointing EPA Directors who are opposed to environmental regulation. Clearly, they are there to stop the Government from performing not, to manage its enforcing the law.

As to the Government having too many tasks to do anything very well, it's quite clear that the size of the Government is not as important as the size of the units of Government performing the tasks it needs to perform, and as the communications among units that need to coordinate to perform tasks well. Also, whether units perform well is a function of the resources available to the units performing particular tasks.

For years Republicans and, to a lesser degree, Democrats, have been trying to shrink the Government, so that much of its work, has to be contracted out to the private sector. Of course, this introduces incentive problems, and also communication problems which interfere with both efficiency and effectiveness. There is no evidence that this policy of shrinking Government's permanent civil service employees, and contracting out to the private sector has been either less expensive for the Government, or more effective than Government operations in the 1950s and 1960s, which used many more civil service employees, and fewer private contractors to perform Government's work. In fact, it's likely that contracting out has been far more expensive and less effective than the old way of doing things, because private contractors have a tendency to stretch out work, and continue it as long as they can so that their billings are extended.

In any event, the size of the Government doesn't necessarily correlate with effective performance. We can see this by comparing national governments across the World. Many nations spent more, and some far more, as a percentage of GDP than the 34.6% the United States spent on Federal, State, and local Government in 2007; for example: France; Sweden, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Norway, The Netherlands, Austria, Finland, the UK, Germany, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Switzerland. Arguably all of these Governments performed more effectively than the US Government in that year. But, even if you don't believe that, it's hard to deny that they performed at least as well.

On the other hand, many nations that spent more on Government as a percent of GDP than the US, performed much more poorly than we did. My point is that there is no clear, strong, correlation between nations whose Governments are obviously effective, and nations with a particular size of Government, and certainly there is no empirical evidence that smaller Governments work better than larger ones.

Finally, the size of Government, viewed in terms of Government spending as a percent of GDP, is not at an all time high relative to the rest of the economy. It was larger in WW2 for one thing. For another, its recent increase is due to the effects of the recession and additional Government expenditures made to combat it.

Trust in the Government may be at or near an all time low, but that is due to the failures of the Bush Administration, the crash of 2008, and the Federal bailout of the banks without a corresponding bailout of Main Street. That is, the Federal Government hasn't performed very well, in large part due to the role of the Republicans, including Congressman Ryan, in opposing the passage of Government spending sufficient to create full employment, and in supporting the continued bailout of the banks, the payment of undeserved bonuses to FIRE sector personnel, and in opposing investigations of the mortgage and accounting control frauds that have put so many out of their homes.

This lack of trust, isn't due to too much Government action, and won't be fixed by Mr. Ryan's preferred policies of ineffective, or no regulation of the FIRE sector and fiscal austerity. On the other hand, it may be fixed by an effective Federal Job Guarantee program, a Federal Revenue Sharing program saving state and local jobs, a payroll tax holiday for employers and employees including Federal reimbursement of the Social Security account, ending the wars in the Middle East quickly, and passing a Medicare for All bill

The President and the Democratic Leadership have shown, by their actions, that they believe government needs to increase its size and its reach, its price tag and its power.

What planet does Congressman Ryan live on? The Democrats have done very little to increase the size of Government. The measure of that is that Federal Government spending as a percent of GDP is still extremely low compared to National Government expenditures by the nations mentioned earlier, and has only risen about 5 percentage points from Bush Administration levels.

In addition, the President, much to his discredit, has done all he could to keep Government expenditures revenue neutral or revenue positive, beyond expenditures for defense, and increases in social safety net expenditures resulting from the recession. His health care reform bill is a disgraceful attempt to bailout the insurance companies without taking them over, because he would not entertain Medicare for All.

We believe a renewed commitment to limited government will unshackle our economy and create millions of new jobs and opportunities for all people, of every background, to succeed and prosper. Under this approach, the spirit of initiative – not political clout – determines who succeeds.

Millions of families have fallen on hard times not because of our ideals of free enterprise – but because our leaders failed to live up to those ideals; because of poor decisions made in Washington and Wall Street that caused a financial crisis, squandered our savings, broke our trust, and crippled our economy.

The history of America is largely the history of extending initiative from the economic sector to politics and gaining advantage in both sectors. We've seen that with the railroads, the steel and oil industries, coal, the mass media, telecommunications, the software industry, the FIRE sector, and most other industries that have scaled the economic heights in this country. There is no way to separate economic initiative from its extension into politics. The idea that these two can be separated is a myth.

So, unfortunately, as much as we would like to believe that a company's success in America has nothing to do with politics. It, most often, is intertwined with either favorable political conditions, political influence, or both. Congressman Ryan knows that very well because he, and his Republican and Democratic colleagues, are the recipients of attempts to fix the political system, so that certain private sector businesses can profit. So, I don't know whether Congressman Ryan thinks that's the “spirit of initiative” or not. But I think it's just as much, if not more, about buying political clout.

Ryan goes on to blame Washington and Wall Street for decisions that caused the financial crisis. I certainly agree; But I also think that the wrong decisions made by Washington include de-regulating of Wall Street so that the spirit of “free enterprise” reigned supreme. That happened during the Clinton Administration under the influence of Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, and then the Bush Administration saw to it that the SEC would not enforce the inadequate regulations that still remained. Unregulated “free enterprise” produced unprecedented accounting control frauds and bubbles in the Real Estate markets which eventually led to the crash of 2008. Then the Obama Administration bailed out the banksters/fraudsters and until now has refused to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators, while moaning about how we have to look forward and not backward.

Meanwhile, Paul Ryan is responding to all this by telling us that we need to back off regulation of the private sector, and that will make everything all right. But anyone with an ounce of common sense knows that the only thing that will clean up the banking system, and restore public faith in it, is cleaning up the frauds and punishing the people responsible. Why isn't Paul Ryan calling for that if he wants people to have faith in “free enterprise” again? He needs to keep in mind that there's no freedom without responsibility and accountability, and that his prescription, and that of the Republicans is to put responsibility and accountability aside, and to let working people bear the burden of the failings of the Wall Street FIRE sector and the corrupt Congresses and Administrations that failed, and still fail, to regulate them.

Finally, Congressman Ryan's plea for a return to limited Government would be far more credible if he were as much concerned about limitations on the size and intrusiveness of Government when it comes to privacy, civil liberties, rights of habeas corpus, protections against torture, and the right to a speedy trial, as he is about the non-existent rights of businessmen to subvert markets through fraudulent activity hiding beneath the skirts of the ideal of “free enterprise. He would also be much more credible in his concern for liberty, if he were concerned that “necessitous men, are not free men,” and were willing, in the interests of liberty, to strengthen, instead of weaken, the social safety net by making its provisions as generous as the safety net in other civilized nations. He would, further, be still more credible, if his concern for liberty were great enough that he would support Medicare for All, so that employees in the United States would no longer be tied to jobs that they don't like, and were free to move to other employment without having to worry about interrupting or degrading their health care coverage.

He would, further, be even more credible, if his concern for liberty extended to providing a Federal Job Guarantee to everyone who wanted to work, so that they had the freedom to do so. And he would, finally, be even more credible that that, if he recognized that liberty is not about small sized Government or big Government, but is, instead, about Government that is the right size, to do those things that will maximize the liberty of as many people as possible in our nation. It's about recognizing that the liberty of individuals is often in conflict, and that you can't maximize liberty by giving some people (big business people and FIRE sector people) complete economic liberty from any reasonable rules, when that means removing or restricting the liberty of many or most of the other people in the United States, by chaining them to the wheel of extreme economic insecurity.

Government does need to be limited, but only a simpleton can fail to recognize that its limits have less to do with its size, and much more to do with its having processes that are just and fair and maximize liberty, rather than processes which enshrine arbitrariness, favoritism, exposure to political influence, and special favors for one group, placing them above the law. If Congressman Ryan understood that it is not about size, but about justice and activities that maximize liberty, then he would be worth listening to when he talks about limited Government, and his Party would gain the trust and honor among the American people that it has not had since the time of Teddy Roosevelt, and before that Abraham Lincoln. But don't hold your breath waiting for that understanding to happen. It's just not in the DNA of the 21st Century Republican Party.

(Cross-posted at All Life Is Problem Solving and Fiscal Sustainability).

And The Door Revolves . . .

Zach Carter — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 14:24:32 -0500

Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.C., is almost certain to be chairman of the Senate Banking Committee next year, once current chair Chris Dodd, D-Conn., is out of office. Johnson has never had a good reputation with consumer advocates, in large part because he's opposed nearly every piece of legislation designed to thwart predatory lending.

That perspective is not likely to change with his chairmanship. Johnson just hired a top bank lobbist named Dwight Fettig to be a "senior policy adviser." Fettig's clients included some of the chief scumbags that wrecked the economy, secured epic bailouts, and opposed financial reform: the American Bankers Association, JPMorgan Chase, the National Association of Mortgage Brokers and the Vanguard Group hedge fund. Prior to peddling influence on behalf of the too-big-to-fail gang, he was the top "government relations" man at Freddie Mac. During the housing bubble.

By hiring Fettig, Johnson is sending the clearest signal possible to Wall Street: I've got your back.

This isn't Fettig's first trip through the revolving door. Before entering the bank lobby, he worked as a Johnson aide in the House.

So the bad news is, Congress is totally corrupt. The good news? It already was.

UPDATE:

And hey! Obama's former Budget Director Peter Orszag just joined Citigroup! It's really pretty sick. The Republicans just spent an entire year promising to give Wall Street whatever they wanted on anything, but the public still thinks it's the Democrats alone who are in bed with Wall Street. This is why.

This also is not the Office of Management and Budget's first turn through the revolving door this year. The current director, Jack Lew, made $1 million running Citi's Alternative Investments unit into the ground.

The political optics here are just horrible. Obama is pushing a tax cut deal that provides huge benefits for the super-rich . . . as his former budget director take a job as Vice Chairman at Citigroup, thus joining the ranks of the super-rich.

Merry Christmas, Wall Street.

Campaign Cash: Tea Party Vows To Block Campaign Finance Reform

Zach Carter — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 11:21:46 -0400

Welcome to the final edition of Campaign Cash, which tracked political spending during this year's midterm elections. Stay tuned for more reporting on money in politics from members of The Media Consortium. To see more stories on campaign funding, follow the Twitter hashtag #campaigncash.

Anonymous millionaires just helped elect dozens of ultraconservative congressional candidates, by pumping millions of dollars into national Tea Party organizations. And guess what's at the top of the legislative to-do list for those same Tea Party groups? Blocking campaign finance reform legislation.

As Stephanie Mencimer explains for Mother Jones, one of the nation's largest Tea Party organizations, the Tea Party Patriots, is already coming out guns-a-blazing against any lame duck effort to crack down on secret corporate spending in elections.

And with good cause. The Tea Party's appeal, after all, is based on its populist, grassroots image. If anybody knew that secret right-wing millionaires were bankrolling the entire operation, the "movement" would lose its luster.

But whether reformers are able to force front-groups to disclose their donors or not, the broader effort to eliminate undue corporate influence from the political process will take years.

Welcome to the plutocracy

The Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission allowed corporations and deep-pocketed elites to spend unlimited amounts electing politicians of their choosing. So long as those expenditures are funneled through a front-group, nobody has to know who is buying an ugly attack ad or why. Instead ads are sponsored by groups with a innocuous-sounding names like "Americans for Prosperity" or "Americans for Job Security." Nobody knows who ultimately foots the bill.

In organized crime, this process is called "money laundering." And everyone is getting in on the game, from the Tea Party to Karl Rove to U.S. Chamber of Commerce. As Bill Moyers explains in this Boston University lecture carried by Truthout, it's ravaging American democracy.

Rove, other conservative groups and the Chamber of Commerce have in fact created a "shadow party" ... We have reached what ... former Labor Secretary Robert Reich calls "the perfect storm that threatens American democracy: An unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the top; a record amount of secret money flooding our democracy; and a public becoming increasingly angry and cynical about a government that’s raising its taxes, reducing its services, and unable to get it back to work. We're losing our democracy to a different system. It's called plutocracy."

That, ultimately, is what is at stake with campaign finance reform. Can democracy continue to serve as a check on elite power? Or will America simply dance to the tune played by the super-rich. Citizens United made an undemocratic mess of this year's election—but the influence of corporate cash is not going to simply melt away. Without serious reforms, the very concept of American elections will become a quaint, naive relic of the past.

Wall Street wins big

And while the plutocracy plainly organized itself against Democrats in this election, democrats have not exactly been strangers to corporate largesse. As Laura Flanders emphasizes for GRITtv, while President Barack Obama occasionally offered rhetorical rebukes against the Wall Street establishment, so far as public policy was concerned, he rarely did anything to ruffle their feathers. Obama continued the Bush bailouts, praised the executives of firms would eventually be investigated for fraud as "savvy," and aimed pretty low on financial reform. But as Flanders notes, all those favors didn't end up helping either Obama or his party on Nov. 2:

Having soaked up the government's largesse, those banksters repaid Obama by pouring millions of anonymous dollars into defeating Democrats.

It worked. The most vocal Wall Street critics in the House and Senate—Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) were bombarded with attack ads courtesy of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Now they're gone, along with the Democratic majority in the House.

Last-ditch effort on campaign finance reform

As Jesse Zwick emphasizes for The Washington Independent, Congress can still limit the damage in the coming months before the officials elected last night take office. A modest law that would require corporations to disclose their political expenditures and force front-groups to publicly identify their donors would help limit the damage.

After that, as Moyers emphasizes, it's a long, hard fight.

But wait! There's more.

Andy Kroll at Mother Jones notes that Rick Scott didn't really need money from outside groups to buy the Governor's race in Florida. He did it himself.
Jason Hancock reports for The Iowa Independent that outside groups spent more than $1 million to oust judges that ruled to legalize same-sex marriage in Iowa.
John Nichols and Richard Kim of The Nation talk to GRITtv's Laura Flanders and Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman on the midterm results, and what to expect from corporate expenditures in 2012.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the mid-term elections and campaign financing by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit The Media Consortium for more articles on these issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

Campaign Cash: Citizens United Becomes Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card for Corporate Criminals

Zach Carter — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 11:06:04 -0400

The votes are in, and while some close races are still being tallied, there is a clear winner from the 2010 elections: Secret corporate cash.

Such unaccounted for political donations may end up allowing those accused of wrongdoing to go free. As Joshua Holland details for AlterNet, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission may have provided a lifetime supply of get-out-of-jail-free cards to corporate criminals.

The Kentucky senate race serves as a prime example. The Democratic candidate, Jack Conway, is currently Kentucky’s attorney general. Conway is also currently prosecuting a nursing home for allegedly covering up the sexual abuse of one of its residents.

But that nursing home is owned by Terry Forcht, a millionaire who gives prodigiously to right-wing causes. He poured money into Karl Rove’s organization, American Crossroads GPS, which ran ads backing Conway’s Republican opponent, Rand Paul. Guess who came away with the victory last night?

As Holland emphasizes, the mid-term elections are just how the first phase of the justice system’s corruption plays out. Eventually the mere threat of attack ads could be enough to prevent needed prosecutions. Corporate bigwigs could literally get away with murder, and pay for it only through attack ads.

Think this is bad? Just wait for 2012

As David Corn details for Mother Jones, the Supreme Court’s ruling has put American democracy in grave danger. This year’s big spending is just a warm-up for the 2012 presidential election. Karl Rove has already pledged to keep running attack ads after the mid-terms, and there’s no doubt that he’ll make good on that. As Corn emphasizes, this issue doesn’t just affect how campaigns are financed—it will permanently reshape the very nature of American elections.

The permanent, neverending campaign will become even more permanent and neverending. These big-and-secret-money groups will be working 24/7, opposing and discrediting President Barack Obama and the Democrats in the so-called off-year and then revving up for the 2012 presidential and congressional elections. The negative ads never have to stop.

That, ultimately, is the major take-away from last night's elections. Not the number of seats Republicans picked up in the House, or the Tea Party’s ability to infiltrate the Senate, but the formal incorporation of American politics. With literally no limits on the amount of money they can spend to influence elections, corporations and secret billionaires are going to be tipping the democratic scales wherever they smell profit.

That means it will be much, much harder for politicians of any ideological stripe to solve society’s problems. The richest corporations have the most political purchasing power, and the companies with the most money are those that have thrived under the status quo—however destructive that state of affairs may be to society at large. This money will go to keeping things the way they are—not toward creating jobs, improving education, expanding access to health care, stopping ecological catastrophe or anything else.

Citizens United 101

We spoke with Jesse Zwick of The Washington Independent about the nuts and bolts of Citizens United and secret campaign cash. In the below video, Zwick details the potential impact of secret money—and how citizens and legislature can curb the effects of this historic ruling.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vscG2X7fRVY[/youtube]

Bare-bones, anti-Citizens United legislation might still have a shot

So what can be done? Earlier this year, Republicans successfully filibustered legislation that would have forced corporations to disclose their political spending and require front-groups to divulge the identities of their donors. But as Jesse Zwick emphasizes for The Washington Independent, there’s still one more opportunity to push a bare-bones version of the bill through Congress. Democrats will retain their broad Congressional majorities until January 2011, when the candidates elected last night formally take up office. If Democrats see which way the corporate wind is blowing, they’ll flex their political muscles one last time to get a disclosure bill through Congress. There are many things that people are reluctant to do in public that they have the political right to do. If lawmakers can remove the anonymity from corporate and elite political spending, some of the Citizens United damage could be reversed.

If not, 2012 is going to be even uglier than last night.

But wait, there's more!

Amie Newman of RH Reality Check reports that a last-minute mailer funded by outside group The Citizens for Responsible Spending attacked Washington state Sen. Rodney Tom, citing his pro-women's rights and pro-LGBT positions. Tom ended up losing his seat last night.
California upheld its environmental protection law by defeating Proposition 23, despite the fact that oil companies funneled nearly $10 million to pass the measure, reports Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones.
As Dave Gilson details for Mother Jones, outside spending worked overwhelmingly in favor of Republican candidates in key races.

Campaign Cash: Why Conservative Attack Ads Won't Stop After Election Day

Zach Carter — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 12:08:16 -0400

Today is the first election in American history in which corporations have been allowed to spend their own money to buy political favors. This legalized corruption comes courtesy of the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which injected massive amounts of corporate cash and unprecedented levels of secrecy into American politics.

And all of this crazy corporate spending will not be restricted to elections. That's right. As Jesse Zwick reports for The Washington Independent, two front-groups founded by GOP strategists Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie plan to keep running ads attacking Democrats well after the elections are over.

As Zwick emphasizes, this is actually a way to help keep one of the organizations, known as American Crossroads GPS, from breaking the law. Many groups that spend money on elections register as 501(c)(4) organizations, which must devote no more than half of their activity to political operations. In return for limiting their political activity—advocacy or condemnation of specific candidates—they don't have to disclose who their donors are. So groups like American Crossroads GPS plan to run "issue ads" focusing on the budget deficit and immigration reform this fall to balance out the ads directed at specific candidates that they've already run.

Under the Citizens United ruling, so long as corporations or wealthy elites launder their political expenditures through a front-group, they can give as much as they want without ever being held publicly accountable. But the high court’s decision also allows these front-groups to keep their actual expenditures secret as well. It’s not just that we don’t know who is funding them—in many cases, we also don’t really know what they’re funding.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce's foreign dues

The secrecy surrounding anonymous donors may very well extend to foreign corporations. As Harry Hanbury emphasizes in this video for GRITtv, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—a lobbying front-group for the largest American corporations—is facing heavy scrutiny over is foreign contributions. Nearly $900,000 in annual dues to the Chamber come from foreign firms, and the Chamber aggressively courts foreign donors who might benefit from weak U.S. laws—particularly environmental laws. The Chamber insists that it’s playing by the rules, but Hanbury catches them lying twice about the nature of the group’s foreign funding.

California's environmental laws for sale

Corporations aren’t just targeting federal elections to influence public policy. As Tara Lohan explains for AlterNet, big oil companies have financed a campaign to repeal California’s carbon emission reduction law. Two major polluters—Valero and Tesoro—have spent a combined $7 million boosting the repeal, while Koch Industries—a major Tea Party funder—has kicked in about $1 million as well. A full 70 percent of the $10.7 million that has been spent to bolster the anti-environment ballot initiative has come from out-of-state sources.

Even the Tea Party's worried

When the Tea Party Patriots received an anonymous $1 million donation for get-out-the-vote efforts, left-wing bloggers weren’t the only people upset about it. As Stephanie Mencimer reports for Mother Jones, some of the Tea Party Patriots’ own members were nervous: Who was funding this operation, and where was the money going?

We’ll probably never know, because the Tea Party Patriots aren't legally obligated report their donors or expenses. The group has only disclosed $15,000 worth of expenditures of the $1 million donation, $10,000 of which was re-granted to another organization run by the father of Tea Party Patriots leader Mark Meckler. The remainder is anybody’s guess.

But wait, there's more!

Writing for In These Times, Sam Ross-Brown highlights a potential legislative solution to some of these campaign finance shenanigans. The Fair Elections Now Act would limit individual campaign contributions to $100, and match them by a factor of four-to-one, increasing the spending power of ordinary citizens and helping to level the distorted playing field created by Citizens United.
Kate Sheppard of Mother Jones details who got hit the hardest this election season in the final push leading up to Election Day: Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) got some of the biggest expenditures. This year also smashed previous campaign expenditures, coming in at $443 million.
Suzy Khimm reports on voter intimidation tactics for Mother Jones from a McDonald's fast food franchise in Ohio's 16th district. Employees were told to vote for Republicans or their wages would go down. McDonald's may have been emboldened by Citizens United even though such tactics are still clearly illegal.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the mid-term elections and campaign financing by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit The Media Consortium for more articles on these issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

Campaign Cash: Corporations Get More Power, Political Parties Get Less

Zach Carter — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 10:44:41 -0400

War chests from right-wing billionaires and corporate titans are funding tremendous portions of political activity, from the so-called grassroots activism of the Tea Party to the streamlined lobbying assaults of the nation's largest corporations.

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court's wildly unpopular ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, secret election financing by elites is exploding, even as the public visibility of such electoral purchasing power evaporates.

Corporations get more freedom as political parties get less

As Jamelle Bouie emphasizes for The American Prospect, election funding from political committees and non-profits is already up 40 percent from 2008 levels. But the oft-cited the liberation of the corporate purse was accompanied by less-well-known constraints on political parties themselves. While corporations like Wal-Mart and Bank of America are free to spend as much as they want attacking or promoting specific candidates, the political parties themselves cannot.

As Bouie notes, this scenario further rigs the electoral game in favor of the wealthy and corporations. Candidates who know that their party can't help them out become even more dependent on corporate cash during elections. And while few entities are less popular right now than the Republican and Democratic parties, they are ultimately accountable to their voters. They reach out to a broad array of individuals across the country, while corporations merely advance their own interests.

Political parties—however imperfect—can serve as a check on such destructive corporate influence. Citizens United has made that check much weaker. As Jesse Zwick emphasizes for The Washington Independent, political parties used to dominate independent election spending. This year, for the first time, thanks to Citizens United, front-groups and corporations have taken the lead.

The Tea Party "grassroots" movement is anything but

Billionaires are on the attack, exploiting campaign finance loopholes to prop-up phony "grassroots" political movements. The most egregious—and successful—effort has been waged by David Koch, a long-time GOP fundraiser who is now backing major Tea Party organizers. Koch is the executive vice president of Koch Industries, Inc., which refines and distributes petroleum and other raw materials.

As Adele Stan details in her latest in-depth expose for AlterNet and The Nation Investigative Fund, Koch has found ways to funnel money to the Tea Party in just about every way imaginable. But it's most sinister maneuver was the establishment of two right-wing front groups that keep their donors anonymous. After Citizens United, we'll never know how much money Koch is funneling to the Tea Party, and his front groups—FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity—provide the same cover for other elites.

How much cover? Americans for Prosperity brags that they'll spend at least $45 million on the 2010 elections, while FreedomWorks plans to throw in another $10 million.

As Stan emphasizes, these two groups are the major organizers of all things Tea Party. They provided logistical organizing for Glenn Beck's 9/12 rally, held over 300 rallies against health care reform and hosted "voter education" workshops pushing the glories of deregulation to anyone who would listen. They even have an unofficial partnership with Fox News, hosting conservative Fox personalities at their rallies, which are, in turn, promoted by Fox programming. Glenn Beck is even featured in advertisements and fundraising pitches for FreedomWorks.

The anonymity provided by Koch's front-groups is critical to the Tea Party's appeal. In popular media, the Tea Party is often described as a grassroots coalition of ordinary, mad-as-hell citizens. That image is hard to sustain in the face of a wildly expensive top-down campaign orchestrated by billionaires. As Stan explains:

The armies of angry white people with their "Don't Tread on Me" flags, the actual grassroots activists, are not the agents of the Tea Party revolt, but its end users, enriching the Tea Party's corporate owners just as you and I enrich Google through our clicks.

Of course, Koch isn't the only man operating anonymous front-groups. The Citizens United decision allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts of their own cash directly influencing elections. But so long as that money is laundered through a third-party, they can keep these expenditures out of the public eye.

Oil giants dominate U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Nobody has exploited this loophole more aggressively than the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a lobbying clearinghouse for the nation's largest corporations.

The Chamber doesn't just rely on domestic donors. It also accepts cash from dozens of foreign corporations. As Kate Sheppard explains for Mother Jones, no less than 14 foreign oil giants belong to The Chamber, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual dues alone. This is important, because as sweeping and destructive as Citizens United was, it did not grant foreign corporations the right to spend on U.S. elections. There's nothing xenophobic about that—it's a U.S. election, after all, and foreign firms don't have to live with many of the social and ecological consequences of U.S. deregulation. The Chamber insists it has accounting devices in place to separate its funding and keep its operations within the law, but so far, it hasn't explained how these work.

But ultimately, as Sheppard and her MoJo colleague Nick Baumann note, the influence of domestic corporations on the American political process is equally sinister as foreign corporate influence. If the narrow interests of a U.S. corporation hijack our democracy with campaign war chests, that can be just as bad as subjecting our democracy to the whims of a foreign corporation. Whether the Chamber's foreign funding follows the letter of the law or not, the organization is still running a destructive campaign to further entrench corporate power in our political system—and shield those same corporate titans from public accountability.

And the existing campaign finance regulators aren't even enforcing the meager laws that do exist to curb legalized bribery. As Jesse Zwick explains for The Washington Independent, three recent appointees to the Federal Election Commission have waged an all-out war to mire the agency in gridlock, preventing it from cracking down on straightforward abuses. President George W. Bush actually named former Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX)'s campaign finance lawyer to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC). His term has expired, but getting new FEC commissioners confirmed by the Senate in the face of Republican filibusters appears nearly impossible. So Delay's lawyer, Donald McGahn, is still working to keep campaign finance laws from being enforced, and succeeding.

Democracy is not a corporate bidding war. Corporate cash belongs in the board room, not the voting booth.

Campaign Cash: How Citizens United Will Change Elections Forever

Zach Carter — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 12:39:45 -0400

Undue corporate influence over U.S. elections has been a serious problem in American politics for decades, but this year's Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission made things worse. Worst of all, we may never know the extent of the damage.

Citizens United freed corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money backing specific political candidates, and without congressional action, those expenditures can be completely anonymous. Major corporations are already capitalizing on the new legal landscape by the millions, and the public doesn’t really know who is buying what influence or why.

That's why The Media Consortium will be carefully watching the effects of this ruling in the run up to this year's midterm elections. Every day through Nov. 4, we'll bring you some of the best independent reporting on the effects of corporate spending in an attempt to measure just how widespread the effect of Citizens United will be on this—and the next—election. Keep your eye on "Campaign Cash" as we follow this issue in the coming weeks. If you want to tweet about it, use the hashtag #campaigncash.

The impact of Citizens United

As Harvard University Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig explains in an interview with The Nation’s Christopher Hayes, the Citizens United v. FEC decision represents one of many ways that corporations buy political favors.

Prior to the ruling, companies couldn’t spend money to directly advocate the election of a particular political candidate during election season. They could form Political Action Committees (PACs) to support or attack specific candidates, but those PACs had to be funded by individuals who worked for the company and couldn't be funded from the corporation's treasury directly. The executives of Goldman Sachs, for instance, could band together to form GoldmanPAC and spend their money on whatever candidates they wished—and many corporate employees exercised that right and spent freely on elections through their corporate PACs.

Now corporations can spend as much as they want and actual corporate funds—not just organized individuals—can also be deployed, making massive amounts of corporate cash eligible for political purchasing.

But the scariest part of Citizens United, as Lessig emphasizes, is the money that isn't spent. That is, if a firm makes it known that they are willing spend millions of dollars to fight any politician who opposes them on a particular policy issue, representatives and senators might begin changing their voting behavior in Congress before the company actually has to put up the cash.

And ultimately, Citizens United didn’t just legalize unlimited corporate expenses on elections. It also allows those expenses to be anonymous. If companies launder their political cash through a front group, that third-party spender doesn’t have to disclose who its donors are.

This isn't your local Chamber of Commerce

As Harry Hanbury details for GRITtv, this laundering scheme is essentially the business model for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce-- a lobbying powerhouse in the nation's capital. Don’t be fooled by its name—the U.S. Chamber has almost nothing to do with the local small business coalitions who help strengthen local economies.

As Hanbury notes, 40 percent of the U.S. Chamber’s 2008 funding came from just 26 corporations. The group represents many of the nation’s largest and most irresponsible corporations, from those responsible for the financial meltdown on Wall Street to BP, the company that spilled millions of barrels worth of oil in the Gulf this summer. The Chamber's branding allows them to disguise their political as a coalition of local businesses while it does dirty work for corporate titans.

When BP was publicly promising to do everything in its power to fix the massive oil disaster it created in the Gulf of Mexico, it was also funneling money to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And what was the Chamber up to? It was lobbying furiously to protect BP from new rules that would force the company to pay for oil disaster clean-up. The Wall Street banks did the same thing as financial reform legislation moved through Congress, and companies never have to disclose these expenditures to the public.

So it’s no surprise that the Chamber responded to Citizens United by immediately announcing a 40 percent boost in its political spending operations. So much corporate money then flowed into the Chamber that the group chose to boost this budget again by 50 percent, allocating $75 million for its 2010 war chest. So far, the Chamber’s ads have favored Republican’s 93 percent of the time. No entity spends more on politics than the Chamber—not even the political parties themselves.

Corporations top the list of big election spenders

But while the future of corporate spending in campaigns looks bleak after Citizens United, corporations are still barred from contributing directly to political campaigns. A company might take out a television ad attacking Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), but it can’t make unlimited contributions directly to Grayson’s challenger, Republican Dan Webster.

Nevertheless, corporate employees and company PACs have already been spending lavishly on elections for decades. In a feature for Mother Jones, Dave Gilson compiles the 75 biggest political spenders, both companies and trade groups, from 1989 through 2010, and breaks them down by industry. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley are all among the top 20 most extravagant political spenders—but the American Bankers Association, a trade group that all four belong to, is also in the top 10. If you’re wondering how Wall Street was able to secure its massive taxpayer bailout in the face of widespread voter outrage, this is your answer.

To soften the Citizens United blow, Congress has been debating the Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act, which would require companies to disclose all of their political expenditures as well as requiring front-groups like the Chamber to list the identities and amounts of its donors. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Christopher Van Hollen (D-MD) and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), cleared the House this summer but was stymied by a Republican filibuster in the Senate.

Undoing the damage dealt by Citizens United through something like the DISCLOSE Act will help, but it won’t make our democracy totally safe from corporate abuse. As Lessig notes, the day before the decision was handed down, U.S. election financing was already encouraging rampant corruption and in need of serious reform.

Lessig suggests banning political expenditures by corporations altogether, and placing a hard cap on the amount that individuals can contribute. By limiting individual donations to $100, the ability of corporate PACs to funnel cash into the political process would be thwarted.

Wall Street's Tea Party

Zach Carter — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 15:33:24 -0400

The Tea Party likes to wrap itself in "grassroots" contempt for wealthy elites, but the 12 leading Tea Party Senate candidates have accepted over $4.6 million in campaign contributions from Wall Street for the upcoming election.

Despite all the Tea Party rhetoric against big, bad bailouts, the leading candidates have had no problem accepting millions of dollars from Big Finance to further their electoral prospects. Every single candidate has taken money from what the Center for Responsive Politics characterizes as the FIRE lobby—finance, insurance and real estate—a category that includes all of the big financial interests who benefited from the Wall Street bailout.

A full tally of Wall Street contributions to the Tea Party's Senate team is below, but some of the Tea Party's biggest figures have been top recipients: Pennsylvania candidate Pat Toomey, Florida hopeful Marco Rubio and Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., have all brought in over $1 million each, while Washington candidate Dino Rossi has pulled in more than $750,000 from Wall Street.

This orgy of Wall Street funding stands in stark contrast to many of the candidates' campaign postures. Toomey, in particular, has been vocal about his supposed outrage over the Wall Street bailout, but didn't mind raking in almost $1.2 million from Wall Street to fund his campaign. Toomey worked in the derivatives business on Wall Street for years before jumping through the revolving door into politics. He even helped write the repeal of Glass-Steagall—one of the landmark acts of financial deregulation that paved the way for the Great Crash of 2008.

Kentucky Tea Partier Rand Paul has an entire section of his website dedicated to bashing bailouts, but he's raked in over $180,000 from Wall Street for this election. After blasting Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, in the Republican primaries for his vote in favor of the Wall Street bailout, Utah Tea Partier Mike Lee accepted over $82,000 from the financial world.

Take a look at the Senate Tea Party's Wall Street haul (click image for larger view):

Other Tea Party candidates openly advertise their willingness to do Wall Street's bidding. Washington Tea Partier Dino Rossi has vowed to appeal the financial reform bill that Congress passed this year, and he has $750,253 worth of reasons to make such a pledge.

Still others blast both "bailouts" and "regulations," while shying away from specific mentions of "Wall Street." Florida's Marco Rubio, Colorado's Ken Buck, West Virginia's John Raese and Delaware's Christine O'Donnell all take this tack. All of them accepted big bucks from Big Finance.

This lack of specificity from high-profile Tea Partiers is astonishing, given the economic significance of Wall Street’s recent excess. Tea Party candidates love to claim that government spending is wasteful while bashing regulation and praising the private sector. But in all of human history, no entity—public or private-- has spent money more wastefully than Wall Street did during the housing bubble. By inflating an $8 trillion housing bubble, Wall Street poured money that could have supported sustainable jobs into a speculative cesspool. When that bubble burst, the economy lost 8 million jobs, and American families were decimated. Deregulation will only make things worse—the sheer lack of regulations in the mortgage market was what allowed Wall Street to wreak havoc over the past decade.

It’s easy for politicians to make vague statements against bailouts. But far more should be expected from serious Senate candidates. Tea Partiers need to specify how they will rein in Wall Street to make sure our economy functions properly. And they need to explain how the $4.6 million they’ve accepted from Wall Street will affect their governing decisions.