Is Plutocracy a Dog?

Plutocracy is rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth.

The combination of both plutocracy and oligarchy is called plutarchy. Wikipedia

So with so many candidates relying on their personal mega-wealth to buy amazingly expensive political campaigns, the question has to be asked: Is America becoming a plutocracy? Better yet, has modern American been really anything else for a very long time? With campaigns starting earlier and earlier, the demand for campaign money has never been higher. My email in-box is littered with several solicitations every day!

But mega-wealthy families seem to be a part of the American political scene – whether it stems from the liberal Democrats like the Kennedy brothers (Jack, Bobby and Ted) financed by a father whose roots reach back into prohibition bootlegging or current Florida U.S. Senate candidate Jeff Greene who made his money betting against the subprime mortgage mess or Republicans like New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg or California candidates Meg Whitman (the eBay billionaire running for governor) or Carly Fiorina (former HP CEO and running for the U.S. Senate). Is “rich” becoming a prerequisite for major political office, at least in the densely populated states where media is exceptionally expensive?

What really got my goat (where is that darned goat anyway?) was this headline from the August 3^rd Los Angeles Times:

Whitman vs. Brown: $531,000 daily vs. $377,000 total.

I’m picturing former California Governor and current Attorney General Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown sitting and running his fingers through a big bowl of pennies while Meg “The Shark” Whitman is sitting Scrooge McDuck-like atop piles of gold, jewels and cash in her eBay money vault. Meg’s using her own money; Jerry’s been a civil servant his whole life and ain’t got any. The campaign-cash discrepancy of the two front-runners for the position of California governor is so staggering, that forgetting about the underlying political positions, one simply has to ask if the people are actually getting a genuine choice? How does a little red wagon fare against a stream roller?

Some will argue that flaunting your wealth invites a backlash against lavish spending, but the problem was so pronounced that in 2002, Congress passed the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, which contained the so-called “Millionaires’ Amendment,” a provision relaxed campaign contribution rules for an opponent and leveled the playing field where self-financed Congressional candidates raised specified levels of campaign financing over and above what their opponents raised (different for the House and the Senate and takes state populations into consideration). In June of 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court (Davis vs. Federal Election Commission) struck down that limitation. “In a 5-to-4 ruling, the high court said Congress cannot use federal election laws to disadvantage candidates who choose to use their own money to run for a seat in Congress… The idea behind the law was to prevent a wealthy candidate from using massive personal spending in a campaign to drown out the voices of other candidates. It was also intended to counter the impression that seats in Congress can be purchased.” CSMonitor.com (June 27, 2008).

Jack Davis, wealthy factory owner from upstate New York, lost twice in Congressional elections where he spent his own cash running for office… perhaps he felt the backlash. But he is also the “Davis” in the above case. In January of this year, again in a narrow 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court (Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission) struck down provisions of the above statute that limited contributions from corporations or organized labor unions as a violation of the Constitutional ban on governmental free speech restrictions. Is the United States becoming a plutocracy? Has it been anything else for a long time? What’s your thought? How about settling the federal budget deficit issue by just being honest about it and putting up major political offices for sale to the highest bidder?

I’m Peter Dekom, and November is going to be a very interesting month.