5 Years After 'Citizens United,' Wealthy Individuals Are Biggest Beneficiaries

Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) presents a body of empirical data spanning several hundred years that supports his central thesis that the owners of capital accumulate wealth more quickly than those who provide labour, a phenomenon widely described with the term "the rich-get-richer".

At the time of 2010's Citizens United decision, the U.S. Supreme Court and its detractors focused on the case's impact on for-profit corporations' election spending. Five years later, a new report by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law finds that some of the most troubling changes brought on by the ruling can be found elsewhere. From a tiny club of mega-donors sponsoring candidates like race horses, to the proliferation of dark money groups, to crumbling limits on direct contributions, the impacts of Citizens United are reverberating across the election system.
“Thanks to the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence, a tiny sliver of Americans now wield more power than at any time since Watergate,” wrote author Daniel Weiner. “This is perhaps the most troubling result of Citizens United: In a time of historic wealth inequality, the decision has helped reinforce the growing sense that our democracy primarily serves the interests of the wealthy few, and that democratic participation for the vast majority of our citizens is of relatively little value.”

Top GOP congressman: My donors told me to pass the Republican tax bill or 'don't ever call me again'

Rep. Chris Collins, a New York Republican, on Tuesday cited pressure from donors as an imperative for the GOP to pass its tax bill.
"My donors are basically saying, 'Get it done or don't ever call me again,'" Collins told reporters.

Republican leaders have portrayed the drive for tax reform as a benefit for middle-class families, often at the expense of special interests.
The donor pressure appears to be substantial, as the GOP has no major legislative victories to point to since the election of Donald Trump one year ago. Earlier this year, the party failed multiple times to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, the healthcare law better known as Obamacare.

Congress serves their prostituents, otherwise they are just a bunch of scrimshanks.

The influence of elites, interest groups and average voters on American politics

Public policy in the United States is shaped by a wide variety of forces, from polls and election results to interest groups and institutions, both formal and informal. In addition to political parties, the influence of diverse and sometimes antagonistic political forces has been widely acknowledged by policymakers and evidenced by scholars, and journalists. In recent years concerns have been growing that deep-pocketed donors now play an unprecedented role in American politics — concerns supported by 2013 research from Harvard and the University of Sydney that found that for election integrity, the U.S. ranked 26th out of 66 countries analyzed...

• Compared to economic elites, average voters have a low to nonexistent influence on public policies. “Not only do ordinary citizens not have uniquely substantial power over policy decisions, they have little or no independent influence on policy at all,” the authors conclude.
• In cases where citizens obtained their desired policy outcome, it was in fact due to the influence of elites rather than the citizens themselves: “Ordinary citizens might often be observed to ‘win’ (that is, to get their preferred policy outcomes) even if they had no independent effect whatsoever on policy making, if elites (with whom they often agree) actually prevail.”
• Regardless of whether a small minority or a large majority of American citizens support a policy, the probability of policy change is nearly the same — approximately 30%.
• A proposed policy change with low support among economically elite Americans is adopted only about 18% of the time, while a proposed change with high support is adopted about 45% of the time.
• Interest groups have a substantial impact on public policy. When mass-based and business-oriented interest groups oppose a policy, the probability of its being enacted is only 16%, rising to 47% when they’re strongly favorable. “On the 1,357 proposed policy changes for which at least one interest group was coded as favoring or opposing change, in only 36% of the cases did most groups favor change, while in 55% of the cases most groups opposed change.”
• Overall, business-oriented groups have almost twice the influence of mass-based groups.
• While the popular belief is that professional associations and interest groups serve to aggregate and organize average citizens’ interests, the data do not support this. The preferences of average citizens are positively and highly correlated with the preferences of economic elites but not with those of interest groups. Except for labor unions and the AARP, interest groups do not tend to favor the same policies as average citizens. In fact, some groups’ positions are negatively correlated with the opinion of the average American, as in the case of gun owners.

Influence & Lobbying

The primary goal of much of the money that flows through U.S. politics is this: Influence. Corporations and industry groups, labor unions, single-issue organizations - together, they spend billions of dollars each year to gain access to decision-makers in government, all in an attempt to influence their thinking.

What a funked up mess, huh?

Have a great funkin' weekend!

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