Legalized Bribery
I don't have to bribe people very often. In Maine, it's just not part of the culture. As far as I know. Maybe there's a lot of bribery going on, and I'm one of those poor chumps who is standing in the long line at the Department of Motor Vehicles, paying full price for brand names, and having the muffler on my car fixed instead of slipping the mechanic a twenty to get an inspection sticker.
So maybe a bribe gets us in the right line. But most of us here, I think, would be outraged at the thought of having to pay an official to get something done.
I started thinking about this when I met my congressman in October. Well, I'm not sure if he's my congressman; I live right near the district boundary. I volunteer on the board of the local chapter of a national nonprofit (you've heard of them). Out of the blue, a few weeks before the election, I heard from a national-level committee that our group's PAC was sending him a check for $1,000.
He hadn't asked for the money and didn't need it. The congressman was sailing to re-election against an unknown opponent who had raised less money than a church bake sale. Apparently some of our staff in Washington, DC had decided that an issue might be coming up before his congressional committee in which we had an interest. And I didn't need to be told that a $1,000 contribution would help us get a meeting or otherwise raise our profile to this member of Congress.
One of our people suggested that I find an opportunity to meet with the congressman and hand the check over personally. Good idea. I called his local office and made an appointment for me and one of our local staff people to meet with him in the nearby city of Watertown.
Now, we had planned to meet at his local district office, not his campaign headquarters. So that is technically federal property, and as you West Wing fans will remember, you can't fundraise on federal property. So after a few friendly handshakes with his staff, we toodled across the street to the coffeeshop. I presented the check and related our pleasure at endorsing his re-election bid, and we started talking about the upcoming elections. He asked us what we were working on in Maine. It was a great meeting. The congressman is a super guy, more on the ball and articulate in person than he appears on TV. This month, I got a personally signed Christmas card from him.
I'm really glad this guy is in Congress, don't get me wrong. But when you hand someone a check for $1,000, you can't pretend it doesn't make a difference in how you will be treated.
Members of congress and other elected officials will always aver that campaign contributions don't matter to them, that every constituent's call is as important as another's. Don't believe it. It matters 100%.
I spent a lot of this fall poring over election laws, political guidelines and nonprofit regulations. I researched PACs in Maine, contribution limits, Maine's Clean Election system, how I could tell our nonprofit's members what candidates we endorsed and what money I could use to pay for it. I found a complicated mishmash of state and federal regulations on nonprofits, candidates, and Political Action Committees, all of it finely calibrated to keep the billions spent on our elections from corrupting our elected decisionmakers. At that goal, it fails. It's simply window dressing that has codified a system of legalized bribery.
(For tales of countries with real bribery problems, visit Transparency International at www.transparency.org.)
-end-
So maybe a bribe gets us in the right line. But most of us here, I think, would be outraged at the thought of having to pay an official to get something done.
I started thinking about this when I met my congressman in October. Well, I'm not sure if he's my congressman; I live right near the district boundary. I volunteer on the board of the local chapter of a national nonprofit (you've heard of them). Out of the blue, a few weeks before the election, I heard from a national-level committee that our group's PAC was sending him a check for $1,000.
He hadn't asked for the money and didn't need it. The congressman was sailing to re-election against an unknown opponent who had raised less money than a church bake sale. Apparently some of our staff in Washington, DC had decided that an issue might be coming up before his congressional committee in which we had an interest. And I didn't need to be told that a $1,000 contribution would help us get a meeting or otherwise raise our profile to this member of Congress.
One of our people suggested that I find an opportunity to meet with the congressman and hand the check over personally. Good idea. I called his local office and made an appointment for me and one of our local staff people to meet with him in the nearby city of Watertown.
Now, we had planned to meet at his local district office, not his campaign headquarters. So that is technically federal property, and as you West Wing fans will remember, you can't fundraise on federal property. So after a few friendly handshakes with his staff, we toodled across the street to the coffeeshop. I presented the check and related our pleasure at endorsing his re-election bid, and we started talking about the upcoming elections. He asked us what we were working on in Maine. It was a great meeting. The congressman is a super guy, more on the ball and articulate in person than he appears on TV. This month, I got a personally signed Christmas card from him.
I'm really glad this guy is in Congress, don't get me wrong. But when you hand someone a check for $1,000, you can't pretend it doesn't make a difference in how you will be treated.
Members of congress and other elected officials will always aver that campaign contributions don't matter to them, that every constituent's call is as important as another's. Don't believe it. It matters 100%.
I spent a lot of this fall poring over election laws, political guidelines and nonprofit regulations. I researched PACs in Maine, contribution limits, Maine's Clean Election system, how I could tell our nonprofit's members what candidates we endorsed and what money I could use to pay for it. I found a complicated mishmash of state and federal regulations on nonprofits, candidates, and Political Action Committees, all of it finely calibrated to keep the billions spent on our elections from corrupting our elected decisionmakers. At that goal, it fails. It's simply window dressing that has codified a system of legalized bribery.
(For tales of countries with real bribery problems, visit Transparency International at www.transparency.org.)
-end-
posted by Hallovian at 3:03 PM
1 Comments:
Funny you should post this. I read a long article in the NYTimes today, about a many-billion dollar project undertaken by the Coast Guard to more or less upgrade the entire fleet. Seems they handed the reins over to Grumman and McDonnell-Douglas with next to no oversight, and now the ships are developing hull cracks that in some cases make them unseaworthy. (And, of course, the job is enormously over budget.)
Regrettably, your esteemed Senator Snowe was mentioned as one of a group of four senators who worked hard to make sure the funding for this massive waste of cash wasn't reduced.
And dang it, I thought she was one of the good guys.
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