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Poor Little Rich Boys (and Girl)
When John F. Kennedy was running for president and asked how he became a war hero, he had the wit and grace to reply, "It was entirely involuntary. They sank my boat."
Rudy Giuliani, on the other hand, would have you believe that God and Fate had somehow aligned the spheres to place him -- and only him -- at the helm of New York City on 9/11. He bestrode the metropolis to save it from certain doom, even though he had less than four months to go in his second, up-until-then undistinguished term as mayor.
After the September 11 catastrophe, despite term limits, he made a last ditch attempt to change the rules so we could continue to have him as our fearless leader for -- oh, how about forever? -- but cooler heads prevailed.
Instead, Giuliani decided to parlay his new reputation for in extremis leadership into megabucks. When he left City Hall, his gross assets were listed at between $1.16 million and $1.83 million, most of it in retirement funds and two Manhattan apartments. Since then, his company, Giuliani Partners, has pulled in more than $100 million in consulting, security, management and financial service fees, and has quadrupled in size.
As reported on the front page of the May 13 Washington Post, "That success helped transform the Republican considered the front-runner for his party's 2008 presidential nomination from a moderately well-off public servant into a globe-trotting consultant whose net worth is estimated to be in the tens of millions of dollars."
With that achievement has come baggage detrimental to his quest for the White House. He brought into the business his notorious crony, the former police commissioner Bernie Kerik, as well as, the Post noted, "a former FBI executive who admitted taking artifacts from Ground Zero and a former Roman Catholic priest accused of covering up sexual abuse in the church." (Kerik, under continuing Federal investigation, has since resigned.)
What's more, clients have included "a confessed drug smuggler who hired Giuliani to ensure his security company could do business with the federal government; and the horse racing industry, eager to recover public confidence after a betting scandal."
Plus Purdue Pharma, the drug company that gave an unsuspecting world the potent painkiller OxyContin. Last month, the company and three past and current executives paid fines and other fees adding up to $600 million. They pled guilty to deliberately downplaying the vicious addictiveness of the narcotic.
Giuliani met privately with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to help broker the deal, a far cry from twenty years ago when he and former New York Senator Al D'Amato dressed up in biker drag to participate in an undercover crack buy, a photo op described by one reporter as "one of the most laughed-over pictures in the city's political history."
Laura Nagel, the former head of the DEA's office of diversion control who directed the OxyContin investigation, told the Post that personally, she "would not have been happy unless we put [Purdue Pharma] in shackles in front of the courthouse."
Instead, she said, "They went and got Rudy. I think they thought they were buying access and insight into how to manage things politically."
Oh well. You have to be rich to run for the presidency, or have lots of friend who are, and these days it doesn't necessarily seem to matter much how the cash was acquired. Monday's New York Times reported how Republican Mitt Romney amassed his personal fortune of almost $350 million through his creation of the private equity firm Bain Capital.
As per the Times, "Mr. Romney's Bain career -- a source of money and contacts that he has used to finance his Massachusetts campaigns and to leap ahead of his presidential rivals in early fund-raising... exposes him to criticism that he enriched himself excessively, sometimes by cutting jobs to increase profits."
The Times quoted Boston University business professor James E. Post: "Increasingly, this world of private equity looks like a world of robber barons, and Romney comes out of that world."
Big bucks and corporate attachments aren't limited to Republicans by any stretch. John Edwards, who has made the fight against poverty in America a keystone of his presidential candidacy, was a consultant for the Fortress Investment Group, a hedge fund with assets of more than $30 billion. Fortress employees thus far have contributed $167,460 to his '08 campaign. Barack Obama's wife Michelle just resigned from the board of TreeHouse Foods, a Wal-Mart supplier (and quit her $215,000 a year job as a vice president at the University of Chicago Hospitals).
And then, of course, there's Hillary Clinton. A recent cover story in The Nation suggests, "If Clinton really wanted to curtail the influence of the powerful, she might start with the advisers to her own campaign, who represent some of the weightiest interests in corporate America."
The comprehensive and engrossing article, by Ari Berman, goes on to chronicle the big business connections of such strategists and confidantes as Mark Penn, Howard Wolfson, Robert Rubin, Roger Altman, Harold Ickes and Senator Clinton's own husband. "Not only is Hillary more reliant on large donations and corporate money than her Democratic rivals," Berman writes, "but advisers in her inner circle are closely affiliated with unionbusters, GOP operatives, conservative media and other Democratic Party antagonists."
Not, many would suggest, that there's anything wrong with that. "I'd rather have him be a millionaire comin' in than goin' out," was the sentiment expressed by a supporter of fried chicken magnate John Y. Brown when he successfully ran for governor of Kentucky back in 1978. And there's a case to be made that business experience makes for better governance, as seen, for example, in the administration of Giuliani's successor, Mike Bloomberg.
Nonetheless, all that money sure as hell is a strong argument for the public financing of campaigns. And in an era of increased outsourcing and globalization, subcontracting and privatization -- the so-called "externalization of state functions" -- it raises questions whether those with ties to big business interests truly understand the purpose of government.
That would be to protect its citizenry from war and want, to provide services and infrastructure that make the pursuit of health and happiness accessible to all -- without profit for itself.
Cheap at twice the price.
Michael Winship, Writers Guild of America Award winner and former writer with Bill Moyers, writes this weekly column for the Messenger Post Newspapers in upstate New York. This article originally appeared on Messenger Post.
Copyright 2007 Messenger Post Newspapers
17 Comments so far
Show AllWe really need to take the money out of politics. Our democracy is further undermined when elections are won by the candidate that has been bought at the highest price.
Thanks but no thanks Rudy. We've got leaders like you running out our ears.
Clinical insanity is what I see in most of these candidates. But then again that is the kind of society they hail from.
The only logical thing to do is to vote for a real outsider and that has to mean a third party.
I've checked the tapes, but still cant find any pictures of Rudy single handedly stopping planes from flying into buildings.
I do seem to find a lot about how he received permission to have the Fire and Police on the same radio frequency 5 years before 911, but didn't bother....
An a LOT of goulish photo ops over the remains of the dead.
HOW THE RICH AVOID COMPETITION
A major myth of economics in the political realm is that Republicans support competition while Democrats support government to do what competition could have done. Wrong.
There's little substantial difference between Democrats and Republicans on competition. They're generally against it when it is a threat to them and their upper income constituents and they generally support it when it reduces costs for the same.
For example, when Senator Byron Dorgan holds up two identical FDA-approved pill bottles from Big Pharma with one priced four times that of the other, he's attempting to break the monopoly power that prevents the low priced version from getting into the US.
But you'll never see Dorgan making similar comparisons between imported sugar with high tariffs and the high, subsidized price of sugar beets farmed by his constituents in North Dakota, much of which consists of Big Farma, a counterpart to Big Pharma.
In other words, Dorgan has chosen to support consumers of drugs and producers of sugar, out of which comes a bizarre mis-mash of huge amounts of campaign spending designed to make very much out of very little differences among politicians.
The result is that Big Pharma and Big Farma both win. What little meaningful debate exists is trivialized or crushed with overwhelming PR strategy if it rises to the level of serious change.
That private campaign spending easily swamps levels of federal funds accessible to qualified candidates speaks to the economic power of these constituencies. They really do have that much market power and it really is worth it to them to spend extraordinary amounts to keep it. Nothing could be more obviously against competition.
Over the last several decades, the frontier of competition has skewed sharply across the income scale, heavily shielding those at upper levels from competition while exposing those at low income levels to degrees of competition sufficient to cross moral boundaries. As some economists might say, child prostitution is better than starving to death, etc.
In the past, like a sport or kid's game, the king of the mountain was a king only as long as the mountain could be held by one's virtuous defense efforts against the competition, also considered essential to good business practice. No more.
As Lewis Lapham of Harper's observed recently about the rich in the context of class structure, regardless of their background, they tend to be from an elite that usually talks of civil decline while supporting the status quo. That's why they behave in seeming contradiction as described by Michael Winship in the article above.
That's also why there should be forceful, focused laws and regulations designed to steer competition toward desired outcomes regardless of the impact on entrenched constituencies.
It's not always about whether government or private business should be providing the good or service in question. It's equally related to who's providing it now under conditions of little or no competition and why these situations are so chronically embedded into the political and economic infrastructure as to remain immune from question.
Politicians get chummy about sports because they know it's a form of competition for which most support the income differences among players and teams, i.e., they earn those differences.
Even the poor can make it big in sports, which makes it a great but false analogy to today's economic opportunities. In business, the upper 10% of the best and brightest in the lowest income group could easily out-perform the bottom 10% of the highest income group, but that's not going to happen with competition stifled by the entrenched corporations and politicians.
B Payne, Economist, Ph.D.
bbpayne@earthlink.net
As regards Guiliani, canuckchuck writes, "An a LOT of goulish photo ops over the remains of the dead."
Maybe that is why I see a death head, the grim reaper style, whenever I see a photo of him. Creeps me out.
And then there's Kucinich, a guy with all the right answers to heal this country and no one in the media willing to give him a chance to be heard. Oh, that's right, he's not in the millionaire club. At a net worth of far less than any of the frontrunners in either corporate party, he doesn't stand a chance of being heard and the American voter will be left instead once again with millionaire choices and nothing of substance. And on it goes.
Under the rule of the rich, isn't it naive to think they are going to get money out of politics?
Gravel and the grassroots Green Party have the means to restore democracy and end the plutocracy. Direct democracy, REAL Democracy, will not come from rich politicians and one or two poor progressives working within a party of, by and for the oligarchy. It can only come from the people as lawmakers.
ezeflyer:
I agree with what you're saying. Any politician no matter how "progressive" they are, will never be able to change the political structure of this country and bring true democracy, peace and social justice to the people as long as they remain tied to their corporate run party. It's so frustrating to see this dedicated visionary (Kucinich) be beaten down time and again by his own party leadership. Yet he won't make the move outside the big tent where his leadership would bring about a true progressive movement in this country. It can't be the money that keeps him in there. So what stops a person like him from becoming a leader of a just cause outside the duopoly? Does he believe that strongly in his broken party that his views will be acted upon and he himself will actually be taken with any seriousness by the party elite? It's mindboggling.
"up until then undistinguished term as Mayor"
Check your facts.
newageartist and ezeflyer, what stops Kucinich from becoming a force outside the two-party system is that a winner takes all political system is structurally designed to be a two-part system. Do you think it's a coincidence that there has never been a lasting, successful third party in this country? Do you think it's a coincidence that there are a host of other countries without a winner-takes-all system and with multiple powerful parties? These are not coincidences. There is not now, nor will there ever be a successful party in the US without significant structural reform, probably in the form of proportional representation.
I understand your desire to have your (probably our) view represented, but supporting a third party, any third party, is not the way to do it. It never has been.
All hail money, our Great GOD!!
For 30 years I've been hearing people say "We must have public financing of campaigns!" The problem is most of congress is on the take. So who is going to enact the public campaign legislation? The only way I can see that happening is with a massive citizens protest movement. That movement will have to be angry, disruptive and determined because it will be difficult and at times dangerous to seriously protest. Maybe a major economic downturn that affects daily life on a basic level will produce that movement. I can't think of anything else that would. It would be nice if people would act now and not wait for a depression.
BeingFrank sez:
"...but supporting a third party, any third party, is not the way to do it.
Support the other corporate party again? What's that they say about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?
This video is almost guaranteed to change your mind:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clIDr4xVXRo&mode=related&search=
These richfilth are the public face of Master's Wrath. Charming and vicious. Charismatic and corrupt. They are mentored, nurtured and placed out in front for exactly those qualities but never forget who they serve - it ain't us. They are the Overseers on Master's Plantation. They are effective only as long as we are willing to pull our forelocks and bow our heads to them, "Our Betters" - while they murder our middle class - while they ship our jobs to slave labor pits - while they steal our future and our children's future to fatten Master. These disgusting humans have sold their souls and we gaze into their dead eyes and say, "Yes Sir! Of course Sir! Immediately Sir!".
Santa Clara v S. Pacific Railroad. Corporate Super Citizenship is a lie. Corporations have no right to participate in our politics at any level in any way. See Thom Hartmann's work, the facts are the facts. They function on the basis of a lie that has no legal standing. Stare decisis cannot be based on a LIE. What would our country be like if no corporation could participate in our human politics - at any level. When the dinosaurs were dead there was room for the lemurs and the tarsiers, incredible little guys, our ancestors. Five fingers, five toes, arboreal, wild curiosity, sense of play, big eyes, incredible coordination - more human than any of the people named in this article. Time for the dinosaurs to die. Let's do it without the nuclear winter.
Peace.
Guiliani=Opportunist
The thing is, JFK was in the millionaire's club too. Can you pick up the phone and call a millionaire for help moving or advice over a beer, or a contribution to help you run for office? Mike Gravel is this year's Ross Perot who was so correct about the danger of nafta and the sucking sound that goes on to this day and is getting louder from mexico to china to india. Welcome to the labor pool, boy is it deep. The only millionaires I get to hang with are those who hire me on a temp. basis. We can have a few laughs, but I'm never gonna date the daughter or get a valid stock market tip.