The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope (12 page)

Most money in our elections goes to TV stations to run political advertisements. According to writers Robert McChesney and John Nichols in the
Monthly Review
, the amount of political ad spending is skyrocketing, such that “factoring for inflation, the 1972 election spent less than 3 percent of what will be spent on TV political ads in the 2012 election cycle.”

For just one relatively small race, a recent Pennsylvania congressional primary between Democrats, journalist Ken Knelly provided a comprehensive analysis of the local TV news coverage compared with the amount of political ads that ran on the same TV stations. Knelly’s headline says it all: “28 hours of political ads (and a few minutes of news).” More than 3,300 ad spots were run on the stations serving the predominantly Democratic district. Lost in the hours of ads, Knelly writes, was the “very occasional news report on the race,” and he said the reports contained very little substance.

How Knelly was able to probe these details is crucial. The Federal Communications Commission requires that TV stations maintain a public inspection file, and any member of the public can view it. Within the disclosures are the details of the political advertising purchases made, the amounts paid, and what entity bought the airtime. Recent efforts have been made to compel these hugely profitable broadcast entities to publish these files online. The broadcasters have vigorously fought such efforts and, although they usually prevail in the industry-friendly halls of the FCC, have lost this battle. On Friday, April 27, the FCC voted 2–1 to require stations to transition from paper to online filing over a two-year period. ProPublica reporter Justin Elliot notes the files will not be provided in a standard format, and will likely not be searchable.

Most of the major U.S. broadcast networks lobbied against the new disclosure rules, including Fox Television, one of the crown jewels of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. media empire. Murdoch received a stinging rebuke this week with the release of a British Parliament report on the phone-hacking scandal that has racked his newspapers in Britain. The scandal exploded in 2011, when the
Guardian
reported that
News of the World
reporters had hacked into the voice mail of thirteen-year-old murder victim Milly Dowler in 2002. While Dowler was still missing, reporters deleted some of her voice mails, which gave false hope to her family that she still might be alive.

Journalists, along with both a judicial inquiry and parliamentary hearings, have uncovered a culture of criminality behind much of the newsgathering facade at Murdoch’s now-defunct
News of the World
newspaper in London. The parliamentary committee released its report this week, saying the Murdoch-controlled company “stonewalled, obfuscated and misled and [would] only come clean, reluctantly, when no other course of action was sensible.”

The scandal also led to the discovery of bribery of British police officials, which, because News Corp. is a U.S. corporation, could fall under the U.S. federal Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits bribery by U.S. companies overseas. In response, the nonpartisan group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington petitioned the FCC to strip Murdoch of the twenty-seven television broadcast licenses he controls in the United States.

While it is a crime to bribe a police officer in London, it is perfectly legal to spend $5 billion to influence the course of U.S. elections, and for powerful broadcasters thereby to reap enormous profits. The FCC is to be applauded for its new transparency rules. Ultimately, political candidates should have free airtime to present their platform to the voters. Until then, it’s up to journalists, activists, and regular citizens to follow the money.

January 4, 2012

Republicans Divided, Citizens United

The Republican caucuses in Iowa, with their cliffhanger ending, confirmed two key political points and left a third virtually ignored. First, the Republicans are not enthusiastic about any of their candidates. Second, we have entered a new era in political campaigning in the United States post–Citizens United, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that unleashed a torrent of unreported corporate money into our electoral process. And third, because President Barack Obama is running in this primary season unchallenged, scant attention has been paid to the growing discontent among the very people who put him in office in 2008. As a result, the 2012 presidential election promises to be long, contentious, extremely expensive, and perhaps more negative than any in history.

Mitt Romney technically prevailed in the Iowa caucuses, squeaking out an eight-vote margin over late-surging Rick Santorum. Libertarian Ron Paul garnered an impressive 21 percent of the vote in the crowded field. Note that the Republican Party does not allow a recount of the handwritten, hand-counted ballots, and that the final Romney edge was first reported on right-wing Fox News Channel by none other than its paid commentator Karl Rove, the architect of George W. Bush’s two controversial presidential election wins.

So, the prevailing wisdom is that while Willard Mitt Romney retains the veneer of “electability,” he cannot persuade more than 25 percent of Republicans to vote for him. Santorum’s surge was a late-breaking coalescence of the anti-Romney vote, boosted by massive voter flight from Newt Gingrich that was inspired by a withering campaign of anti-Gingrich attack ads attributed to Romney.

While Romney’s Iowa operation maintained a positive campaign strategy, a super PAC that supported him went on the offensive. Restore Our Future, according to NBC’s Michael Isikoff, spent $2.8 million in ads in Iowa, more than twice the amount spent by the Romney campaign itself, all attacking Gingrich. The super PAC is not limited in how much corporate or individual money it can take in, and does not have to disclose the identity of its donors. While super PACs are prevented by law from coordinating with campaigns, three of the founders of the pro-Romney Restore Our Future were campaign staffers on Romney’s failed 2008 presidential bid: Carl Forti, Charlie Spies, and Larry McCarthy.

The Iowa caucuses can be seen as the first instance in a presidential electoral race waged after the January 2010 U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
ruling. As summarized by the SCOTUSblog, the split court decided that “political spending is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment, and the government may not keep corporations or unions from spending money to support or denounce individual candidates in elections.”

Election seasons are usually a boon for local TV stations, which sell airtime over the public airwaves. Iowa broadcasters were reporting a less-than-projected windfall, however, due to the record number of candidate debates, in which the candidates got to present themselves to the public, in essence, “for free.” The last-minute onslaught of negative ads brought station revenues back up. Dale Woods, general manager of WHO TV in Des Moines, told
Broadcasting & Cable
magazine: “It’s normally never negative here, but that’s one dynamic I’ve seen change with the PAC money involved. The candidate buys are positive, but the PAC money is negative. I think that’s a dynamic you’ll see all over the country.”

The advertising industry is watching campaign spending closely, predicting up to $4 billion in spending across all the campaigns, including those for president, Senate, House, and governorships.

But there’s hope. People are fighting back against this flood of secret money infecting U.S. elections. State legislators in California are calling for a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United. The New York City Council is voting on a similar measure, following Los Angeles; Oakland, California; Albany, New York; and Boulder, Colorado. Last week, Montana’s Supreme Court restored a 100-year-old ban on corporate spending directed at political campaigns or candidates.

Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig is calling for a constitutional convention. As defined in the U.S. Constitution, thirty-four state legislatures would need to call for a convention, which could allow an amendment banning corporate money from elections. Lessig, a favorite of progressives, is recruiting the right-wing Tea Party to help. He told me, “People can call for a convention for any purpose . . . the only option we have for intervening to fix this corrupted system is the only option the framers gave us, which is outsiders organizing to fix the problem in Washington.”

Climate Change

September 2, 2009

New Light on Copenhagen Climate Talks

On September 1, the European Union stopped manufacturing and importing incandescent light bulbs. Europeans will now turn to the much more efficient compact fluorescent, halogen and LED (light-emitting diode) bulbs. Incandescents, critics argue, waste up to 95 percent of energy as heat, using only 5 percent for light. The EU hopes to save the equivalent of 11 million households’ energy usage through the year 2020, worth $7.33 billion per year to the European economy.

The ban precedes the December 2009 Copenhagen climate conference, held by the United Nations to update the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Greenhouse-gas emissions now occur faster than ever. Copenhagen will be critical to the success or failure of establishing a practical, binding global plan of action before human-caused climate change reaches the point of no return, creating a cascade of catastrophes.

Eventually, global warming will become irreversible if action is not taken. Greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere are measured in “parts per million” (ppm). Environmentalist Bill McKibben says that a sustainable level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 350 ppm. He has named his organization 350.org to reinforce the point. We are currently at 387 ppm and climbing. McKibben and 350.org are calling for a global day of action, on October 24, to pressure governments before the Copenhagen summit.

A new generation of environmental activists is already in motion. This week, two young people were arrested in West Virginia for halting a Massey Energy Co. mountaintop coal-mining operation with a weeklong “tree sit,” and six people in London were arrested at the Royal Bank of Scotland headquarters for protesting the bank’s investment in fossil fuels. They glued themselves together and to the floor of the bank to hamper their removal, leading Reuters to headline its story “Protesters stick together in UK bank demonstration.”

The road to Copenhagen also is paved with gold: money being spent by the wealthy oil, gas, and coal industries to derail or weaken any outcome. The American Petroleum Institute (API) has launched an “AstroTurf” (not to be confused with grassroots) campaign in the U.S., paying for and organizing rallies, largely attended by oil, gas, and coal company employees, under the banner of “Energy Citizens.” Employees are bused in to the staged rallies with signs proclaiming “I’ll pass on $4 gas” and “Congress, don’t take away my job!” Similarities to the organized mobs at health care reform town-hall-style meetings are not merely coincidental; former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey’s group FreedomWorks, funded by, among others, oil and pharmaceutical corporations, is listed as a consultant to each industry campaign.

The API is attempting to undermine the U.S. Senate’s consideration of climate-change legislation, and it just might succeed. The House bill, referred to as the American Clean Energy and Security Act or the Waxman-Markey climate bill, is up for consideration by the Senate in September. Fast action would be required in order to grant President Barack Obama the room to negotiate at the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh in late September, a key step in the lead-up to Copenhagen. But Sens. Barbara Boxer and John Kerry said this week that the bill will be delayed, citing the health care debate and the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy. How ironic. Every week that the health care and energy bills are delayed is a victory for the opponents of change, which is especially sad since these were two of the most important issues to Kennedy.

Genuine citizen action, in the U.S. and beyond, will be critical to counter industry influence over the Copenhagen talks. There is a light at the end of the climate tunnel—it just isn’t incandescent.

October 21, 2009

Trick or Treat for Climate Change

Halloween is around the corner, and children will soon be dressing up and chanting “trick or treat,” their demand for candy backed up by the threat of a prank. Climate-change activists, from pranksters to presidents, are doing the same. This past Monday, the activist-artist group The Yes Men staged another of its hoaxes, with one member posing as an official from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, leading what appeared to be a legitimate press conference and stating the chamber’s complete reversal on its historically adamant opposition to climate-change legislation.

Meanwhile, in the Indian Ocean, the president of the Maldives held the world’s first underwater cabinet meeting, demonstrating that rising sea levels could very soon overwhelm his archipelago nation. With the Copenhagen climate conference less than fifty days away, people are stepping up the pressure.

The Yes Men stage elaborate hoaxes on global-trade organizations, multinational corporations, and politicians. They satirically skewer corporate, free-trade, pro-business positions by acting as genuine, sincere spokespeople for these institutions, often offering apologies for past corporate crimes or promoting absurd products with remarkably straight faces at industry conferences.