The US Congress: Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

But doesn't a politician receive a good wage?

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

Trump was right when he talked of the media in such derogatory terms; the media that didn’t promote him of course. But the mass media is not so much fake as biased. The mass media has a class bias whether it’s CNN, MSNBC or Fox News. It is owned and controlled by capital, by the US ruling class and its purpose is to present the ideology of the market and superiority of the capitalist system in a way that is believable, that despite its faults, it is the only system that works.

 

In this venture, language matters. I have raised many times how during the PATCO strike that opened up the offensive against organized labor in the 1980’s a reporter asked an airline passenger delayed due to the stoppage, how they felt being held hostage by the workers on strike. Isn’t that what lawyers call a leading question?

 

I read reports in the media yesterday that Facebook and Amazon, whose CEO’s have been questioned by friends in the US Congress regarding antitrust activity, are preparing for “new scrutiny of their businesses” by the Biden Administration. They are relying on a “time tested” strategy the Wall Street Journal reports and that is “opening their pocket books”. This is an even nicer term for Lobbying which is the usual term to describe what they are actually doing which is bribing members of the body politic. As they are being “investigated” for illegal practices, they are handing over swathes of cash to the investigators.

 

Facebook spent $20 million bribing politicians in 2020 an 18% increase from 2019 and Amazon, whose CEO, Steve Bezos is worth $193 billion as of 1-26-21 according to Forbes, spent $18 million in 2020 an 11% increase from 2019. It appears that 2020 was a good year for some. Compare the experience of these social parasites to the treatment health care workers received, or how ER nurse Cliff Willmeng was treated for demanding PPE’s that wouldn’t infect his family or members of the public.

 

Just for the record, Apple spent $6.7 million in 2020, Alphabet, the Google parent $$7.5 million. Even these figures pale when compared to some:

 

Spending on bribing politicians (lobbying) in 2020:

National Association of Realtors $84,113,368

US Chamber of Commerce (largest gang in the US bigger than MS-13) $81,910.000

Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. $25, 946,000

American Hospital Assn. $23,648,466

Blue Cross Blue Shield (Health care industry) $22,662,720

American Medical Assn. $19, 575,000

 

This is just the tip of the iceberg and one important conclusion working people must draw from this, especially trade union members, is that those representatives your union has trying to influence members of the US body politic on your behalf don’t stand a chance. Capitalists are called capitalists because they are the owners of capital. Collectively they own the means of creating that wealth and determine how it is created, how it is spent and allocated. They do no productive labor, they live as we say, off the profit of capital and profit has its source in the unpaid labor of the workers.

 

Spokespersons for Facebook and other firms have made pronouncements about how they value integrity and support “updated regulations” and new laws etc. are just hot air. The tiger will not change it spots and the fox will never guard the henhouse except to protect his next chicken meal.

 

I added up the top numbers for a rough count on those figures above and they come to $254 million. This is a tiny amount of the bribery money spent every year and that has been spent for decades. When you add the defense, er, I mean offense budget, there’s another $700 billion minimum. The total amount wasted on feeding these parasites at the public trough is inconceivable and most of it kept from us. Just imagine that Jeff Bezos $193 billion net worth is somewhere around 800 times that $254 million figure. And if my language is harsh, go read how the big business press, especially the right wing journals refer to poor people, economic refugees and workers in general. Trump called us murderers, lazy and so on. A worker couldn’t steal in a lifetime what the above steal every minute of every day.

 

And this very same body politic can’t provide its citizens with health care, decent public transportation, a minimum wage that can actually keep a family from poverty ($15 an hour is not it. Where I live, a closet is $1000 a month) housing and much more. I remember when a truck driver could actually earn a decent living in the US.

 

The capitalist class a lot more money than we, or the unions do, that’s why they’re called capitalists so we cannot outspend or outbribe them. Not only that, the recipients of their monetary gifts are political representatives in parties that are financed and funded by the capitalist class as a whole.  What we have as workers is the numbers and the capitalists know that, so for them, instituting legislation that causes division in society is as natural as breathing; using language like “opening their pocket books” for bribery when describing their activity is a conscious decision based on class interest. It’s why they will never eliminate racism in society, it’s been the most successful divide and rule tactic so far; in Northern Ireland, religion plays this role.

 

Working class solidarity means solidarity across borders. Workers never created the borders of modern nations states; the capitalist class did. All the talk about walls and obstacles to immigration or migration, doesn’t apply to capital. For capital, there is only the world and what US capitalism strives for, as do all the major capitalist powers including state capitalist regimes, and for want of a better description I include China in that, is to dominate in the plunder of global resources.

 

The US political structure is profoundly undemocratic, just consider the Electoral College or the US Seanate. After the Georgia elections, the Democratic half of the US Senate will represent 41,549,808 more people than the Republican half. But that doesn’t change the relationship of power between the two parties.  As Ian Millhiser pojnts out at Vox.com, “If the Senate were anything approaching a democratic institution, however, the Democratic Party would have a commanding majority in Congress’s upper house. The Senate is malapportioned to give small states like Wyoming exactly as many senators as large states like California — even though California has about 68 times as many residents as Wyoming.”

 

While it is important for workers to strive for reforms because we learn through struggle, in the last analysis this animal cannot be reformed, it has to be discarded and dismantled. “James Madison, one of the authors of The Federalist Papers and a future president, stated that the American constitution he helped to write would mean “the total exclusion of the people, in their collective capacity, from any share [in the government]”.”  Guardian. That’s what the Senate is for in particular.

 

Society needs new managers.