“Lobbyists, Guns, and Money”

“Lobbyists, Guns, and Money” is the title of Paul Krugman’s latest op-ed piece in today’s NY Times.

While Krugman is one of my heroes and a person whose academic achievements and insights are to be greatly admired, his outrage and seeming surprise about the existence and agenda of the ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) is misplaced.

I am not a lawyer or Constitutional scholar and so my base instinct is to be outraged by the Citizen’s United decision, and I am.  The great fear is one of corruption…governments and Government are corrupt by virtue of their nature; they don’t need further help from the private sector.  Outrage at the Supreme Court for its decision—yes, but futile; outrage at corporations or their representative organizations for employing this decision in their best interests, misplaced.

In a representative democracy, we elect to protect our interests.  At the risk of seeming cynical; all people are self-interested and the status quo appears to many to maximize that self-interest. There are occasional paradigm shifts in values, e.g. abolishment of slavery, women’s voting rights, and electing an African American president but these changes took many decades, if not centuries, and some have still not assimilated the values these changes represent.  And now, the Citizen’s United decision; it is immediate and requires an immediate response.  We hope citizens will recognize the distortion this decision brings to the electoral process and put pressure on Congress and state legislatures to put forth a Constitutional Amendment banning corporations as persons.  That will take many years, but right now, we should bring less outrage and more determination to see to that the ‘status quo’ leaves less people behind.

Krugman knows better than most that corporations are profit-making entities.  They are mandated to maximize profits for their shareholders (you and I)…that is what corporations do.  This, by itself, is not corrupt despite protestations to the contrary and additionally, many are slowly realizing that having a social conscience is not mutually exclusive with maximizing profit.  In point of fact, it is within their profit-making best interest.  What is corrupting, of course, is the Supreme Court’s indirectly endowing corporations and their interested-organizations the right to vote.  It seems to me that our job is not to scream it’s unfair and be morally outraged that companies form organizations to put forth that which is in their best interest. They have an agenda to maximize their profits; to create an environment that seemingly justifies and makes it as easy a process as possible.  This is accomplished by shaping their agenda in manner that creates an appeal for those people that value their priorities in order to win these people’s hearts and minds and votes in support of the politicians that support their World-View. It provides a cover for the sometimes very large profits that companies make at the expense of these very same constituents.

Our job is to offer an alternative and show our citizens that our ideas are at least as good.  Perhaps I am overly optimistic about human nature but, assuming all things being equal, people will be motivated to choose a more inclusive way, and if not, we just have to offer the better argument for the Progressive agenda.

ALEC’s mandate is to privatize because privatizing traditionally governmental institutions is profitable for its supporters and they claim; more efficient. Our job is not to deny the profitability motive, although I think I can show it is not (for another post) the panacea for which the Right argues, but to show privatizing institutions of government is not more efficient; if judged by a standard other than corporate profitability, and even if true doing so is, in fact, further corrupting and undermines our way of life.

The claim for the priority of efficiency, as measured by the level of profit, is not a rational argument that justifies a particular practice but an argument of relative and perceptive value; narrowly understood.  Perceptions are changeable.  By example, Krugman rightly points out the profit motive leads to having a vested interest in the size of a prison population and cannot but make helping the conviction rate the self-interested and profitable motivating factor for prison administering corporations. We cannot accept motives of this nature to be the basis for adopting practices that justify the functioning of the Institution of Justice; itself; whether these private institutions operate efficiently or otherwise. This would mean the profitability of our prison system has a moral priority over our sense of justice and about what motivates the practices in our Institutions of Justice.

Krugman thanks the Center for Media and Democracy for outing this below- the-radar organization.  Two comments…if we were doing our job, an organization backed by the corporate giants that he claims founded ALEC should not be below the radar.  And, while some might disagree that fighting fire with fire is the best way to approach this issue, I argue that Citizens United created an environment where now it is.

This is the first I have heard of ALEC though this kind of organization and its motivation has always been part of our culture...perhaps the response is to form ALGC...American Legislative Government Council, with donors that see the world differently...we don't lack the deep pockets on our side; it seems to me that it is often easier to fain shock, outrage, and disbelief about the Right’s agenda than to similarly organize and motivate the Left.  We need to fight for the hearts and minds of those skeptics so that they know life would be “nasty, brutish, and short” without the institutions of government for which they have so much disdain.


Comments are appreciated
sfb