Perry continues to give high-level government jobs to his big campaign donors, despite the fact that he just announced he is running for president, and despite the fact that the New York Times just published a front page article about how Perry hands out tax breaks, contracts, and appointments to his strongest supporters and the businesses they own.
UPDATE: Further evidence of Perry’s corruption — an insurance scheme of questionable legality (and taste) designed by Phil Gramm and pushed by Governor Perry to allow Swiss bank UBS to profit on the deaths of teachers in Texas.
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So, what’s new?
He has no fear of reprisal.
He has been mandated by God… remember?
He wants to make government inconsequential. OK so no more social security, disability or medicare, or Unversal Health Care under Perry. No homeland security. With Perry all those will go. We can add to the list-military.
“Perry continues to give high-level government jobs to his big campaign donors”. Your right, nothing new. Have we heard of GE CEO Immelt.
According to OpenSecrets.org (http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000125&cycle=2010) GE contributed twice as much to House Dems in 2010 as Reps. And in 2010 they spent nearly 40 million in lobbying efforts (their largest assault ever). To be fair, the top dollar recipient of money was (R) Rob Portman of Ohio. However the majority party donations were to Dems.
So why does it surprise anyone that politicians reward those big money people with high level government jobs? Both sides are equally corrupt when it comes to this practice. Big business lobbies those bills and donates to those individuals whom they feel will serve their interests. Don’t blame the players, blame the system. And I know everyone will say its a republican created evil, but the truth is otherwise. The Dems controlled both houses and the presidency for 2 years and proposed no legislation to change any rules. Why, they also know which side their bread is buttered on. They might be self serving but they’re not idiots.
I don’t think it is accurate to say that when the Democrats were in control of both houses and the presidency between 2008-2010 that they “proposed no legislation to change any rules.” During the 111th Congress, (2009-2011) was the time in which HCR was passed. Congress also passed the Lilly Ledbetter Act, passed the Dodd-Frank Act (which set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, among other things), modified FMLA to ensure that flight attendants have access to family and medical leave, modified TSCA in order to reduce formaldehyde emissions from certain wood products, passed the Fair Sentencing Act which reduced (although did not eliminate) the disparities in sentencing between powder and crack cocaine convictions and removed the 5 year mandatory minimum for crack cocaine, just to name a few. And – this is very important – they did not come even close to ruining the financial credit of the USA.
I do think it is interesting that GE directed the bulk of its lobbying dollars at Democrats, at least in that year. I can’t say I’m surprised, since Democrats were in power that year and this is a typical strategy for many corporations. But what you have not shown is a connection between those lobbying efforts or donations to patronage jobs. This is not to say that I disagree with the larger point that patronage occurs in both parties. But in the example you gave, you did not make that connection. And it remains an open question whether it occurs more often among Democrats or Republicans, at what level of government, and in what areas of government. I think if we knew that, we would know whether “both sides were equally corrupt” in this way.
Republicans controlled all threee branches of Gov. for 6 years, but lets not get into that right now, this is about buying a politician, something that Amanarican history is rich in and won’t end until the Constitution is ammended.
Anonymous and starluna – I agree, that the previous Rep admin most certainly did the same thing as the one before it and so on. On the point of legislation I don’t disagree that the 111th congress passed many bills, what I was referring to whne I said “proposed no legislation to change any rules” was legislation to fix campaign contributions. I understand a constitutional amendment would have probably been necessary given the SCOTUS ruling, however no effort was made and no ideas. They had the majority and could have possibly gotten it through if it had been fair accross the board. If not they could have been the mouth of reform and been able to hold it over the oppositions head.
And your absolutely right Starluna on more dollars to the party that is in power, which is a bit ironic to me that when that happens the other party seems to benefit more in the ensuing elections and makes it seem as if more donations is a negative and obviously doesn’t seem to be as much a factor as we perhaps suppose it to be.
To make a rare defense of Congress, I think they are in a tight spot when it comes to campaign finance reform. The SCOTUS has knocked down every meaningful attempt to regulate campaign financing, its hard to know what to do. And now with Citizens United, it’s difficult to know what to do. And recently the Court overturned an AZ law held that leveling the campaign finance playing field is somehow an unconstitutional infringement on free speech. So, according to the Court, you can’t limit corporate spending in politics and you can’t level the playing field with public dollars. What is Congress supposed to do?
A lot of folks say that we need transparency, but even when we found out about who was behind the mystery corporation that gave so much money to Romney’s Super-PAC, it didn’t stop anything. And other research has found that disclosure laws are not really effective in modifying behavior in situations like this. Dan Ariely discusses this in his book Predictable Irrationality. He presents studies that basically find that people behave as if once they’ve disclosed distasteful (but not necessarily illegal) behavior, they continue on their merry and unethical way.
I haven’t heard anything that might actually address this problem in a way that would get the approval this Supreme Court, except to have Congress pass a constitutional amendment which I can’t see passing this House or being ratified by the requisite number of states. I really can’t blame Congress for giving up.
Sadly, I agree with you.