Politics and Business

It has long been held that the Democratic Party is the party for the laborers and educators and the Republican Party is the pro-business party. I believe this is more traditional rhetoric than actual practice. It is my desire to explain this statement in the following article.

[Sometimes since because of the respective parties the advocacy of the aforementioned that Republican Party is anti-labor and anti-education and the Democrats are anti-business. That is in practice untrue and false logic. Nevertheless, parties do have the particular ideological emphasizes and typical support groups.]

As I have written before there have been significant ideological shifts in both parties to the left in my lifetime. This is particularly true since the Reagan administration economically and with the advent of the Tea Party and the Trump election politically. A characterization of the Republican Party is that it was a pro-business advocate. It was an important aspect of the Republican Party that was good for the nation. I believe that emphasis had now undergone a significant, even radical shift that is bad for the country as a whole.

My premise is that the Republican Party led by President Trump is no longer the advocate of all business but has now limited that focus to being the advocate of large businesses and has left small businesses to their own devices along with the workers in both large and small business.

The reason for this shift if found largely in two places. The first of this shift has to do with lobbyists.  According to Wikipedia, there are currently 1,274 pharmaceutical lobbyists in Washington D.C, that are more than 2 lobbyists per member of congress. That is a whole lot of influence upon congress and they have spent the most in their lobbying efforts than any other business or interest group. It is believed that there are more than12,000 lobbyists in Washington D.C. most of which are in 300 firms. The spending break down according to Statista  (a German online research group for statistics) is as follows in millions of dollars: 295.17 millions by Pharmaceuticals/Health Products, 156.39 millions by electronics manufacturing and equipment, 155.5 millions by insurance companies, 124.7 millions by oil and gas, and 121.27 millions by business associations. That is a lot of money from big business. Note I said big business. The vast majority of these lobbyists work for big business not small business. And this is my point. The Republican Party has become largely supportive of big business and is not particularly supportive of small business.

The second major aspect of the shift to big business support is rooted in “Citizens United.” When the Supreme Court enacted this interpretation that businesses can be regarded as people and therefore may contribute as individual persons that enabled big businesses to invest more in support of candidates in contrast to small businesses and individuals. This means the wealthier the more influence. Thus “we the people” become “we the people of wealth” are the most influential in government. All of which contributes to our government to become an oligarchy (government by the wealthy) over democracy (government by the majority of individuals.)

To get to a democratic system were “we the people” regain control of government we need to get extreme wealth out of the political campaign system. This could be easily done by making part of our taxes, a few dollars, to used for campaigning and no dollars coming from special interest group and business. Lobbyists could remain but should be highly regulated so that special interest groups and individuals cannot unduly influence members of congress. With money more limited and perhaps campaign seasons shortened, members of congress can spend more of their time do the work they were elected to do and not have to campaign for funds so much of their time. Today members of senators spend two-thirds of the time fundraising according to former senator Tim Daschle or as 60 Minutes of CBS suggest today's election methods turn members of congress into telemarketers. After winning a special election in 2014 Republican David Jolly was sat down behind closed doors and was told, “You job, new member of Congress, is to raise $18,000 a day. Your first responsibility is to make sure you hit $18,000 a day.” Then members of congress are given access to places outside capital grounds to go and spend time on the phone fundraising (it is illegal to campaign on capitol grounds.) Since Citizen United v. FEC both parties have told new members they should spend 30 hours per week on calls.

It is time for significant changes in campaign laws.