Forget the issues: It’s all about Trump!

Three to six months ago, the conventional wisdom was that the Democratic Party was headed for disaster in the coming elections. The reason given was President Biden’s failure to cope with inflation and other serious national problems.

Now the conventional wisdom is that the Democrats have an even chance or better of holding on to their majority. Why? The change is due to the focus on Donald Trump.

Overall, many political observers and Democratic leaders think Trump-backed candidates in the Republican primaries are wackos that will be easy to defeat.

Operating on this theory, Democrats reportedly donated $53 million to Trump-backed candidates.

Here is the Washington Post’s rundown how the Democrat-backed pro-Trump candidates fared and the amounts the Democrats contributed.

WON.  Illinois Governor.  $34.5 million spent.

LOST.  Colorado U.S. Senate. $4 million spent.

LOST.  Nevada Governor.  $3.9 million spent.

WON.  New Hampshire U.S. Senate.  $3.2 million spent.

LOST.  Michigan Governor. $2 million spent.

WON.  Maryland Governor. $1.7 million spent.

LOST.  Colorado Governor.  $1.5 million spent

WON.  Pennsylvania Governor $1.2 million spent.

WON. Michigan 3rd District, U.S. House. $425,000 spent.

LOST.  Virginia 2nd District, U.S. House.  $300,000 spent.

LOST.  California 22nd District, U.S. House.  $200,000 spent.

LOST.  Colorado 8th District, U.S. House.  $250,000 spent.

WON.  New Hampshire 2nd District, U.S. House.  $100,000 spent.

Total $53,275,000.

I don’t want to overstate the significance of this.  Democrat money wasn’t necessarily the deciding factor in any of these races.  

And Trump endorsed nearly 200 candidates in all.  BBC News reported 92 percent of them won.

What the contributions reflect is that Democrats think that focusing on Trump is a winning victory strategy.

Of course this strategy could backfire.  The Clinton campaign in 2016 tried to “elevate” Trump, figuring that he would be easiest to defeat in the general election.  It didn’t work out the way they thought it would.

Billionaire power in the 2022 election

The expected backlash against Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic leadership is well-deserved.  But it’s unlikely that the Republican leaders will do anything to improve the lot of ordinary Americans.  They are even more dependent than the Democrats on campaign contributions from the billionaire class.

Judd Legum wrote in Popular Information:

Are the 2022 midterm elections for sale? A handful of billionaires are trying to find out. 

Two primary super PACs seek to establish Republican majorities in the Senate and House — the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) and the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF). Those two groups, which can accept unlimited donations, collectively raised $188.3 million through March 2022. Nearly half of the money, $89.4 million, has come from just 27 billionaires, according to a new report from Americans for Tax Fairness. 

This figure understates the influence of billionaires pushing to restore Republican majorities in Congress. An additional $40 million in funding to the SLF and CLF has come directly from corporations. Some of these corporations are controlled by billionaires. Koch Industries, for example, has donated $1.75 million to the SLF and CLF and is controlled by billionaire Charles Koch. 

Another $35 million in donations to the SLF and CLF comes from entities organized as non-profits that do not disclose their donors. $18.7 million in funding comes from the American Action Network, a non-profit run by the same group of leaders, including former Republican Senator Norm Coleman, that run the CLF. The source of these funds is entirely opaque. 

The Democratic counterparts to the SLF and CLF, the House Majority PAC (HMP) and the Senate Majority PAC (SMP), raise significant funds from billionaires — but it is a smaller percentage of their total receipts. According to Americans for Tax Fairness, the HMP and SMP have collectively raised $154 million in the 2022 cycle. About $25 million, around 17%,  has come from billionaires. 

The reliance on billionaire dollars by Republicans and Democrats in 2022 reflects an acceleration of an alarming trend in American politics. Since the Supreme Court eliminated limits on so-called “independent” expenditures by corporations and the wealthy in Citizen’s United (2010), political spending by billionaires on federal races has exploded. 

During the first two years of the pandemic, the net worth of the 44 billionaires who donated this cycle to the main Democratic and Republican Super PACs increased by $168 billion. These billionaires are now using a small percentage of their extraordinary wealth to shape the federal government to meet their economic and ideological interests. 

LINKS

Bank of America Memo: “We Hope” Worker Power Worsens by Ken Klipperstein and Jon Schwartz for The Intercept.

Billionaires Buying Elections: How the Nation’s Wealthiest Translate Economic Power Into Political Clout by Americans for Tax Justice.

The billionaires buying the midterm elections by Judd Legum for Popular Information.

How corporate cash could make an extremist the next Governor of Pennsylvania by Judd Legum and Rebecca Crosby for Popular Information.

Big money in politics keeps forever wars going

After his appearance on Breaking Points, Matt Taibbi commented:

A lot of people want to look at the bright side with this withdrawal, and they should, up to a point.  However much he may have botched the planning, Joe Biden deserves credit for sticking to his timeline.  It is good news that the United States can eventually recognize that a war has stopped serving any purpose, and actually decide to leave a country ten years after the last theoretical reason for staying has expired.

However, the fact that both the government and the national commentariat remain essentially captured by contractor money remains as big a problem as ever, as this episode shows.  We haven’t even reached the stage of being able to identify the financial connections of the people occupying center stage on the national televised debate over military policy.  It’s a terrible look that the people willing to point things like this out mostly all work for independent media outlets, while the New York Times and Washington Post have to be harassed to do the ethical minimum on that score.

If we properly identified the sponsors of the people with the biggest voices in media and politics, a lot more of what America does at home and around the world would make sense.  We need more of that, and thanks to Krystal and Saagar for bringing the topic up.

On Afghanistan, the Revolving Door and Media Failure to Disclose Contracting Ties of Guests by Matt Taibbi for TK News.

Democrats support their cause more intensely

Willingness to donate to a political party is a measure of how strongly you support it. I came across a couple of graphs that show how the depth of support for Democrats (measured in donations) exceeds support for Republicans.

Double click to enlarge.

The top chart shows the number donors to the Trump and Biden campaigns from various occupations; the bottom chart shows the same thing from various institutions.  The size of the circle indicates the number of donors; the intensity of the blue for Biden or red for Trump indicates how much of a majority they had with each group.

Double click to enlarge.

The Democratic Party never was a labor party

Political scientist Thomas Ferguson is the leading U.S. expert on money in politics.  In his book, Golden Rule: the Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems, he argued that national elections are always about conflicts between different economic interests, never about conflicts between working people and business in general.

There has never been a strong U.S. labor party along the lines of the British Labor Party or French Communist Party, which is explicitly anti-capitalist and pro-labor.

Political campaigning in the United State is expensive and, paradoxically, democratic reforms such as direct election of Senators and nomination of candidates through political primaries, have made it more expensive. 

Senator Bernie Sanders tried to create an alternative financing plan based on small donors.  It was remarkable that he got as far as he did, but he was crushed in the end.

This does not mean that issues on national elections are meaningless.  Rank-and-file voters have a stake in issues such as loose money vs. tight money, public works projects vs. budget austerity, free trade vs. protectionism, monopoly vs. anti-trust policy, etc.  It is just that none of these issues get traction unless there is a business interest behind it.

Even the Populist Party of the 1890s, which sought to unite farmers, wage-earners and small-business owners against corporate monopoly, got the support of silver mining interests, based on its plan to increase silver money, and it got its strongest support in mining states.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal never was anti-business, Ferguson said.  Organized labor did have a seat at the table of power during FDR’s administration, which is more than it had before or since, but it was never the dominant power.

Roosevelt took power in 1933 when the U.S. economy was in a state of collapse.  Many Americans, including representatives of big business, were willing to grant him the powers of a dictator.

He pushed through the National Recovery Act, aka “the first New Deal,” which attempted to stabilize the economy by organizing it as government-regulated monopolies, which prices and wages fixed by government.  The NRA failed, and also was rejected as unconstitutional.

FDR also pushed legislation for public welfare and to empower labor unions, such as the new CIO (Committee for Industrial Organization, then Congress of Industrial Organizations).  Business interests were split on this program.  They didn’t want to give high wages to their employees, but they did want their customers to have high disposable incomes.

In general, Ferguson said, labor-intensive business interests opposed the New Deal and capital-intensive industries, including the domestic oil industry, supported it.

The business community also split over free trade and protectionism.  One of FDR’s first actions was to take the U.S. off the gold standard, which meant a fall in the exchange rate for the U.S. dollar against foreign currencies.  That was bad for banks and other lenders, but good for exporters, again including the oil industry.

Roosevelt got authority to negotiate reciprocal trade agreements with individual foreign countries.  The U.S. lowered its tariffs in exchange for foreign countries lowering theirs.  Ferguson said this was highly popular among businesses that sold abroad.

Congressional committee assignments are for sale

Big-money influence on Congress is nothing new.  It does back to the Gilded Age of the 19th century and before.  House Speaker New Gingrich took it a step further in the 1990s with his “pay to play” system.

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi actually has taken the process a step further.  Each Democratic congressional representative is expected to pay “dues” to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee by raising money from donors.  Each committee assignment has a specific posted price.

The political scientist Thomas Ferguson wrote about this eight years ago, and I posted about it then.  Recently Ryan Grim and Aïda Chavez of The Intercept obtained the latest posted prices.

The dues for the 2020 cycle, according to the DCCC dues document, range from $150,000 at the low level to $1,000,000 for the Speaker of the House.  The document lays out the price of particular committee assignments.

Leadership posts for the second-, third-, and fourth-ranking Democrats — currently Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn, and Ben Ray Luján — range from $900,000 down to $700,000.

The next tier of leadership, which includes Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries, DCCC Chair Cheri Bustos, and others, costs just $575,000. Lower-ranking members of leadership owe between $400,000 and $500,000.

That’s less than the chairs of exclusive committees have to chip in. Those four — Richard Neal, chair of Ways and Means; Frank Pallone, chair of Energy and Commerce; Nita Lowey, chair of Appropriations; and Maxine Waters, chair of Financial Services — owe $600,000 each for their gavels. Neal has paid half of his dues, while Lowey and Pallone have paid just under $200,000. Waters hasn’t made any dues payments yet.

The document also lists a goal for money-raised, which it puts at $1.2 million for each of the four. The dues report claims Waters has raised just $40,500, compared to $3.3 million for Neal, $1.4 million for Pallone, and $160,400 from Lowey. (Neal, Pallone, and Lowey are facing primary challenges.)

On those so-called money committees, like Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce, even freshman members are asked to pay higher dues. That’s because those committees have jurisdiction over effectively every major industry, giving members a leg-up in demanding checks from corporations who need — or oppose — legislation before the panel. It is also valuable for industries to have committee members write letters to agencies they oversee.

Chairs of committees not lucky enough to oversee commercially prosperous industries owe just $300,000 in dues and have a listed goal of raising $300,000, compared to the money committees’ $1.2 million. Indeed, even vice chairs of money committees owe more than chairs of regular committees. Yvette Clarke, vice chair of Energy and Commerce, and Terri Sewell, vice chair of Ways and Means, owe $400,000 each. Subcommittee chairs on money panels owe as much as chairs of plebeian committees: $300,000.

An individual seat on a money committee, meanwhile, will run a member of Congress $250,000.  Sad sack rank-and-filers not privileged enough to sit on a money committee owe just $150,000.

Source: The Intercept

Democratic congressional representatives are expected do spend several hours a day on the phone, soliciting donations.  There also is a “points” system by which representatives can earn credit by supporting the party through action rather than money.

AOC on how to legally be a ‘super bad guy’

AOC Campaign Finance Primer Goes Viral by Jeri-Lynn Scofield for Naked Capitalism.

2016 and the fight against the money power

Political scientist Thomas Ferguson has spent his career tracing the influence of money on U.S. national politics.   In this interview from last week, he said the big story of the 2016 election is that it is politically possible to defeat big money.

Bernie Sanders raised 60 percent of his funds from small donors, who gave $200 each or less, Ferguson said.  This is unprecedented.  He said Sanders could well have won the Democratic nomination and the general election if he had started earlier and done things differently.

But even in defeat, he said, Sanders showed it is possible to fund a national political campaign without going to the wealthy and corporate donors that the leaders of both political parties depend upon.

Ferguson is noted for his “investment theory of political parties”—that wealthy interests invest in political parties and candidates, and that the only political issues that elections decide are issues on which the big donors disagree or that they don’t care about.

He says there are basically two elections.  There is the informal money election, conducted by big donors, which winnows the field   Then there is the actual vote, which chooses among the candidates pre-selected by the money election.

What Sanders—and also Trump, to an extent—showed is that large numbers of small political “investors” can offset the few big donors.   Sanders was the equivalent of an entrepreneur who funded a start-up with a GoFundMe fundraiser.

Trump himself raised 40 percent of his campaign funds from small donors, which is unprecedented for a Republican, Ferguson said.   But most of that was before he won the Republican nomination.

Starting in August, big money started to roll in—especially from Rustbelt manufacturing interests, who liked Trump’s promise to raise tariffs against foreign imports, and also from such far-right figures as Sheldon Adelson, Peter Thiel and Robert and Rebekah Mercer.

Hillary Clinton received most of the donations that came from Wall Street and the defense and aerospace industries.

Thomas Frank on the Democrats’ future

Scroll down for links to six recent Thomas Frank interviews on the Real News Network

Thomas Frank, who understands American politics as well or better than anyone else I know of, is giving a series of interviews on the state of the Democratic Party to the Real News Network.   I link to them below.

Most of my friends are liberal Democrats, like me, and they can’t understand why a working person would go against their own interests by supporting Donald Trump.  But then they themselves go against their own interests by supporting Hillary Clinton.

The problem is not Clinton as an individual.   As an individual, she is much more qualified to hold public office than Trump.

The problem is that the Democratic Party has come to depend on wealthy donors to finance its campaigns and it looks to well-to-do salaried professionals as its core voters.   Working people are coming to realize that the Democratic Party does not represent them.

It is not that large numbers working people are turning to Donald Trump.   The GOP is even worse than the Democrats.  It is that increasing numbers of working people—black, white and brown—see no point in voting for either party.

Thomas Frank on Clinton’s attack on Sanders

Paul Jay of the Real News Network did a good interview with Thomas Frank, one of my three or four favorite political writers, on why Hillary Clinton is attacking Bernie Sanders at this late date.   The interview starts about five minutes into the video.

Frank says Clinton has no just reason to hate Sanders personally.   He conducted a relatively gentlemanly primary election campaign, and supported her loyally during the general election.   She should be grateful that he decided to run within the Democratic Party in the first place, and not as a third-party candidate, like Ralph Nader in 2000.

But what Sanders represents, which is the pro-labor New Deal tradition of the Democratic Party, is deeply threatening to the power of the corporate wing of the party, which is what Clinton and her husband have represented through their political careers.

I think the reason the Democratic Party has done so little to fight voter disenfranchisement and to register voters is that disenfranchised and unregistered voters are mainly in demographic groups that corporate Democrats don’t care about.

They would rather seek the votes of culturally liberal suburban Republicans, whose votes, as Frank noted in the interview, Clinton actually won in the 2016 election.

The argument of the corporate Democrats is that (1) the Republican leaders are so reactionary and dangerous that nothing else matters except defeating them, (2) this can’t be done without matching the Republicans dollar for dollar and so (3) Democrats can’t afford to advocate policies contrary to the interests of their big-money contributors.

This is why they found that Sanders campaign so threatening, Frank said.   Sanders showed it was possible to conduct a political campaign based on small donations.   As far as that goes, Clinton outspent Trump two to one, and she still lost.

Sanders and Clinton are both getting on in years, and I don’t think either has a future as a national political candidate.  But I think there will be a long struggle between Sanders and Clinton factions under different names.   The struggle will be bitter because the stakes are high—whether the U.S. government will be accountable to the common people or to a corporate and political elite.

The best way to sift the Trump-Russia allegations

The best way to deal with the suspicions and charges that the Trump election campaign colluded with Russians is to appoint a bi-partisan commission of respected individuals to investigate.

This commission should have full authority to read secret transcripts collected by U.S. intelligence agencies and any other classified information relevant to the case, and authority to publish such information as can be done with jeopardizing sources and agents.

It should have full authority to subpoena witnesses and require  testimony under penalty of perjury.

It is a federal crime for a foreign national to contribute to a candidate in a U.S. election, or for anyone to solicit or accept such a contribution.   This would most definitely include the contribution of secret intelligence information.

If a Presidential candidate knowingly accept foreign help, I would say it is an impeachable offense.

The charter of the bi-partisan commission should be to determine whether there is any evidence that the Trump administration violated federal election law.

Evidence would include transcripts of communications of Russian agents and testimony by Americans regarding secret meetings of Trump operatives and Russian agents, or documents and records in the Trump campaign acknowledging Russian help, or testimony of Trump campaign operatives.

Routine contacts between Trump supporters and Russian diplomats or business people, especially if in public or in front of witnesses, would not be evidence of violation of election laws.

Even past business relationships of Trump operatives or even Trump himself with corrupt Russian oligarchs or business operations would not be such evidence—although very interesting to know.

I think it important that such an investigation be carried out by respected individuals in a bipartisan commission, and not by a special prosecutor who would consider himself or herself a failure if they didn’t find grounds to indict somebody.

The billionaire behind Bannon and Trump

An interesting behind-the-scenes look at the Donald Trump election campaign, which I just now got around to watching.   Click on this for a transcript.

The trouble with corporate personhood

One victory Bernie Sanders has already won

The most significant thing that Bernie Sanders has done is to prove that it is possible to carry out a credible national political campaign without depending on corporate and billionaire donors and without being rich himself.

This deprives establishment politicians of their excuse that they have no choice but to cater to big-money donors.   It also shows other progressive that they don’t have to compromise with the donor class in order to win.

Even if Sanders loses, which now seems likely, he has shown the way for future, better-prepared candidates.

Front-runners in the money primary

The first third of your campaign is money, money, money.

The second third is money, money, money.

The final is votes, press, and money.

Source: Rahm Emanuel

In American presidential nominating process, there are two primaries.  One is to determine who can get the most votes.  The other is to determine who can raise the most money, it is virtually impossible to campaign for votes without money.

I visited the Open Secrets web site to learn how the candidates are faring in the money primary, and where their money support is coming from, which is a better indicator of where they stand than their campaign rhetoric.

Hillary Clinton is the front-runner in the money primary, having raised $222.6 million as of the end of February.  She received $48.7 million from just 20 donors, representing a range of financial institutions, labor unions and charitable foundations.

Her top contributor was Soros Fund Management, headed by the billionaire speculator George Soros, which gave her campaign $7 million.

Organizations aren’t permitted to give directly to candidates.  The Soros donation, and all the organization donations I mention in this post, are totals of donations by Political Action Committees and by officers, employees and their families.

Bernie Sanders is the runner-up.  He raised $140.2 million, of which $92.6 million came from small donations, which are defined as donations of $200 or less.

His top contributor was Alphabet Inc. (formerly known as Google).  Sanders doesn’t accept PAC money, so Alphabet’s $254,614 contribution was all from officers and employees.  His other top contributors were the University of California, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon.

Ted Cruz is the front-runner among Republicans.  He raised just under $120 million.  Just three companies contributed $36.1 million of that.  His top contributor was Wilks Brothers, a fracking company, which gave $15,069,000.  Its owners are strong supporters of the religious political right.

Donald Trump hasn’t bothered much with fund-raising so far.  He received $36.7 million, which included a $24.7 million loan – a loan, not a gift – from his personal funds.  His top contributor was Manchester Financial Group, a real estate developer, which gave $50,000.

John Kasich raised $22 million, including $1 million from the Boich Companies, a coal marketing and trading business.

Hillary Clinton’s basic conflict of interest

Hillary Clinton asks her supporters to believe that there is no contradiction between accepting big campaign contributions from Wall Street, the private prison industry and the oil and gas industry, and promising to crack down on Wall Street, private prisons, fracking and greenhouse gas emissions.

Hillary Clinton says it is possible to take a donation to an interest group and not be captive to it.  That is true.  But it is harder to ask an interest group for money and still vote against its interests.  In any case, it is something you can only do once, and Clinton has been around for a very long time.

Either her fat-cat donors are being fooled, or her supporters are.  I wouldn’t vote for a candidate based on a hope that he or she is telling me the truth and misleading somebody else.

Hillary Clinton says she hasn’t done anything that President Obama hasn’t done.  That is true.  That is why I voted for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, when Obama ran for a second term.

Bernie Sanders breaks fundraising record

Bernie Sanders has broken the fundraising record for most contributions at this point in a presidential campaign, surpassing 2.3 million donations.

According to a Dec. 20 post on Sanders’ campaign website, the previous record-holder was Barack Obama, who had logged 2,209,636 donations by Dec. 31, 2011 during his reelection bid.

Many of these contributions are from small donors: according to the Sanders website, the average donation that came in during the third Democratic debate on Saturday was less than $25.

Sanders raised more than $26 million in the third quarter of 2015, according to the New York Times.

Source: TIME

Hillary and Jeb are the bankers’ favorites

Source: Who Are Bankers Backing for President? by Victoria Finkle for The American Banker.

Election 2016: small money vs. big money

Bloomberg Business had an interesting set of charts, showing how much money the different candidates received in small donations (under $200) versus large donations.

Bloomberg’s bar for small donations was lower than for some of the other charts I’ve published on this web log.  Some of what the writers consider “large” donations aren’t all that large.  Nevertheless, Boomberg’s figures give a general figure of which candidates raise significant amounts from the general public and which depend on the wealthy.

The only Democratic candidate supported mainly by small donations is Bernie Sanders.  Among Republicans, Ben Carson, Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee all received more in small donations than large.

The figures are as follows:

Bernie Sanders

Large donations: $6.02 million.

Small donations: $20.19 million.

Ben Carson

Large donations: $8.29 million.

Small donations: $12.43 million.

Donald Trump

Large donations: $1.04 million

Small donations: $2.78 million

Mike Huckabee

Large donations: $500,000

Small donations: $730,000

These figures don’t include contributions from Political Action Committees, or the amounts that the candidates spend out of their own money.  Those are particularly important in the case of Donald Trump.

The rise of the Money Power

Click to enlarge.

This chart shows how both Republicans and Democrats have become dependent on wealthy donors during the past 30 or so years.

In 1980, both political parties received well over half their donations from small donors—those who gave less than $1,500 in 2012 dollars.  In 2012, they both received more than a quarter of their contributions from mega-donors–people who could afford to give more than $5,616.

Mega-donors are expected to account for an even larger share in the 2016 election.   So far 158 families, who’ve contributed more than $250,000 each, have contributed $176 million to the campaign.   Together with 200 additional families who’ve given more than $100,000 each, that is more than half the reported campaign contributions.

But, as Ben Carson shows among the Republicans and Bernie Sanders among the Democrats, big money is not invincible.   A sufficiently popular candidate can raise as much in small donations as their rivals can obtain from a few super-rich people.

LINKS

How Did the Democrats Become Favorites of the Rich? by Thomas B. Edsall for The New York Times.

The Families Funding the 2016 Presidential Election by Nicholas Confessore, Sarah Cohen and Karen Yourish for The New York Times.

Why is there no real party of the people?

A conservative Christian writer and blogger named Rod Dreher is disgusted with how the Republican Party serves the interests of Wall Street and the military-industrial complex.  But he won’t vote for the Democrats because he is opposed to gay marriage and abortion rights.

He wonders why there can’t be a party that represents the interests of the common people on economics and the views of the common people on social issues?

The reason why economic and social issues are aligned the way they are is the power of big money in politics.

Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and the other Democratic leaders are strongly pro-business.  But they can never be as pro-business as George W. Bush, Mitt Romney or the other Republican leaders.

So in order to appeal to rich people, the Democratic leaders have to differentiate themselves on non-economic issues.  A Wall Street banker or Silicon Valley CEO who was gay or female or an immigrant or a marijuana user, or had relatives or friends who were, would prefer Democrats to Republicans unless the Democrats were an actual threat to their wealth and power—which Democrats have not been for decades.

Social issues work the other way for Republicans.   Abortion, gun rights, immigration and gay marriage are issues that enable the GOP to appeal to middle-income voters who might otherwise vote Democratic.  And, in fact, many Democrats would prefer to campaign on these issues than press for raising the minimum wage, breaking up the too-big-to-fail banks or preserving Social Security and Medicare.

The Election 2016 money race so far

Preliminary figures on campaign fund-raising indicate that:

• Hillary Clinton has so far raised more money than any other candidate of their party.
• Bernie Sanders has so far raised more money than any Republican candidate.
• Ben Carson has so far raised more money than any other Republican candidate.
• Ted Cruz has so far raised more money than Jeb Bush.

Now these figures are incomplete because the candidates have until October 15 to report the totals.  When they do, the Republican candidates’ totals may well exceed the Democrats’ totals.   The figures also omit supposedly independent Political Action Committees.

Still, I think it is significant that Bernie Sanders and Ben Carson have been able to raise so much from small donations.   Sanders and Carson (whom I do not support) show that a middle-class person can run for President without having to beg for money from the super-rich.

LINK

Bernie Sanders is raising more money than every Republican candidate by Rick Newman for Yahoo News.  Source of the chart.  (Hat tip to naked capitalism)

Bernie Sanders Is Awash In Cash From Individual Donors by Emily Atkin for ThinkProgress.

Ben Carson raising millions to become fund-raising juggernaut by CBS News / Associated Press.

The GOP Establishment’s Sneaky Ben Carson Fundraising Ploy by Russ Choma for Mother Jones.  An indication of Dr. Ben Carson’s grass-roots appeal.

Jeb Bush and his mega-rich donors

Most contributions went to “outside” pro-Bush groups that supposedly and in law are independent of his campaign.

Pro-TPP companies, groups bankroll Clinton

Source: LittleSis.

Hillary Clinton in her book, Hard Choices, endorsed the Trans Pacific Partnership.  If she makes any statements appearing to back off from that position, I’d read them like a lawyer looking for loopholes.

She’s been paid more than $2.5 million—actually, more than $2.7 million—in speaking fees by companies and organizations that lobby in favor of the TPP.

Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley, two other Democratic candidates for President, are opposed to the TPP, as are Republican candidates Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump.

Republicans Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Rick Perry support the TPP.

I think the TPP is a terrible idea because, based on information now available, it appears to lock in a corporate wish-list as international law.  International corporations, but no other entities, would have the right to appeal to a special tribunal against laws they deem unfair, and the tribunal would have authority to fine governments for allegedly unfair laws.

At the very least Congress should have time to discuss and debate it fully rather than having it rushed through on fast track.

LINKS

Groups lobbying on trade paid Hillary Clinton $2.5 million in speaking fees by Julianna Goldman for CBS News.

TPP Agreement: Where Do 2016 Presidential Candidates Stand on the Trans Pacific Partnership? by Howard Koplowitz for International Business Times.

Donald Trump slams Pacific free trade deal by CNN Money.  Trump appears to be right for wrong reasons.  Like some TPP supporters, he talks as if the TPP is mainly about free trade.

The passing scene – August 5, 2015

Here are links to interesting articles I’ve come across recently.  I may add links during the day.  The comment thread is open to general and off-topic comments.

Businesses Flee Catalonia, Foreign Investment Plunges as Confrontation With Spain Comes to a Boil by Don Quijones for Wolf Street.

The Mother of All Storms Builds Over Catalonia’s Independence by Don Quijones for Wolf Street.

A coalition of parties in Catalonia say they will declare independence from Spain if they win the provincial elections September 27.   Madrid will not recognize the results if the vote is “yes”, so the worst case possibility is a new Spanish civil war.

Want to Know How the Banks Got Greece to Surrender? Explaining Bank Power 101 by Ellen Brown for the World of Debt blog (via Alternet)

ECB’s economic hitmen on the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens web site.

The Costs of Accountability by Jerry Z. Muller on The American Interest.

Governments justify turning over decision-making to central banks on the grounds that they are thereby substituting objective metrics, benchmarks and performance indicators for fallible human judgment.  But at best, these metrics are human judgement once-removed and, at worst, masks for covert human agendas.

Who is Jeremy Corbyn? An international reader’s guide to the British politician by James Walsh for The Guardian.

Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters aren’t mad – they’re fleeing a bankrupt New Labor by Owen Jones for The Guardian.

Jeremy Corbyn, the emerging new leader of the British Labor Party, seems a lot like Bernie Sanders.  He is an aging, formerly obscure member of Parliament who wants to return the party to its original principles.   His strong grass-roots support surprises and alarms the entrenched party leaders.