I’ll dissent. (Or, if you must, I’ll be the special interest group.)
The delineation is between special interest groups, which focus on a single issue (e.g. the NRA and guns) and general interest groups, which focus on, well, a lot of issues (e.g. the Democratic Party.)
“Special,” here, means “particularized,” a point to which the OP (probably unintentionally) alluded.
That’s exactly what I always think of when they say special interest.
Perhaps then, we should change it to SPECIFIC interest groups.
Guinastasian wrote:
That’s exactly what I always think of when they say special interest. Perhaps then, we should change it to SPECIFIC interest groups.
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Or how about “no interest” group, for all the attention they receive in Washington
Tennessee Ben, the groups you refer to are known as single interest groups.
Izzy, I think it’s worth making a distinction between zealous groups of people who have an outsize effect on our politics by virtue of their passions, and corporate lobbying.
[manifesto]
Aside from people wealthy enough to hire staff, most of us are more or less in the same boat politically. We can write letters to the editor, contribute to advocacy groups and political parties, and engage in various other uses of our time and money to make our views heard. But every hour we spend, every dollar we spend, to affect the political process, is pretty much an hour or a dollar lost to us. We do what we do because we believe it’s right, but it represents a sacrifice.
For corporations (and, above some rarefied level, the wealthy), participation in the political process isn’t a sacrifice; it’s an investment with a clear likelihood of return. Corporations invest in political contributions, in lobbyists, in issue ads, in phony grassroots (i.e. ‘astroturf’) groups, and so forth, in order to realize a financial benefit that (regardless of success or failure in any particular instance) is, over time, many times the investment.
This is such a fundamental distinction that I’m amazed that it never gets discussed. IMO, it makes any political contest between people and the corporate world fundamentally uneven: on our side, we have to weigh the time or money we might spend on political activism against other needs: time with our friends and loved ones, money that might be used for a plethora of other things. But for the corporation, the money is always well-spent, because it will bring in more money. (Time isn’t even an issue; the corporation pays money for people’s time.)
No matter how committed we are to a position on an issue, our interest may wax or wane. But corporations never get weary, never sleep. Their pet legislation may go down to defeat once, twice, a dozen times, but they still bring it back up; the potential payoff justifies the expense of keeping it alive. The investment in time and energy is only that of hiring lobbyists and staff to keep writing legislation, buttonholing congresscritters, and so forth.
The bankruptcy legislation is but one instance of that; another is gambling legislation in any number of states - no matter how many times it gets defeated, it keeps coming back: not due to any letter-writing campaign from pro-casino citizens, but due to the corporations already running casinos elsewhere, who expect to make a bundle if casinos are introduced in yet one more state.
Regardless of how one feels about this or any other issue, I at least feel it’s an even contest when the people on the other side are made of flesh and blood, rather than of legal documents.
[/manifesto]
Gadarene:
And even when congresscritters aren’t wealthy, they’ve got human limitations too, and these work to the advantage of the corporate world and the super-rich. Congresscritters have only 24 hours in the day, and corporations and the rich, in exchange for their contributions, unquestionably get access - face time with our elected representatives. (This is on top of the time the congressdroid spent on the phone or on the golf course with them, chatting them up for contributions.)
Even though there is no direct quid pro quo, all of this time is time when the congresspersons hear the problems of the corporations and the wealthy, and don’t hear a peep from their run-of-the-mill constituents. And, let’s face it, we all want to please those whom we spend time with, more than we want to please those whom we rarely see. As you said, their environment shapes their perceptions - and their environment consists of rubbing elbows with corporate lobbyists and execs.
Not to mention, the congresscritter will need to come back to these same interests to finance his/her re-election bid, so s/he knows s/he’s going to have to please a lot of them, to stay in office.
OK, maybe that was yet more manifesto. But what did you expect - I’m a Marxist, after all, even if I’m talkin’ about the one with the greasepaint eyebrows and moustache. 
Ahhhh, but you have something that no corporation will ever have.
One vote.
RTFirefly,
Excellently put. One further point that you might want to add to your manifesto (no self-respecting manifesto can be as short as that) is that the fact that the wealthy and powerful can escape with custom written loopholes from the laws that affect the regular people diminishes opposition to those laws. It always irks me when, in the interest of saving jobs, cities and states give special tax breaks and incentives to large corporations. This means that the full brunt of our repressive tax rates is borne only by the powerless, while those who could fight it fight only for themselves.
Well, let’s see. I’ve got one vote, and as much advocacy time as my work schedule will allow. Chase Manhattan has millions of dollars, thousands of man-hours to spend on lobbying and public relations, representatives in Congress and on the presidential Cabinet, the incentive to make a sufficient investment of time and money as to maximize the possibility of a profitable return, face time with the leaders of both parties, and as many votes as are possessed by their board of directors, their CEO, and their shareholders. Yup. That’s the same.
RTFirefly, did you read the article in the Post sometime last month regarding the National Governor’s Conference? It was being held in State College, Pennsylvania, and “sponsored” by several large corporations. In exchange, they were permitted to hold “workshops” with the governors that were, essentially, primers on how the governors could make life easier for the attending corporations. The general public was not given access to this event; and in fact, the sponsoring corporations said that having (shudder) voters in there would simply muck up the works.
Highlights:
"Eight companies, including Apple, AT&T and US Airways, donated $50,000 each in cash or products and were ‘steering committee hosts.’ Chipping in $25,000 each were 17 ‘corporate hosts,’ including Anheuser-Busch, General Electric and Sprint. Nine more companies, including Boeing, Pepsi and Pfizer, gave $15,000 each and were recognized simply as ‘hosts.’ "
“Nell Abom, [Pa. Governor Tom] Ridge’s deputy communications director, said the corporate contributions meant that taxpayers had to pay only for security and staff time. She said most donors to the host committee were based in Pennsylvania and were eager to ‘step up to the plate to show off the New Pennsylvania,’ using a trademark Ridge expression.”
"And Joe McCormick, director of state and government relations for the Boeing Co., another ‘corporate fellow,’ said, ‘If you have the public in there, it’s not going to be a freewheeling exchange of ideas.’
Several lobbyists, hoping to dispel any perception of backslapping, said the governors occasionally use the sessions to give them bad news, often preceded with softeners like, ‘I see where you’re going, but . . .’."
"Wisconsin Gov. Tommy G. Thompson, a Republican, asked ‘what we can do as governors’ to speed approvals to give the former Bell companies ‘the opportunity to get into the long distance market a lot faster.’
‘It just seems that the delay is something that is not good for America,’ Thompson said. "
Phil - yup, I saw that. Warmed my heart, that’s for sure. Thanks for quoting the highlights here. But just to further the message:
When we decide we don’t want to pay for government, (surprise!) we don’t reap its benefits; instead, the guys who pay for it do. We shy away from public financing of elections, too, for the same reason - we don’t want to pay for it - and, again, the people who do pay for it reap the benefits. I wonder sometimes if one out of a hundred voters has a clue as to how much they’d save by publicly financing campaigns.
And:
I guess it would inhibit politicians from giving away our birthright to the corporations. What a shame.
Anyhow, Phil, thanks again for bringing up such a fine example of how the big boys get access, and we lose access, to our own lawmakers. And the effect that that has.
A good example of that, Izzy, was one that affected me personally, to a mild degree: H-1B visas, another issue that is under most people’s radar screens.
H-1B visas are a particular category of visas available for people who have work waiting for them here. There’s a numerical limit on how many such visas can be issued in any one year. This limit is there to protect American jobs, to keep corporations from undercutting American workers by importing cheap foreign labor. Congress raised the limit last year, and looks about to raise it again, in response (both times) to pressure from the high-tech sector, which says they can’t find enough Americans to work for them.
The problem is, they could find lots more Americans to work for them, if they were willing to take people who didn’t already have 3-5 years of experience, but had shown an aptitude for programming and whatnot. Or if they were willing to hire older workers who are harder to con into working 60-100 hours a week, on salary, no overtime pay.
Here the high-tech companies can’t find enough qualified people. This is good for American workers: supply and demand. We’re in short supply, we can make demands. You need us, you train us. If we’re already qualified, we want time and a half after 40 hours, so we can have a life outside work, see our spouses and children occasionally.
Instead, the companies, not finding the present supply-and-demand balance to their liking, get our lawmakers to change the balance, letting in 100,000 foreign high-tech workers, thereby weakening the bargaining position of American workers. Sneaky, huh?
And again, there was zero popular pressure for changing the law. It all came from the corporations. They won that battle, and we lost it, and will lose it again, because most people don’t even know the battle took place. That’s got to be the scariest part about it. The occasional conservative columnist makes a big deal about how, in some high-profile battles, big money doesn’t always get its way. But it almost invariably wins dozens of these sorts of issues each year, that barely make the papers.
**
My pet Canadians graduated from some sort of computer school in the great white north and made it down to Dallas on one of those visas. As have several of his classmates gone on to settle in various parts of the US
Why would a corporation in Dallas want a Canadian to come down here if they had plenty of Americans to hire? They are paid a decent salary on top of the expense of getting them here.
**
You’re right, and most Americans I know working in hi tech jobs are doing fairly well. They get free training from their employers, a good salary, and decent benefits. Of course sometimes my programmer friends end up working 60-80 hours a week.
How many Americans are majoring in liberal arts instead of something like computer science, engineering, or for other high tech positions?
**
So we should avoid bringing workers in just so you can ream companies for more money? I have to admit I have a very liberal attitude towards immigration. I seriously doubt that you’re hurting because of foreign workers in the high tech industry.
Marc
Marc:
Because the Canadians are more experienced, so they don’t have to go to the trouble of training them.
A lot. But if an American with a Ph.D. in mathematics, and a handful of programning courses under his belt (me, in 1998), is considered not worth the trouble to interview - and this at a time when the high-tech people were lobbying to have the H-1B limit raised - then if I was a liberal arts major instead, I’d be wondering what’s the point.
A friend of a friend took one of those courses that gets you a MicroSoft certification not too long ago. He’s in his forties like me. Six months of looking, and no job - they wanted experience in addition to the certification.
Again, if I were a liberal arts major, I’d be confused by the mixed messages. They’re telling us all to get into high tech, that they need people like crazy, that they’re leaving money on the table because they can’t find qualified workers - but they aren’t willing to hire people with less than perfect credentials, they aren’t willing to hire people who can ‘only’ give them 40 hours a week, they aren’t particularly crazy about hiring people over 40.
I have no problem with immigration in general; three of my four grandparents were immigrants. While I’m not hurting now because of foreign workers in high tech, my experience indicates that it restricted my options substantially when I was looking for a job two years ago.
And with respect to reaming, I’m just saying that, at a minimum, the laws of supply and demand should work both ways, and not be manipulated for the benefit of one side.
In the early '90s, firms were cutting back workforce, laying off people, and needless to say, the shortage of jobs, or surplus of workers, made it harder for workers to negotiate good wages, and easier for employers to negotiate or impose benefits cutbacks, and demand long work weeks.
Now the shoe’s somewhat on the other foot; we have full employment, and there’s a shortage of workers in some sectors of the economy. It’s only fair that, at this point in the cycle, workers should have the full leverage of their position, and not have the rules changed on them by big business to undermine their ability to negotiate better wages and benefits, shorter working hours, and anything else they care to negotiate for.
Instead, business changes the rules to ease the worker shortage, and the Fed, fearing ‘wage inflation’, ups the interest rates to cool down the economy and reduce demand for workers - a crock that I don’t have time to deal with at length here, other than to say, there’s a lot of slack, in the form of money sloshing around the top levels of our economy, to be taken up before wages put direct pressure on prices.
In conclusion, I don’t like it when business justifies low wages by the laws of supply and demand, when those laws benefit them, but you can make a case for its legitimacy. But when they then turn around and get the government to alter those laws when they’re more favorable to workers, that’s just plain unfair. It’s like a big guy playing chess with a little guy, where the big guy will play by the rules until he’s losing. Then he’ll bump the board, and reset the pieces in places that work better for him, and defy the little guy to do anything about it.