Time To Burn Some Bridges

Seriously, I know it’s fashionable to say that both parties are controlled by corporate interests, but here’s yet another example of the disparity between the two parties :

The top-giving corporate political action committees didn’t hedge their bets in the fall elections despite the narrow division between the GOP and Democrats in Congress.

They favored Republican candidates 10-to-1.

Of 268 corporate PACs that donated $100,000 or more to presidential and congressional candidates from January 2003 through the middle of last month, 245 gave the majority of their contributions to GOP hopefuls, according to an analysis released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Political Money Line campaign finance tracking service.

Jerome Armstrong has more details over at MyDD :

See, if we had a Democratic party leadership with some steel for action to change the status quo, they’d come out with a PR asking Democratic party voters to stop going to Wendy’s if they are going to only contribute to Republicans. Instead, we get the likes that are grateful for the 7% in crumbs, which is good enough to buy off their silence.

Overall, the list of Corporations that give more than 50% of their contributions to the Republican Party numbers 254. On the senate side? There is only one Corp. that gives above 60% to the Democratic party, CableVisions Systems at 78%, and 22 others in the 50-59% range. It’s a 10:1 ratio in the number of corporations favoring Republicans over Democrats, but for the actual money, it’s much higher, 25:1 or greater.

The GOP has the corporations in their pockets writing the laws. The only way the Democratic party can possibly counter is through having leaders that recognize the power of a million individuals nationwide being a part of a netroots/grassroots effort to reform the political system.

The best thing the Democratic party could do for itself is to pick a DNC head like Howard Dean who can mobilize grassroots contributors and give the party enough financial indepedence to tell the corporate donors to take a hike.


posted by greg on November 24, 2004 @ 9:31 pm

4 comments

  1. Very interesting. I’d been thinking along the same lines. Using the data from opensecrets.org, I’d suggested a Consumer Accountability Index that takes the difference between PAC contributions for Republicans and Democrats.

    While the post at Alt Hippo was tongue-in-cheek, I’m starting to like the concept. For the same reason that I’ll never buy Coors beer (okay, there’s lots of reasons that’ll never happen) I wouldn’t want my money going to major Republican donors.

    Comment by alt hippo — November 25, 2004 @ 8:19 am

  2. they’d come out with a PR asking Democratic Party voters to stop going to Wendy’s if they are going to only contribute to Republicans. Instead, we get the likes that are grateful for the 7% in crumbs, which is good enough to buy off their silence

    This is the key… i try to live my life around my politics. Everyone should be a smart consumer. You should know where your money is going, and what it supports. If you find out that you don’t agree with the ethics of a corporation, you should no longer support it.

    John Edwards gave Wendy’s a free commercial on the news with his wedding anniversary, and then Wendys goes and gives money to the GOP?

    The people on the Right organize big boycotts all the time: Disney, Dixie Chicks, etc… And it always sends a clear message. It’s time that the people on the left do the same thing…

    oh wait… the people on the left ALREADY do that… the problem is that the Democrats are no longer on the left… they’re in the middle.

    Comment by tom — November 25, 2004 @ 10:50 am

  3. I followed the links back and found the following on politicalmoneyline.com:

    Sixteen company PACs gave 90% or more to Republicans. They include the federal PACs of Phillips Int’l. (100%), Cooper Industries (100%), Flowers Industries (100%), Harris Corp. (98%), Illinois Toolworks (97%), Outback Steakhouse (96%), ExxonMobil (96%), National City Corp. (95%), Wendy’s Int’ l. (93%), Anadarko Petroleum (92%), Timken Corp. (91%), Halliburton (91%), Meadwestvaco Corp (90%), Darden Restaurants Inc. (90%), Branch Banking & Trust Co (90%), and Int’l Paper (90%).

    The trick now would be to determine what each of these produce that could then be boycotted, or at least held up for public scorn.

    We could continue to widen the list, these are just some of the most egregious, not necessarily the easiest to hit by boycott.

    Comment by Gary — November 25, 2004 @ 7:44 pm

  4. I’ve been saying the same thing. The corporate money is like heroin. The Dems get enough to keep them hooked. The GOP gets enough to make them subsidiary dealers.

    Comment by eRobin — November 26, 2004 @ 6:45 pm

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