Big dollars are used as blunt-force instruments to impose corporate will, but manipulation is apparent in Rainy Day Fund controversy.
(SALEM) - Lobbyists, by definition, buy-and-sell influence via access, for private gain. Their major tool is corporate contributions, ostensibly for political campaign purposes, allowed only through egregious error by “the Supremes”.
The two-day stunner-deal (Big O headline 3/1) on kicker-drain into Rainy Day Fund proves up the pattern precisely; this time fully-obvious even to the naive eye-and-understanding of too many Oregonians.
Personal political ambitions, fueled by long-continuing past practices including heavy dollars over the years into Oregon campaign funds was surely involved in this one; and not by only a single perpetrator, either.
Anyone unclear on that has surely been Van-Winkling it into the 21st Century, given tons of media-matter from DC and every state during the past three decades.
That’s without direct-view unavoidable right here in Salem, whenever the curtains slip a bit or hasty press-release tells too much.
Most recently that rush to harvest public credit for ostensible tax-rise prevention, even if on dubiously-described foundation, did the curtain-trick all too clearly.
That also accounts for recent Big/O-quote from one working in the liquor-lane for thirty years, stating taxes on that equally-poisonous product unchanged over years --and he can keep it that way, too.
Then there’s the Big Tobacco lavish-dollars, paid-out over past few years, totaling around $650,000-- publicly/recorded!!-- but probably not counting what’s outgoing now on desperate determination to assassinate ANY Oregon additional tax; even though dedicated to addiction-education and care of youth-addicted via propaganda, advertising practices, and other malignities.
What’s the political poison to which far too many local, county, state and national politicians have become fully, firmly and furiously addicted? The means --and the motivations-- are all too clear.
(For clarity, let’s define what we mean by addicted: Someone who is physiologically dependent on a substance; abrupt deprivation of the substance produces withdrawal symptoms.)
Such symptoms surely include declared allegiance to credibility-killing obvious-influence political-cult manipulation, leading on to massive reversal within 12 hours by rational, reasonable-others fearful of fully-illuminated image.
Campaign contributions is the name of that potent poison-portion imbibed or eaten --or absorbed in many other ways, both good-and-legal, with more than a small-smattering of otherwise-used, too--case we’ve learned to our dismay in Oregon lately.
For goodness-sake!!:
It is even still legal to pay off Ethics Commission fines via delving deep into the bag.
(You will forgive goodness and bag used here, please! -- It did seem somehow demanded/essential to tell it true for you.)
BUT you should surely continue to be extremely involved and concerned regarding the pat-on-wrist/pattern revealed in E/C response to reformed consideration of surely-egregious travel-exposures for well-experienced legislators; who surely need to be concerned re rapid memory-loss at such an early-age exhibited by some, and lack of professional-behavior pattern proven up as applying to one particular lobbyist.
Then, too, there’s that indisputable fact that the reformation of Ethics-Commission working rules --established by these Arena-participants for themselves as their first responsibility-promised as this session opens its operations-- is still not consummated with denials and deep disturbances for what has been common practice for far too long in this once-pristine and practically-oriented State.
There’s some burgeoning hope, however, in how this messy cult-driven take-it-or-leave-it debacle for decent cooperative effort was finally resolved; even if under other-pressures from colleagues and possible partners in working for State and commonweal interests.
The root decay which has occurred is directly consequential to the egregious commonsense-error committed by the O.S. Supreme Court in justifying human-rights to the definitely non-human corporate concept for common business operations.
The reality was recognized as legal make-believe even by those first proposing such UNcommon treatment for the corporate corpse -- a business-operations format NOT characterized by human consumption or other attributes of ANY human -- such as elimination and conscience.
If that bore any resemblance to reality, then surely must follow the same other-half of any human right: The responsibility demanded --universally and unequivocally-- whenever and wherever such a right is accorded credibility and honored.
That responsibility has so long been deeply disavowed and disabled by corporate actions widely on public record via legislation and court proceedings that the legal fiction of the concept has become just as widely recognized as a fiction --accomplished by canny corporate attorneys resourcefully exploiting early understandings and attitudes in a rapidly-expanding nation --with the connivance, it is suspected, of some legal scholars and even of judges involved in the key cases.
The concept itself is about to become a nationally-noted new question, on its way back to the Supremes, probably within this next year.
This --and other anomalies within corporate jurisprudence-- has allowed an unprecedented and highly unsavory development of corporate dollars used as blunt-force instruments to impose corporate will, wherever political contributions can be manipulated.
That substitution of dollar-muscle, easily capitalized within the corporate structure, has allowed malign actions to bring about unprecedented corporate freedom from regulation and surveillance by public agencies and public officials.
That’s the root/rot mentioned earlier, with both elected and appointed officials abusing and defying the trust of taxpayers placed with them, believing that their employees would be acting in the commonweal interest, and in that interest alone.
That’s why Legislative action via cooperative consensus, defying and denying return to malign and mischievous cult/cabal confrontation, leaves us some returning hope, now, in Oregon -- again!!
*******************************************************Editor’s Note: For earlier treatment of Supreme Court “error”, see Op Ed “U.S. Supremes Blew Another”, Feb. 21, 07. Click on “Articles written by Henry Ruark” in STAFF section.
Op Ed:Salem-News.com