Campaign Finance Reform, the Internet and Town Economies
Remarks of Doris Haddock to the Cumberland, MD Rotary Club, January 25, 2000
The response was extremely enthusiastic.
Thank you.
In my walk, I have seen countless main streets in hundreds of towns, and it is heartbreaking to see the boarded-up windows and empty sidewalks. It has been the only sad thing I have seen, not counting quite a few armadillos and foxes and other animals that did not make it across the road as they had planned. It is sad that the economic life of our towns can be listed among the roadkills. You have done so much with your beautiful downtown, and there is such a sense of vitality in Cumberland, that I can talk about the issue here without it being a criticism. It is not your problem here, except that we are all Americans and we must all care about the vitality of Main Street America, for it has historically provided the strong middle class soil for the flourishing of our democracy.
There is an advertisement currently running on television showing a man coming to work in the morning on a New York subway and sitting down in a small cubicle and making his first telephone call of the day to a client. He is a stockbroker. The announcer says, "if your stockbroker is so smart, why does he still have to work for a living?"
Well, that may seem like a good question, but it really is not. Working for a living is a fine idea. It is perfectly fine to make a living serving the needs of others. It is perfectly fine to manage investments so that they grow carefully over the years. It is not essential that everyone buy penny stocks and become billionaires overnight. A stockbroker does not have to be incredibly wealthy to be incredibly worth his or her salt. That is obvious.
So what is really behind this ad, which of course was for an Internet stock trading service, or should I say, a casino. The Internet is only the latest tool that allows big, distant companies to put middle class business people and professionals entirely out of business and to deny their clients their wisdom and caution.
Here we see an attack on the very legitimacy of a stockbroker. Who is safe from such an attack? Surely not insurance agents, realtors, travel agents (poor dears), retail store owners, pharmacists, bookkeepers --anyone. We are all competing with automated systems and with 25-cent an hour labor on the other side of the world. Which members of our middle class can survive? And how can our democratic society survive without a strong and stable middle class? As that television ad shows, the demonization and undermining of our local professionals and our town economies is very much underway and very well-financed. Besides purchasing television ads, these Internet giants are buying our elected leaders.
Now, you're starting to understand my direction. You have been wondering, "What does all this have to do with the issue she walks for, campaign finance reform?" Look no further than the pledges the presidential candidates are now making to keep the Internet free of sales taxes--a policy that will make it increasingly difficult for Main Street merchants to compete. Then look at who is funding these candidates, and you will see the names of the billionaire companies doing business on the Internet.
The computer-based financial management program, Quicken, which controls some 85% of the market for that sort of thing, is now selling every kind of insurance on the Internet, as a part of its software. They will soon be selling home mortgages and they are already selling investment products and banking services. If you walk down Main Street in three years, will any of your neighbors be selling insurance or mortgages? Will there be any banks behind the ATM machines? Not if the megacorporations have their way and destroy all our middle class jobs and turn them into telephone clerk positions.
Maybe there is a natural evolution involved here, but it is important for you to know that the new law that enables these companies to pull the rug out from under all the state insurance and banking regulations went through Congress last year on a fast track greased by millions of hard and soft campaign dollars. If you are in the insurance, banking or mortgage business, ask your Senators and Representatives how they voted on the big financial services bill last year, and you will know if they can be bought or not. You will know if they represent your interests, of if they have sold you down the river. If they say that the bill is a good one and a necessary one, tell them that they might have some credibility if they had not taken the money from the bill's business sponsors.
The biggest problem with the current campaign finance system is that we dare not trust our elected leaders. We don't know if they are making decisions for the right reasons, or for corrupt reasons. We have our suspicions, and suspicions are deadly to a democracy.
In a corrupt environment where public policy is for sale through the campaign finance system, towns and small businesses and family farms and people themselves cannot successfully compete for representation. If that is the case, then a coup has taken place. We continue to finance the government with our taxes, but it no longer serves our interests or answers to our concerns. This is a change of government and a treachery to those who have sacrificed their lives and limbs for our freedoms.
Those causing this change of government --senators and representatives, lobbyists, corporations, unions and the very wealthy-- are consciously and aggressively putting us out of the picture. They are conspiring daily to steal our government from us. I don't know if I would call it treason, but it is the purposeful destruction of our idea of government by and for the people, and so what is the word for that?
Don't go away from this meeting thinking that I was speaking against the Internet. I do not mean to suggest that the Internet is a bad thing, or that the nature of commerce should not evolve. I do mean to suggest, however, that our elected leaders should be looking to our interests, not those of the highest bidders. But that is in fact what has happened, and the power center of our democracy has moved from the Capitol building to the lobbyists along K Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. I am suggesting that, in this time of rapid change to our economic system, we need our representatives to represent our interests.
Hanging in the balance is the nature of our town economies. What does it matter to a community to have its own businesses owned by its own townspeople or by faraway, multinational corporations?
It is, of course, the difference between a community of free men and women, and a colony --which is rapidly becoming the condition of many American communities.
Our corrupted elected leaders have done everything possible to promote the destruction of family businesses and everything possible to promote the advance of all-consuming mega-corporations that sweep away all competition.
The first president to really see the problem of the small business and the small farm, pitted against over-large corporations was that wonderful Republican, Teddy Roosevelt. He broke up the trusts while he was in power. The minute he left power, no leader took his place to defend the human scale of our communities, and to defend the health and breadth of the middle class. This battle has been untended for most of the last century. So we have watched the decline of the family farm, the decline of family businesses, the deterioration of central cities, and a growing income gap that leads rather directly to family stress and family and community problems.
It may seem that I have picked on the Internet a little bit, so let me say something to cheer up the Internet people in the room before I close. There is a dark and light side to every new thing. Yes, it will challenge us to find new ways to be free communities where people own and operate their own businesses. But it also, of course, allows anyone, including the parent or elder at home and the smallest of small businesses, to provide services or products to a worldwide market.
Another bright side of this new invention is its potential to provide a new medium for political campaigning: one that can potentially be free of charge to candidates, or nearly so. There are several websites that have set themselves up as impartial sources of information about candidates.
I think this kind of website, especially if they become easier and more interesting to use, and if they will push themselves out there by advertising themselves in other media so that voters will come shop for candidates, can revolutionize politics in America and take the money nearly out of campaign advertising. If done well, with no costs to candidates, and with serious foundation and sponsor support for its development and its promotion to voters, the Internet can provide an end run around the high cost of political campaigns. I challenge foundations to do this in a more aggressive, use-friendly and entertaining way. There is no greater opportunity right now to take special interest money out of campaigns--money that we all pay back in the form of $150 billion dollars a year in the tax loopholes and sweetheart rules and laws passed for fat cat contributors.
The Internet is only one case. There are many new things we can do to move into a better future--but we must be in the driver's seat. The interests of ordinary people must be represented, which is not our situation today. If you will go down this hill to Washington without $100,000 in your pocket and try to get your representatives to listen openly to you and to decide to help you on the basis of what is right, why, you are dreaming. I remember a time when you could do that without a penny in your pocket, and they were interested to listen and take action. I witnessed it many times and I long for an honorable Washington D.C. again before I leave this life. I may have to live a long time.
Thank you very much, and I do hope you will push your representatives in Congress to ban the use of special interest corporate and union money in our elections.
Thank you