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Empty Promises from Democratic Candidates
- Thread starter Nous
- Start date
It depends on whether donor or recipient and the type of entity making or receiving the contribution:
Contribution limits for nonconnected PACs - FEC.gov
In the first place, you need to read that study. That blurb seems to misrepresent.
An oligarchy consists of just a few people. Name them.
Are you saying that unions are like oligarchs?
I'm not quite sure what "promise" you're referring to here. But the US is supposed to be a democracy. The people are supposed to decide what the government should do. Lately, it's mostly oligarchs that are deciding what government should do, and that's in direct opposition to the idea of democracy. When oligarchs are allowed to make huge campaign contributions, the oligarchs gain the power to make politicians do what the oligarchs want.
Would you be happier if we said plutocrats?
Did you want the study's PDF? https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites...testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf
How many people is ":a few" people?
You're asking me to write a book! You know a general interest forum's not suited to long format research papers.
I can recommend readings if you really want an in-depth overview.
Misunderstood
Active Member
Yes, from the part of my post you quoted That is what I thought I was trying to say. That giving depends on the Type of PAC and the race, making a big difference as to what can be given and to whom.
But, that was not the point I was trying to make. The part of my post you did not quote was:
A PAC is limited in what they can give depending on the race, Candidate or the type of organization. But why be limited to just giving money to a cause? A PAC can run an independent campaign on their own with no limitations.
Now say I have a PAC called Misunderstood's Great Politicians PAC. I have many news sources that I have influence over, many large donors, and influence over some important Politicians I can get to endorse my selected candidates. I come to the candidate I want and say, 'If I support you with all influence I have, Do I have your support if issue _________ (fill in the blank) comes up. If you do this I will not give you any PAC money, so your campaign will look clean, but I will support you with endorsements, press and our own independent campaign support", and this candidate accepts.
Would this candidate not be a bought and paid for candidate? As you mentioned in your OP not taking any PAC money means little, as some PAC's can give even more support than money, without giving a candidate a dime.
The US is a republic, a form of government in which the people elect representatives to legislatures. And that is exactly what happens in the US. You haven't cited a single fact by which to conclude that the US is an oligarchy, a plutocracy or any other form of government. I asked you to name theose few people who constitute the ruling power if your claim of the US being an oligarchy were true, but you haven't named a single such person yet, nor have you cited a single fact regarding what any such alleged oligarchy does in our republic. All you have done here is post adolescent nonsense. Are you old enough to vote? Have you ever voted? What are you claiming happens to the hundreds of millions of votes cast every year in the US for representatives, if it were true that the US is an oligarchy?
I have referred to only one promise on this thread, and it is succinctly stated in the first sentence of the OP and elsewhere. Work on reading comprehension.
I read the study the first time it was cited on RF. It has been posted and discussed at least a couple of times.
Did you notice that the authors do not test any hypothesis about an oligarchy? Tell us how the term "economic elite" is defined in the study. Did you notice that policy preferences of the economic elite were not enacted more often than those of the median income group?
Have you read the 3 refutations of the Gilens and Page study published in the peer reviewed literature? A nice summary with links to those analyses is here:
Since its initial release, the Gilens/Page paper's findings have been targeted in three separate debunkings. Cornell professor Peter Enns, recent Princeton PhD graduate Omar Bashir, and a team of three researchers — UT Austin grad student J. Alexander Branham, University of Michigan professor Stuart Soroka, and UT professor Christopher Wlezien — have all taken a look at Gilens and Page's underlying data and found that their analysis doesn't hold up.
Gilens and Page used a database of 1,779 policy issues — which included data on the opinions of median-income Americans, the rich, business interests, and non-business interest groups like unions or the National Rifle Association — to determine whose opinions correlated most closely with actual government policy.
But the researchers critiquing the paper found that middle-income Americans and rich Americans actually agree on an overwhelming majority of topics. Out of the 1,779 bills in the Gilens/Page data set, majorities of the rich and middle class agree on 1,594; there are 616 bills both groups oppose and 978 bills both groups favor. That means the groups agree on 89.6 percent of bills.
That leaves only 185 bills on which the rich and the middle class disagree, and even there the disagreements are small. On average, the groups' opinion gaps on the 185 bills is 10.9 percentage points; so, say, 45 percent of the middle class might support a bill while 55.9 percent of the rich support it.
Bashir and Branham/Soroka/Wlezien find that on these 185 bills, the rich got their preferred outcome 53 percent of the time and the middle class got what they wanted 47 percent of the time. The difference between the two is not statistically significant. And there are some funny examples in the list of middle-class victories. For instance, the middle class got what they wanted on public financing of elections: in all three 1990s surveys included in the Gilens data, they opposed it, while the rich favor it. That matches up with more recent research showing that wealthy people are more supportive of public election funding.
So it's hard to say definitively, based on this data, that the rich are getting what they want more than the middle class. And it's hard to claim, as Gilens and Page do, that "ordinary citizens get what they want from government only when they happen to agree with elites or interest groups that are really calling the shots." Even when they disagree with elites, ordinary citizens get what they want about half the time.
We can only discover how many people make up your alleged oligarchy when you name them.
I've cited and linked to a good deal of evidence on RF showing, inter alia, showing that campaign contributions have little, if any, effect on representatives' voting in legislatures. I'll get it for you ASAP.
See the studies discussed in the OP here:
Are Your Views on Campaign Spending Deduced from the Evidence?
And #32 here:
xray
Times be a changing.
I'm not quite sure what's got your knickers in such a twist? I will try to carry on in a civil manner, despite your boorish behavior.
I've numbered the sentences in your post..
1 - Yours is - in this case - a distinction without a difference. The key word is "represent". As I recall, our government is set up to be "for the people", correct?
2 - Have you read the study that @Valjean mentioned earlier in this thread? The one written by Gilens and Page? You're dangerously close to sea-lioning here @Nous. Have you installed Google on your computer?
3 - Off the top of my head: Koch brothers, Waltons, the major shareholders in Google and Facebook, major shareholders in the top military contractors, major shareholders in the large banks and the largest oil companies.
4 - Oh how I wish I wasn't yet old enough to vote
FYI, I've been voting for decades now.
As for your argument that many votes are cast, really? You gonna go with that? The oligarchs step in long before we get to the point of voting. They help craft the bills we get to vote on. They bury the bills we'd like to vote on, but don't get a chance to. In short - and I know you know this - the people have a chance to vote on the things they care about only a small percentage of the time. I think that for you to trot out this argument indicates that you're not debating in good faith. That's too bad. I suspect we disagree on some points, but I also think you have some well considered opinions. It would be great if we could hear those, without all your unnecessary and distracting snark.
I've numbered the sentences in your post..
1 - Yours is - in this case - a distinction without a difference. The key word is "represent". As I recall, our government is set up to be "for the people", correct?
2 - Have you read the study that @Valjean mentioned earlier in this thread? The one written by Gilens and Page? You're dangerously close to sea-lioning here @Nous. Have you installed Google on your computer?
3 - Off the top of my head: Koch brothers, Waltons, the major shareholders in Google and Facebook, major shareholders in the top military contractors, major shareholders in the large banks and the largest oil companies.
4 - Oh how I wish I wasn't yet old enough to vote
FYI, I've been voting for decades now. As for your argument that many votes are cast, really? You gonna go with that? The oligarchs step in long before we get to the point of voting. They help craft the bills we get to vote on. They bury the bills we'd like to vote on, but don't get a chance to. In short - and I know you know this - the people have a chance to vote on the things they care about only a small percentage of the time. I think that for you to trot out this argument indicates that you're not debating in good faith. That's too bad. I suspect we disagree on some points, but I also think you have some well considered opinions. It would be great if we could hear those, without all your unnecessary and distracting snark.
Power within the party is in the news....
Michael Moore: Ocasio-Cortez is the Democratic leader
Michael Moore: Ocasio-Cortez is the Democratic leader
You haven't answered the question I asked in the OP, nor any other question I've asked you. Why don't you do so instead of posting twaddle about the US being an oligarchy, which you obviously can't deduce from any fact?
See #31. Why don't you answer the questions there that I asked him, since he didn't?
Cite the evidence to substantiate your claims.
Even if you could do so, the fact that a constituent writes a bill and submits it to her representative does not mean that the country is an oligarchy.
You can write bills and lobby your representatives to enact them.
That's democracy or republicanism in progress.
FYI, I wish to quote a 2014 review article, in which Milyo discusses evidence from “event studies” that examined the effect of corporate contributions to politicians and political campaigns on various outcomes. It's so very relevant here:
For many political observers, the source of political corruption is obvious: privately financed political campaigns facilitate a market for political favors (Grossman and Helpman 1994). Advocates for campaign-finance reform have long asserted that campaign contributions are bribes and that only full public financing of political campaigns can address the problem of political corruption. However, it also has long been recognized that although there is some superficial evidence consistent with the view that campaign contributions are the functional equivalent of bribes, upon closer inspection that hypothesis is not well supported by the scholarly literature (e.g., Sorauf 1992).
The best illustration of this assumed equivalence between contributions and bribes is found in analysis of corporate PAC campaign contributions and roll-call votes on issues of interest to those same corporations. Firms in industries that are more highly regulated or dependent on government contracts are more likely to form PACs (Grier, Munger, and Roberts 1994). Those PACs make contributions to party leaders and members that sit on committees with relevant policy jurisdictions (Grier, Munger, and Roberts 1991). More to the point, PAC contributions are also highly correlated with the likelihood that a firm will benefit from government investment and with roll-call votes on legislation favored by the sponsors of corporate PACs (Duchin and Sosyura 2012). Even the timing of contributions -- coincident with major steps in the legislative process -- suggests a market for favors (Stratmann 1998). All of this is consistent with the notion that campaign contributions are like bribes, or, as Fred McChesney (1987) argues, extortionary payoffs. But this evidence is also consistent with the phenomenon that PACs support politicians that hold beliefs most beneficial to the employees and investors in the associated firms (Bronars and Lott 1998; Levitt 1998).
In fact, both theory and evidence favor the latter interpretation, at least in the pre–super PAC era. First, bribery, influence peddling, and extortion are crimes, so it is not possible to make legally enforceable promises regarding exchanges of money for favors, which at least hinders such exchanges. Further, contributions made directly to federal candidates are limited by law, so the amounts of money being contributed from any one source may not justify the opportunity cost of illicit behavior. Moreover, contributions to candidates must be disclosed; the activities of politicians are closely monitored by competing candidates and watchdog groups eager to make accusations of impropriety. And several studies show that marginal campaign expenditures have negligible effects on federal election contests (Levitt 1994; Gerber 1998; Milyo 2001), which implies that political contributions to high-spending incumbents are particularly inefficient in-kind gifts and unlikely to win much gratitude. These facts do not preclude illegal transactions, but they do suggest a limited scope for such activities.
Empirical evidence also raises doubts about the efficacy of corporate PAC contributions as the functional equivalent of bribes (Milyo, Primo, and Groseclose 2000). The amounts of money transferred to politicians in the form of PAC contributions are not only well below the legal maximum but in the aggregate are also dwarfed by corporate lobbying expenditures, which at least suggests that contributions are less effective at influencing policy than lobbying. In turn, corporations devote far more resources to charity than all to political activities combined, which again suggests that both contributions and lobbying have limited impact. Given all this, it is not surprising that most careful research studies find no causal impact of campaign contributions on legislators’ roll-call votes (Ansolabehere, de Figueiredo, and Snyder 2003).
The facts noted in this last paragraph seem to me highly important and persuasive.
At the time of this review there were evidently not a lot of published post-Citizens United event studies. But in the section “Campaign-Finance Law,” Milyo reviews a few, which collectively found “no positive impact of corporate political activity [of corporate contributions to politician or political campaigns] after Citizens United “. In this context, Milyo also cites a study by Coates, which was not an event study, where it was found that such corporate contributions were detrimental to shareholder value. This is likely the or one reason such corporate contributions are relatively so small.
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I know of no rational reason to conclude that the greater number of Tweets a president posts equates to having any desirable quality as a president. Do you know of any such rational reason?
Do you know any rational reason that Lincoln would have had a Twitter account?