Dirty Politicians

Its long been no secret to progressives that one of the most important things a politician can do is put their money where their mouth is. No. Let me rephrase. Where a politician gets there money becomes their mouth. Or what comes out of it. Something like that. You know what I mean. I personally feel like Republicans (especially those on the far-right) don't care so much about where you funding comes from if you vote the right way. But that's another post.

One of a number of key planks of the progressive agenda is tackling climate change. Despite overwhelming scientific evidence, getting anyone in Washington to move on this subject seems to require Herculean efforts. And for every dollar in a politician's war chest that comes from a group who is into climate change denial or just doesn't want to do anything about climate change, the less likely that politician is to want to be part of the solution. Without further adeu I present the top 10 Democratic and Republican incumbent Senators in terms of campaign contributions from the oil and coal industries. Let's take a look at this list and break it down a bit. The first couple of things I notice are these:

• Fully 1/5 of all Senators owe the Oil and Coal industries at least $10,000 in campaign funds
• 17 of the 20 that make up that 1/5 owe at least $30,000
• Republicans usually owe considerably more than Democrats
• The number one benefactor is Democrat from Arkansas, Blanche Lincoln (ahead of Lisa Murkowski from Alaska!)
• The list of "honorees" don't call any one region of the country home
• Russ Feingold is now the senator from the great new state of Wisconscion (probably a new, weird scion of Wisconsin) 

It's important to know where your elected representatives get their contributions from. It's important to know because these contributions don't come free. They come with the expectation that these senators will do favors for the industries who did the giving usually worth many times the amount donated. Recent examples include Ben Nelson and the teat of the healthcare industry as he fought valiantly for his insurance buddies to eliminate the popular Public Option from the Health Reform Bill and Blanche Lincoln and the epic job she's doing for the Oil industry in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon Spill. That first link for Lincoln also has a drop down for different years. 2008 tells us that John McCain received more than double the donations that the President did from the Oil and Gas industry during the 2008 campaign.

The fact is, our political system rewards politicians for diving into the very bottoms of lobbyists pockets and coming up with as much cash as they can. Winning a race for House or Senate is expensive. That's why decisions like the recent Citizens United v. FEC case so directly effect who represents us and what kind of government we can have. Before the Citizens United case there were caps on how much money a corporation could give to a candidate. Now, there are none, so you can expect to see those numbers go up in the next few election cycles. This sort of buying and selling of elected representatives has been going on a long time, but it has gotten much worse in the last few decades. We need to put a stop to this in the only ways we know how. We have to give our time and our money to candidates who really deserve it. Who aren't in some industry's pocket before the ever step foot in the Capital Building. And even more important that our time and our money is our votes. Research the people who are on your ballots. Especially for high federal positions like House, Senate, and the Presidency. Statistics show that once you get to Washington, you usually leave by choice. The incumbency effect is a powerful thing. Let's use it to our advantage and get people who answer to us and not to industry elected to the 112th Congress.