Capital Corruption – A Review

Capital Corruption

The New Attack on American Democracy

By

Amitai Etzioni

Transaction Books

New Brunswick (USA) and Oxford (UK)

Copyright © 1988 by Transaction, Inc.

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Editor’s note: This review by Alan Danesh portrays the shocking corruption poisoning the American political system. Let it serve as a warning to Canadians, who should stand on guard against all forms of corruption in our own systems and institutions.

Introduction: One of the best documented works on corruption of American politics published in the 1980s is Amitai Etzioni’s Capital Corruption. The book consists of two distinct parts. In the first half the author meticulously documents the specific cases of corruption at the highest levels of the U.S. government, chiefly among members of the Congress. In the second half he offers detailed theoretical and philosophical analysis of approaches for eliminating, or at least diminishing, the deeply-rooted corruption in the American political system.

The wholesale corruption originates from PACs (Political Action Committees) which number in the thousands, represent the most powerful private interests in the country, and in total contribute hundreds of million dollars in support of the electoral campaigns of their allies, and against the candidates who do not support their interests.  While some 98% of the Congressional candidates who are supported and funded by powerful PACs win the race, rarely do those who are not funded or are opposed by PACs through negative advertising end up winning.

And the corruption does not end with winning the election but continues throughout the career of the Congressional representatives and senators, in the form of lecture invitations where a brief talk is nowadays rewarded with a $50,000 or higher “honorarium”. The “lecture” could simply consist of a few remarks after a luxury lunch where the Congressional member is wined and dined. The luncheon could be scheduled for a weekend in the Bahamas, with all travel expenses for the Congressional member and his or her spouse paid by the PACs.

Nor is political corruption limited to America. In Canada we had Justin Trudeau’s mother, Margaret Trudeau, attend events by the so-called WE charity, briefly talk about her emotional problems, and receive $300,000 in “honorarium.”

Professor Etzioni documents the cases of corruption which are nevertheless legal in the U.S.

The Canadian counterpart of legal corruption is The Former Governors General Program that entitles all former Governors General to continue charging the Canadian public up to $206,000 annually in “personal expenses” with no accountability to the end of their lives above and beyond the $143,816 annual pension they receive for living in extreme luxury for five years while doing occasional ceremonial ribbon-cutting.

The Program allows former Governor Generals to charge the taxpayers for “duties” they perform at their pleasure during their retirement and can cover hospitality costs, salaries for four staff members, office costs and travel expenses. The Program also covers payments to thre former governors general’s estate up to six months after their death.

The most blatant case of corruption has been the former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson’s circumpolar junket purportedly to promote Canadian culture whereby she took along 59 of her associates and cost the people of Canada $5.3 million.

Please note: all the dollar figures quoted by professor Etzioni in Capital Corruption are in 1982 dollars and are therefore very low. In today’s dollars they would be at least ten times higher.  AD

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“’Washington is corrupt to the core,’ I wrote in The New York Times, in conclusion of a study of American society in November 1982. The conclusion still shocks me, although five years of traversing the corridors of power in the nation’s capital, including one year in the White House, and observing politicians at work and on the take should make anyone immune to shock.” (Source: Capital Corruption, Preface)

“The daily news carries allegations of political corruption. Representative Henry Helstoski was -accused of selling to illegal immigrants private bills that would prevent their deportation. Senator Paul Laxalt is reported to have received campaign contributions from major figures in the underworld of organized crime while he was serving as chairman of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee which drafts criminal laws. Campaign contributions by the auto dealers’ political action committee (PAC) have urged Congress to veto a regulation that would have prevented the dealers from knowingly selling a ‘lemon’. Congress passed a bill prohibiting all candidates for public office from converting ‘surplus’ campaign funds for personal use—except those who were members of Congress on January 8, 1980″  (Source: Ibid. p. xii Preface)

“The tidal wave of private funds, many directed by special interests in their efforts to either buy an election of a representative or to gain specific items of legislation, reached such flood-levels that even the receipt-politicians have been expressing growing unease with the PACed polity. Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri (since retired) in referring to the Capitol, states ‘’there is the stench of money around this building.’’ Eagleton elaborated, concerning PAC contributions, ‘. . . they expect something for the money. And when you receive that money, you know those folks have an expectation. You’re not blind.’’ Senate Majority Leader Byrd described the private fund raising process of elections as the ‘’poison arrow aimed at the heel of representative democracy.’ The growing concern about the role of PACs is further reflected in the introduction and drafting, but so far not enactment, of several items of legislation that seek to curb the PAC’s scope and/or introduce public financing of election campaigns to Congress as they are in place for the presidency.” (Source: Ibid. pp. xv- xvi Introduction)

“The problem is not limited to campaign contributions. Another way private interests pay members of the House and the Senate is by providing them with ‘lecture’ fees, given even, as Senator Proxmire put, if one merely reads the phone book, and not to the best speakers but to the most powerful members of committees of interest to the providers of fees. In recent years, honoraria were up: $7.2 million in 1986, up from $5.4 million in 1984. Leading sources include Chicago Commodity trades, whose intellectual needs may not exceed those of other groups, but who actively sought to keep special tax rules for their trading profits; tobacco companies, fighting excise taxes; and billboard companies who defeated attempts to remove roadside advertising. (Source: Ibid. pp. xvi-xvii Introduction)

“America is not a plutocracy—at least not yet. Certainly it is not a full-fledged one. But there were, from day one, plutocratic tendencies, persons and groups who commanded wealth—or other forms of economic power—and who sought to use it to corrupt the democratic government. Now the country is subject to a strong new bout of the same. Interest groups, most of which reflect concentrations of economic power, have found new, effective ways of undercutting the American government. At issue is nothing less than who has the power to guide the government. If you believe that in contemporary America it is the people, each person having an equal say, as in ‘one person, one vote,’ you probably also believe in the tooth fairy. There have always been select groups within society that used their power to make government heed them more than the rest of the people. When the select group is the church, we talk about a ‘theocracy.’ When the power behind the public scenes is a titled, closed group of owners of large estates, we refer to a ‘landed aristocracy.’ When the powers that be are those who command economic power, and when they use it to wreak their will on that in office, the appropriate label is ‘plutocracy.’

Plutocrats in a democracy work by corrupting public life. They seek to turn a government of, by, and for the people into one in tow of the wealthy.” (Source: Ibid. P. 3)

“What corrupts American democracy most these days is PACed interest groups, the old interest groups equipped with a new set of computer-age tools for cracking public safes. While interest groups have haunted American democracy since its inception, only recently have they acquired the legal right to amass, openly, the resources needed to elect (or defeat) the nation’s lawmakers.” (Source: Ibid. P. 5)

“The amounts of money mobilized and applied to politics are quite substantial. Some of the larger PACs raise as much as $8 or $9 million in a two-year congressional-election cycle that typically includes a primary, general elections, and, possibly, a run-off. During the 1981-82 congressional-election campaign, for example, Senator Jesse Helms’s archconservative PAC, the National Congressional Club, raised $9.7 million. The total raised by PACs for the 1981-82 congressional campaign was $199 million.” (Source: Ibid. P 6)

“The PACs basically reflect the distribution of economic power in society. Corporations, the mainstay of a modern economy and the bases of economic power within the community, raised 24 percent ($47.2 million) of the total PAC money in the 1981-82 campaign. Large corporations had sizable PACs of their own, as well as participating . in trade associations’ PACs. Most small businesses have no PACs, or only puny ones. They can rely only on their trade associations.” (Source: Ibid. P. 6)

“Weaker groups, such as the poor, unemployed, and senior citizens, or less well organized groups, such as consumers, either have weak PACs or none at all. For instance, two Senior PACs, advocating the interests of older people, raised only $176,536 between them in 1981- 82.” (Source: Ibid. P. 7)

“In the 1982 elections, twelve senators each spent more than $2 million on their campaigns. Of these, nine won. The three who lost faced others who were able and willing to spend more than $2 million. In the House, the median winner spent $203,831; the median loser, $86,397. Of course, those who look as if they will lose will draw less money. In short, those who say, ‘You cannot buy an election’ are only technically correct: usually one cannot buy a victory against all odds, but one can substantially improve one’s chances.” (Source: Ibid. P. 12)

“Senators and representatives receive fees for addressing conventions, board meetings, luncheons, and so on, as well as travel expenses. The expenses of a spouse may also be covered. Senator James A. McClure and his wife were flown to Hawaii at the expense of the National Association of Realtors. Senator Robert Packwood and his wife had their way paid to Tel Aviv by the American Jewish Congress. The speeches may be long, detailed addresses, but they may just as easily be ten-minute off-the-cuff remarks. ‘If you’re chairman of the Banking Committee,’ says Senator William Proxmire, ‘you don’t have to speak at all….. You can read the phone book, and they’ll be happy to pay your honoraria.’ (Source: Ibid. P. 14)

“In 1982, the first full year without a limit, there was a substantial increase in the amount senators earned from speeches before private groups. Fifteen senators earned over $50,000 each. Senator Dole, who earned $134,000, passed along $51,000 to charity, which left $83,000 to supplement his salary (an amount greater than his $60,662 public salary). Senator Ernest F. Hollings earned $92,000 and kept it all.” (Source: Ibid. P. 15)

 “The ultimate check on politicians is the voting public. Theoretically, the voters could throw corrupt politicians out of office and vote in a clean bunch. But a major obstacle is that American voters focus their attention on the wrong kind of corruption. Although many Americans agree that most politicians are crooked and that special interests have too much power, they tend to attribute the flaws to the deficient character of individual members of Congress.” (Source: Ibid. P. 17)

“It’s Legal”

“Most confusing to the public is the fact that the newest, most damaging, and most prevalent forms of corruption in contemporary America are legal. The corruption that currently permeates American public life is of a very different kind from that with which the public seems most concerned. References to corruption in Washington conjure scenes of Abscam, of Congress members calmly stuffing their pockets with bribe money, embarrassed only by their pockets’ not being deep enough to accommodate the day’s take.” (Source: Ibid. P. 20)

“The power of PACs has grown constantly. They provided 26.2 percent of the money raised by congressional candidates in the 1982 election, up from 15.7 percent in 1974. Yet these often cited figures underestimate the role of PACs. PACs have a better batting average than the public. They have provided more money to candidates who ended up winners (their future allies— debtors) than to losers. In 1982 in the House, winners got 35 percent of all the money they raised from PACs, up from 31 percent in 1980 and 28 percent in 1978. Almost one-fourth of the 1982 winners received more than half of their financing from PACs. Especially favored were key House leaders and committee chairmen. These included Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill and James Jones, chairman of the Budget Committee. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rostenkowski, a Democrat, received 56 percent ($290,425) of his campaign funding from PACs; House Minority Leader Robert Michel obtained 68 percent ($476,637) from PACs. John Dingell, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, gained 58 percent from PACs, the majority of which represented business groups.

By contributing more to winners than to losers, and more to powerful chairmen and leaders than to the rank-and-file, PACs buy significantly more clout for their dollar than the public, which contributes proportionately more to losers and to the rank-and-file. If you ever bet on racehorses or dogs, you’ll have no difficulty in seeing the full significance of the difference.” (Source: Ibid. P. 27)

“Last but not least, the organization of PACs themselves is not exactly democratic or representative. There are very few studies of the inner working of PACs. However, from a few accounts in the press and interviews that I have conducted, the following picture emerges.

Only a minority of PACs poll their contributors as to who should receive the funds, or allow contributors to designate to whom the funds will go or to elect members of a committee to make these decisions. Most PACs are run like corporate charity drives. There is considerable pressure to give; a handful of higher-ranking executives decide to whom to give; and most contributors are lucky if they get an annual report on what was done with their money.” (Source: Ibid. P.40)

Taxing Oil’s Windfall Profits versus the Oil Lobby

“When deregulation of U.S. oil prices in 1979 allowed American oil companies to charge whatever OPEC charged, oil-company profits suddenly climbed sharply. OPEC had increased its oil prices fourfold in 1973 and soon followed that jump with other steep increases. Nobody could claim that U.S. production costs had suddenly increased four times, then doubled again in a few years; the gain was basically fortuitous. Hence, Congress decided to impose a tax to collect some of this ‘profit.’ The oil companies opposed the tax from the outset. When the measure came to the floor of the House, with a tax rate somewhat lower than had first been suggested, they went to work to cut it some more. They lobbied for an amendment that would end most of the tax in 1990, long before the scheduled date, and reduce its level until 1990 below that recommended to the House by its Ways and Means Committee.” (Source: Ibid. P. 48)

“Legalized corruption works routinely these days by deals, struck be-tween a member of Congress and a representative of a private interest, that are implicit, rather than fully spelled out, but nevertheless specific, relating to clear outcomes. Deals can be fashioned implicitly because when a lobbyist representing a private interest approaches a member of Congress, the member knows quite clearly what general position the lobbyist seeks to advance.” (Source: Ibid. pp. 57-58)

“Nor is there a legal prohibition on the lobbyist’s explicitly arguing the case, say, for public support for education and for maintaining the Department of Education. And the lobbyist will violate no law if he or she promises to support the member of Congress with campaign contributions, and deposit them before or after the vote (typically both).” (Source: Ibid. P. 58)

“The strongest barrier against convicting a corrupt member of Congress is a provision of the Constitution, often referred to as the ‘speech or debate’ clause (Article 1, Section 6). The key phrase states that ‘for any Speech or Debate in either House, [members of Congress] shall not be questioned.’ The courts have broadly construed the section to prohibit questioning a member of Congress, or introducing any evidence concerning his or her vote, debate in Congress, or all ‘things generally done in a session’ of Congress in relation to legislative business. The historical origin of the article is the British bill of rights. It was added when, in the seventeenth century, kings were arresting members of Parliament who voted in ways they disliked. The idea was to protect lawmakers from undue pressure, not to shield them from prosecution in bribery cases. However, several Supreme Court cases have been interpreted to cover such acts.” (Source: Ibid. P. 64)

 “While Reagan’s communication skills played a key role in his 1981 victory, another element of the process was all but disregarded at the time, in practically all accounts of the forces in play: The President was forced to make very major concessions—valued at scores of billions of dollars —to select interest groups. In effect, he had to buy their support. They in turn helped swing enough Democrats to give Reagan’s program a majority in the House, where the GOP had only a minority. For instance, despite the President’s adamant opposition to government handouts, he reversed his position on sugar price supports on June 25, just days before the vote on the budget, to help win the votes of representatives of sugar-growing districts, especially in Louisiana. The cost to the public: roughly $2 billion a year.” (Source: Ibid. P. 83)

“Corporate taxes have almost ceased to exist. From providing 32.1 percent of federal revenues in 1952, they have declined to 6.6 percent in 1983. And the amounts collected are offset by refunds. While theoretically a corporation may be taxed 46 percent on its income, very few paid nearly that much, even before their effective tax rate was further reduced, cut, and slashed in 1982. A study by the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation established that in 1981 twenty of the nation’s large commercial banks paid in total only 2.7 percent tax on domestic income, or $53 million on $1.9 billion income. There are industries that did even better: instead of paying taxes, the paper-and-wood-products industry and railroads received substantial refunds. As former Representative Charles Vanik, who served as a ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, put it: ‘If any of them [corporations] are paying taxes, it will develop that they are paying only on a temporary basis—they get it back in refunds.’”

“Tax subsidies for intangible drilling costs granted oil companies estimated benefits of $2.9 billion in fiscal 1982; ‘percentage depletion’ saved ‘independent’ oil companies another $2.3 billion. Hog farmers (and a few others) are allowed to treat income from their sales as capital gains, rather than ordinary income, at an estimated tax saving of $1.1 billion a year.” (Source: Ibid. P.87)

 “A major engine of American inflation is health costs, which for years have been rising more rapidly than other costs, thus exacerbating inflation in general. Hospital costs per patient day rose on the average about 16 percent a year through the seventies, while the Consumer Price Index rose on the average about 8 percent a year. Several factors propel health-cost inflation, top among them interest groups. One of the best accounts of interest groups’ power is contained in a new study of American medicine by Paul Starr, a Harvard sociologist. He found that in earlier decades the AMA sought to keep doctors scarce and salaries high by lobbying for low enrollments in medical school and against federal aid to medical students. (At one point the AMA was indicted of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act by fighting the rise of more economical group-practices.) In recent years, the AMA has opposed most schemes that would have reduced health costs through the use of public-health nurses, prenatal care, and a score of other cost-control measures. In 1983, lobbyists for the hospital industry fought to continue to maintain a provision of the Medicare legislation which required the government to secure profit-making hospitals a return on equity that in 1982 averaged 19 percent of their investment. (It was above 15 percent in mid-1980 and almost 23 percent in late 1981.)” (Source: Ibid. P. 98)

“SIX AREAS OF CORRUPTION

If there is an area in which one would expect the interest groups to restrain themselves, it is that of national security. Conversely, if this sector of public policy-making is found to be permeated by interest groups, one can hardly expect any other area to be immune. The evidence indicates that national security is mangled by special interests.

These include major defense contractors (or industries with defense interests, such as aerospace), service associations (some of which mix retired service personnel with those on active duty, and with representatives of defense industries), thousands of smaller businesses and subcontractors, trade associations, labor unions, numerous local constituencies (in the areas in which defense generates jobs), and the armed services themselves, when they act as lobbies.

These various groups do not all pull together, working in cahoots with one another. There is no single, unified military-industrial complex which has captured the nation’s public decision-making. Nor is private gain the only source of corrupting influence. Yet together, evidence shows, those interest groups have penetrated national-security decision-making to the point where independent or professional decision-making geared to national-security goals cannot prevail. The undue role of private interests is evident in six major areas:

A strong bias in favor of procurement of weapons, which contributes to a tendency to neglect the development of a security strategy and hinders efforts to ensure that the balance of various kinds of armed forces (infantry versus naval, for instance) will reflect a national strategy.

The purchase of inferior weapons (weapons that fail to meet specifications, while superior ones are available), as well as the continued production of obsolete weapons.

A bias in favor of costly (‘big-ticket’) items and complex technology over simpler, less costly items.

A tendency to favor buying new items rather than properly maintaining those the military has already bought.

A strong inclination to favor hardware over personnel, particularly dangerous in that it favors nuclear forces over conventional forces.

An inflation of the total defense budget until it undercuts the economy, the social order, and its own effectiveness—and hence national security.” (Source: Ibid. pp. 102-103)

“INTRODUCING THE MAIN INTERESTS

The defense industry is a rather concentrated business. While there are twenty-five thousand prime defense contractors, only thirty-three of these account for over half of the prime contracts. The largest defense contractors include General Dynamics ($3.5 billion from the Department of Defense [DOD] in 1980); McDonnell Douglas ($3.25 billion); Hughes Aircraft ($1.8 billion); Grumman ($1.3 billion); and Northrop ($1.2 billion).” (Source: Ibid. P. 104)

“The largest PACs in the defense area have been set up by the largest DOD contract recipients, and by some runners-up. Together, the PACs of the ten largest contractors shelled out more than $1.5 million to federal candidates in the 1982 election. These include the PACs of United Technologies, which gave $211,025; Lockheed, $183,330; General Dynamics, $176,990; Rockwell International, $175,233; General Electric, $149,125; McDonnell Douglas, $136,675; Hughes Aircraft, $136,265; Boeing, $128,400; Martin Marietta, $131,500; and Raytheon, $115,479.” (Source: Ibid. p. 104)

“True to form, defense PACs concentrated their dollars where they would count most. For instance, in 1982 McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed PACs favored with their dollar endorsement thirty-six of the thirty-nine members of the House Armed Services Committee who were running for re-election, and all fourteen of the members of the Subcommittee on Procurement. PACs of Rockwell International, Raytheon, and Hughes Aircraft contributed handsomely to all ten of the members of the House Subcommittee on Defense Appropriations. The chairmen of the appropriate committees, Representative J. P. Addabbo (House Armed Services Committee) and Senator John Tower (Senate Armed Services Committee), did particularly well. These two names will come up again.” (Source: Ibid. p. 104)

“BUYING INFERIOR AND OBSOLETE WEAPONS

Beyond the combination of a pro-procurement bias and neglect of strategy, interest-group pressures frequently result in the purchase of inappropriate weapons. That is, setting aside the question of how many and what general kind of weapons the U.S. defense requires, the decisions to buy specific weapons systems—a highly technical matter —are made under the undue pressure of special interests. Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin has pointed out that ‘the heaviest lobbying pressure—and the most potent with Congress—is to hold on to old weapons, keep old assembly lines rolling.’ Congress ‘primarily keeps things alive that ought to die’ and increases production runs, according to Jacques S, Gansler, former deputy assistant Defense secretary for materials acquisition. ‘Canceling an established program is extraordinarily difficult,’ said William A. Long, the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for acquisition policy, adding that ‘each weapon developed a constituency in Congress, in its armed service, and in industry.’ Reports The Wall Street Journal: ‘History shows that once big weapons programs get rolling—generating jobs and business contracts—they are politically almost impossible to stop.’ (Source: Ibid. p. 111)

“The General Accounting Office concluded that military planners are mesmerized by high technology. Choice examples: The F-15 fighter plane is so dependent on sophisticated electronics that battlefield repairs require diagnostic computers, and these computers have numerous reliability problems of their own. To perform at all they must be kept air-conditioned. Electronic parts integral to the army’s Cobra attack helicopter cause its anti-tank missile-firing system to fail on the average of once every hundred hours. The navy’s MK86 weapons control system, at the heart of all the newest combat ships, has more than forty thousand parts and, during a period studied in 1979, was usable only 60 percent of the time.” (Source: Ibid. p. 115)

“THE BALANCE BETWEEN NATIONAL DEFENSE AND THE PRIVATE ECONOMY

Finally, there is a cumulative effect of the various pressures by private interests that is resulting in a distortion, not within the U.S. defense posture but between it and other national needs. The issue is sometimes put in terms of ‘guns versus butter’: the more resources defense absorbs, the fewer are left for the private economy. However, in recent years the competition for resources has been at least as keen within the federal budget. Here it has been more a question of guns versus food stamps. The Reagan administration has tried to cut social programs while increasing defense expenditures, whereas many a liberal would prefer to slow down the increase in defense spending and dedicate more resources to social programs.” (Source: Ibid. pp. 127-128)

“THE PUBLIC/PRIVATE SEPARATION OF POWER

A democracy cannot be sustained unless the separation of public power from private power is maintained. Individuals, groups, and organizations that amass power in the private realm—economic, social, even moral—must not be allowed to control decisions made in the public realm, which is the province of the government, of duly elected representatives and those appointed by them. This prohibition holds for powerful individuals (the ‘super-rich’), corporations, labor unions, associations of many kinds (from the Mafia to the Chamber of Commerce), and wielders of religious or secular moral power (from the Catholic Church to Ralph Nader). It is not that those who command private power are not to be consulted, or not to ‘have an input.’ But lawmakers, the President, and judges must be free from control by private power; that is, their ability to render autonomous decisions must not be undercut by outside forces. When private power commands the means necessary for an official to be elected or re-elected, or to be effective in office, as we have seen is the case in the age of PACed interest groups, the loss of public autonomy cannot be far behind. Soon elected officials become obligated and, in varying measures, controlled by those to whom they are indebted.” (Source: Ibid. pp. 133-134)

“The virtues of the constitutionally mandated separation of powers (within the public realm, among the three branches of government), is part of the litany of the virtues of American government. The ‘other’ separation of powers—the protection of the public realm from private power—has been rather neglected in recent years.” (Source: Ibid. p. 135)

“Once the separation of the private and public powers is advanced, once the foundations of democracy are introduced, they tend not to stay put. It is not accidental but in the nature of things for the separation to be threatened, for forces to arise that seek to re-fuse positions of private and public power. The rise of these forces, in turn, calls for renewed efforts to sustain the separation of powers (‘reforms’), to maintain the democratic foundations. The Progressive Era, early in the present century, illustrates this dynamic and provides the most relevant historical ‘model’ of both the nature of our current difficulty and how it might be overcome.” (Source: Ibid. p.149)

“Indeed, all the major social philosophers, such as Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau, different though they are, have recognized the need for a community, as well as the contesting individuals and groups. Indeed, if Hobbes and Rousseau erred, it was more in the opposite direction. They were so concerned with the consequences of lack of unity that they tended unduly to promote the concern with community, under-mining the pluralistic element of the needed balance.” (Source: Ibid. p. 187)

“PUBLIC-INTEREST GROUPS

Public-interest groups are organizations whose political positions concern the community at large, or primarily nonmembers, and whose focus is as a rule on nonpecuniary interests. The size of their social base tends to vary and hence cannot be used as a defining characteristic. Concern with the community is their most outstanding quality. Common Cause, Americans for Democratic Action, and Young Americans for Freedom often act as public-interest groups. Most, if not all, interest groups—not merely public-interest groups —claim they serve the community or the public interest. The social scientist, it has frequently been noted, is hard put to tell what ‘the’ public interest is. It is easier to determine whether or not those who benefit by the groups’ actions are first and foremost the groups’ members. At issue are not the futuristic, hypothetical, potential payoffs that interest groups are fond of promising to all, but those that line pockets here and now, or securely in the near future.” (Source: Ibid. p. 203)

“One must accept, first, that there is no way to overcome political corruption once and for all. Its deepest source lies in a built-in tension between the private and the public realms. The two realms are, and ought to be, in a constant tug-of-war; as each tries to penetrate the other, they also check and balance each other. Democracy thrives as long as neither side wins. Violation of individual freedoms and the economy occurs when the public realm unduly intervenes in the private realm; political corruption occurs when private powers invade the public realm. It follows that when the forces pulling one way are prevailing, we need to weigh in on the other side, to restore the balance—not to ‘solve the problem, once and for all.’ There are no cure-alls.

To say that there is no solution to the problem is not to suggest  that significant progress cannot be made in restoring the public realm to its proper, autonomous status.” (Source: Ibid. pp. 233-234)

“PUBLIC FINANCING OF CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS

The best way to reduce substantially the power of private money over public office is to cover the costs of campaigning from public sources. Such a plan already exists for presidential elections. It should be extended to encompass congressional elections. Participation should be voluntary: candidates who wish to participate would have to refrain from receiving private funds, but those who believe they would do better otherwise are free to do so. To encourage participation, how-ever, private funds should be limited as much as possible.” (Source: Ibid. p. 236)

“A NEW CIVILITY

The institutional changes suggested so far provide but an illustrative list of the kinds of change required. While they are important in their own right, many others are called for and will come to the fore, once a movement to roll back the interest groups sets in. Beyond changes in institutions, a successful reform movement must build on, and contribute to, a change of attitude. Just as the civil-rights legislation of 1964 and 1965 both reflected and advanced a new acceptance of America’s blacks, similarly, the curbing of interest groups, via various reforms suggested in the previous chapter and the kinds of institutional changes suggested here, will be most effective if accompanied by a change of attitude. The change must take place in the public mentality, the ‘mind-set’ that defines citizens’ views and feelings about public life and ethics.” (Source: Ibid. p.281)

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Link for downloading a copy of Capital Corruption free of charge for personal reading: https://archive.org/details/capital-corruption-the-new-attack-on-american-democracy-etzioni-amitai

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