Outsider in the White House (30 page)

What can we do to revitalize democracy? How can we bring tens of millions of Americans back into the political process?

Some Simple Steps to Reinvigorating Democracy

Revitalizing the electoral process is, in some ways, a simple matter. If the goal is to get more people to vote—and that certainly should be one of our goals—then it is high time we establish automatic voter registration for every American who is eighteen or older. Given the growth of technology through the “information highway,” a social security card or driver's license should be all that is required for voting. Same-day registration, allowing every American to register up until election day, would substantially increase voter turnout.

Similarly, we must make it more convenient for people to vote. We can open the polls, as is done in other nations, over a two- or three-day period—including at least one weekend day—so that working Americans will have more time to vote. Oregon has shown us another possible route: in that state, voting can be done by mail over a period of up to four weeks, and as a consequence voter turnout has risen.

But we need to do more than just increasing voter turnout. We must do a much better job in educating our citizens about the political process. It is time for our schools to offer young people an education for democracy. If our school curricula took the rights and duties of citizens as seriously as they do varsity football, home economics, and even study hall, young people would be far more likely to participate in the democratic process, and be better informed.

“But what about the damaging effect of money on the nation's elections?” I can hear you saying. And you are absolutely right: we will not reinvigorate democracy until we have thoroughgoing campaign finance reform. Not only do campaign finances currently pervert the political process by buying influence, but the existence of huge donations and the access they buy convinces many Americans—not erroneously—that voting is less important than money in determining national policy.

Given the fact that we have huge states like California and small states like Vermont, campaign finance reform on the national level can get a bit complicated, but some elements of
real
reform are clear. Most importantly, we must limit the amount of money that candidates can spend on an election. If less money were required to run successfully, the impact of big contributors would be reduced. And if there were reasonable campaign spending limits, it would no longer be possible to “buy” an election. Make no mistake: in the current situation, the candidate with the largest war chest will almost always be the victor.

How can we limit campaign spending? There are several alternatives. What we need, immediately, is a national debate about which path is the best to follow. We could provide public funding for campaigns, thereby setting limits on the amount of money that a candidate can spend. Or, as the Democrats proposed several years ago, we could provide matching public funds for every contribution of under, say, $200 a candidate receives. That way, huge donations that would no longer dominate campaign financing and the impact of ordinary citizens would be doubled. Or we could make free television time available, in sizable quantity, to every candidate. Television advertising is, after all, the largest expense in a campaign and the motor that drives the cost of campaigns higher and higher. We could, and should, restrict bundled contributions, “soft money,” enormous individual donations garnered at $10,000-a-plate dinners, and “uncoordinated” independent expenditure advertising—all ways of allowing monied interests to buy influence by circumventing efforts to limit campaign spending.

Whatever course we take, we need to address these key requirements: capping the amount of money that can be spent, providing public funding, limiting private funding, encouraging small donations, and making television time available cheaply or at no cost. Our goal should be to get over 80 percent of our fellow citizens to vote, to ensure that votes and not money determine which direction our leaders take, and to increase dramatically our efforts to ensure that those who vote are well informed.

The Corporate Mass Media: America's Untold Story

A knowledgeable and informed electorate is essential to a working democracy. We fall far short of that ideal. A principal source of the crisis in American democracy is the oligopoly—a handful of megacorporations—controlling the media, which ostensibly informs Americans about what is happening and what our political choices are. To say the least, the media is doing an horrendous job of providing Americans with what they need to know in order to be active participants in a vital democracy.

Americans get about 85 percent of their news from television. Almost all of that comes through six major television networks. NBC is owned by General Electric, CBS by Westinghouse, ABC by Disney, and Fox by Rupert Murdoch, the right-wing billionaire. CNN was recently bought by Time-Warner, the world's largest entertainment conglomerate. “Public” television is also increasingly controlled by a wide variety of corporate interests.

The problem with television is not just what is reported but, more importantly, what is
not
reported. It's no accident that we get thousands of hours of discussion about the O. J. Simpson trial and almost no discussion about the growing gap between rich and poor or our regressive tax system. Why is it that there is massive coverage of airplane crashes, but almost no coverage of corporate disinvestment in the United States?

There are any number of business and Wall Street shows. But despite the fact that 15 million Americans are trade unionists, there isn't one national television program exclusively devoted to discussing the goals and problems of the trade union movement, and the needs of American workers. In fact, most Americans have never seen even one prime-time television show on the positive role that trade unions have played in protecting the lives of working Americans. And while extreme right wingers are regular guests on various talk shows, almost no progressive voices are heard on prime-time TV.

The most important “story” of the last twenty years has been the precipitous decline in the standard of living of America's working families. Television, which provides instantaneous coverage of earthquakes thousands of miles away, seems to have “missed” this issue.

The conflict of interest in corporate ownership of our major television networks is enormous. Let's take a brief look at General Electric, the nation's largest corporation, which owns the NBC television network.

General Electric makes billions of dollars producing weapons. So it is keenly interested in defense spending and questions of foreign policy. Additionally, General Electric has shipped thousands of American jobs overseas to take advantage of cheap labor. So it is keenly interested in NAFTA, GATT, Most Favored Nation status with China, and other issues shaping the trade policy of the United States. In the early 1980s, General Electric got away with paying absolutely nothing in federal taxes—and would like to be in the same position again. So it is keenly interested in federal tax policy. General Electric, with a long reputation as an anti-union corporation, constantly battles with workers. So it is keenly interested in federal labor policy.

General Electric contributed $100,000 to a PAC controlled by presidential candidate Bob Dole. In the past, it has contributed heavily to both political parties. So it is keenly interested in the effort to prevent campaign finance reform. General Electric invests billions of dollars in financial institutions. So it is keenly interested in banking and insurance regulations. General Electric has invested billions of dollars in the electronic media. So it is keenly interested in communications legislation. And these are just a few of the areas in which General Electric has a stake.

Is it possible that the enormous financial interests of the General Electric corporation influence the news and programming of NBC? Frankly, you'd have to be very naive to believe otherwise. But of course, it's not just General Electric. Recently, Disney bought ABC, Westinghouse bought CBS, and Time-Warner bought CNN. The
New York Times
bought the
Boston Globe
. Gannett Corporation buys every newspaper in sight. Rupert Murdoch owns Fox Broadcasting—and
TV Guide
, Twentieth Century Fox, HarperCollins publishers, and 150 newspapers and magazines in various countries.

Today, one of the greatest crises in American society is that the ownership of the media is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Those hands are, as a result, more powerful than ever before. Needless to say, there is not a lot of discussion in the corporate media of this issue. Just how concentrated is media ownership? Ben Bagdikian has written a very important book called
The Media Monopoly
in which he relates that:

•
Eighty percent of the daily newspapers in this country were independently owned at the close of World War II. Today, 80 percent of daily newspapers are owned by corporate chains. Just eleven companies control more than half the nation's daily newspaper circulation.

•
Ninety-eight percent of the daily newspapers in America have a monopoly as the only paper in town.

•
Although there are more than 11,000 magazines published in the United States, today just two corporations control more than half of all magazine revenues.

•
Although there are 11,000 local cable television systems, only seven companies have a majority of the 60 million cable TV subscribers.

•
Three companies own more than half the television business. Four companies own more than half the movie business. Five companies rake in more than half of all book revenues.

Limiting this concentration of power over the media, which allows a few giant corporations to determine much of what we learn, presents a very difficult dilemma—and I do not have all the solutions. While we want to address forth-rightly the problem of corporate control of the media, we do not want to tread on two of our most precious freedoms: freedom of speech and freedom of the press. But there are reforms we can make which do not impinge on these freedoms.

Three Positive Steps We Can Take to Develop a Freer and More Responsive Media

The first step we should take is vigorous antitrust prosecution. In the early years of this century, when the railroads had a strangle-hold over the crop sales of midwestern farmers, Congress passed legislation to bust the trusts and limit their monopoly. There is an equally pressing—perhaps even more pressing—reason for us to pass media antitrust legislation today: the current monopoly over thought and expression is clearly a serious danger to our fragile democracy.

A second step would be to provide significantly greater funding for public radio and public television. Greater funding would wean public broadcasting from its dependence on corporate advertising, which it euphemistically calls “underwriting.” And greater funding would allow public radio and television stations to proliferate. With more stations, public broadcasting could accommodate an even greater diversity of public needs.

Third, the Federal Communications Commission should reestablish two principles that formerly served this country well: the public service requirement and the fairness doctrine. Every television and radio station should once again be required to devote a meaningful percentage of its programming to public service broadcasting. The public, after all, owns the airwaves through which signals are broadcast, and the rights-of-way in which cables are strung. And every television and radio station should once again have to follow the fairness doctrine: those with opposing views should have the right to respond to viewpoints expressed on the station.

Will these initiatives—antitrust prosecutions, public funding for public broadcasting, and a strong FCC role—reverse the current monopolization of those “industries” that inform us as to what is happening, what the world looks like, and how we can change that world? Unhappily, I doubt it. The mass media is too lucrative and too important in maintaining the dominance of monied interests to be reined in that easily. But these initiatives would be important first steps toward curbing corporate control and moving toward a society in which information flows more freely.

Let's suppose for a moment that we could open up the media to a much greater diversity of opinion and ideas, establish a more vibrant and well-informed democracy, and move toward a fairer distribution of wealth. Would the great work of building the America we dream of be accomplished?

Hell, no. The work would only have begun.

Let me put the progressive agenda as plainly as I can. Not until there is good, decent-paying work for every American can we be satisfied that the nation's promise is being fulfilled.

Downsizing, Job Flight, and the War on Workers: The Race to the Bottom

I am old enough to remember the presidency of Lyndon Johnson, when the government fought a “war on poverty.” In recent years that war has been transformed by representatives of both major parties into a war on the poor. More important yet, but less reported, is that in the years since Ronald Reagan was elected president, corporate America has waged war against this nation's workers.

We live in an era of “downsizing.” Well-paid workers are laid off in huge numbers, while the executives who axe their jobs earn enormous bonuses. Those workers are often replaced by what is called “contingent” labor. Every day over 35 million Americans go to work as temporary or contract labor. That's one out of every three workers. As an indication of what kind of society we are becoming, two out of every three jobs created in the private sector during the 1980s were temporary, not permanent. In fact, the ranks of contingent workers are growing so rapidly that some estimate they will outstrip permanent full-time workers within the next ten years. Manpower, Inc., is now the largest private sector company in the United States, employing some 600,000 workers.