Greed — an American Addiction
Larry Kane
Greed certainly didn’t originate in the United States but, at the risk of oversimplification, it lies at the root of many of the most serious problems plaguing this country. Simply put, much of American society has grown addicted to greed and its pernicious attributes. This is not the first time in American history that greed has arisen as a serious social problem, but it is trending upward to such a degree that it threatens the continuation of our democratic republic and its vision of fairness and equal opportunity for all citizens. Greed manifests itself in many forms, but they are all reducible, in simplest terms, to either greed for wealth or greed for power or control over others. This essay explores only one way in which greed is expressed — the grasping for political control and its negative implications for democratic governance.
Greed and Democracy
Our democratic institutions are under greater, more insidious attack than at any time in our nation’s history since the Civil War era. The American democratic republic was birthed in reaction to a British government bent on economic exploitation of its remote colony. Ironically, today, America’s wealthy upper class and its political enablers are bent on the political and economic exploitation of its working class on several fronts — a motivation that is undermining the democratic institutions of the noble American experiment.
Voter Suppression Strategies
Policies of state governments in the United States to suppress voting by undesirable elements of the population are not new. Following the cessation of Reconstruction efforts in the South to protect rights of newly emancipated slaves in the aftermath of the Civil War, southern States under control of white politicians initiated various measures designed to deny or discourage voting by former slaves.a Such voter suppression tactics were quite effective, notwithstanding the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and persisted until the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, when the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was enacted.
Federal enforcement of the Voting Rights Act provided much relief from voter suppression efforts of the preceding 90 years. Yet in the last few decades, Republican-controlled state governments in many southern and Midwestern states have reinstituted policies intended to suppress voting by black citizens, who now predominantly vote for Democratic candidates.b Such tactics have been instituted with increasing frequency as the number of registered Republican voters has slipped to minority status in many states. While the broad terms of the Fifteenth Amendment proscribe such tactics, its enforcement has been undermined by the 2013 Supreme Court decision of Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, in which the Court held a key enforcement provision of the law to be unconstitutional.c
A new type of voter suppression tactic has been introduced by President Trump in the summer of 2020: suppression of voting by mail. To destroy the confidence of American voters to vote by mail (which the President apparently believes will be used predominantly by Democratic-leaning voters), the President has engaged in a strategy to sabotage the efficiency and timeliness of the U.S. Postal Service.d Trump publicly announced his opposition to increased funding in pending COVID-relief legislation for the Postal Service that would assure prompt delivery of ballots. Also, according to news media reporting, the Postmaster General, at Trump’s direction, initiated the removal of high-efficiency automated mail sorting equipment from some post offices and the physical removal of mail boxes from many locations in some American cities. These are tactics expected of a totalitarian state, not the United States of America.
It should go without saying that voter suppression policies are blatantly undemocratic measures that cut to the very core of democratic government. There is no democracy without a right of citizens to vote. Suppression of voters who are likely to vote for the opposing party is obviously a tactic by which a minority party might hold unfairly onto political power. The institution of such tactics is a bald expression of greed — a greed for power regardless of how immorally it may be obtained.
Disproportionate Campaign Financing
Representative democracy in the United States received a major setback with the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.e The decision effectively overturned election spending restrictions that had been in place for over a 100 years. Simply put, the Court ruled in Citizens United that the federal government could not place limits on the amount of money spent on election campaigns by corporations and similar groups, such as non-profit entities, including advertising expenditures for the benefit of a particular candidate, so long as the campaign spending is not coordinated with a candidate’s campaign. The specific rationale for the slim 5–4 majority of the Court was that restrictions on “independent” political spending by corporations and similar entities violate the First Amendment’s right to free speech. In doing so, the Court’s majority either naively or disingenuously opined that such independent spending on election campaigns would be transparent to voters and would not be subject to corrupt intent to circumvent remaining campaign restrictions on direct donors to a candidate.
The ten years since the Citizens United decision have witnessed an explosion of political donations to political entities known as super PACs (political action committees), which often are created to support the election of a particular candidate or candidates of a certain political ideology, but are not affiliated with a candidate’s formal campaign organization. Such unfettered spending enables very wealthy individuals or groups to exert an inordinate amount of influence over voter attitudes for or against specific candidates. Moreover, wealthy donors are able to avoid disclosure of their identity by routing their donations through non-profit entities, which are not required to disclose their donors. So, the transparency touted by the Citizens United majority is revealed to be non-existent.
Discussion and Concluding Thoughts
The combined impact of recent increases in voter suppression measures, especially by Republican-dominated state legislatures, and in unrestricted campaign donations through super PACs are threatening to seriously erode the perceptions of ordinary voters that the election process is fundamentally fair for all participants. Such erosion of voter confidence in the fairness of elections in the U.S., should it continue unchecked, raises a very real concern that a large percentage of voters will come to view our democratic process as a charade and to develop a malaise of political disenfranchisement.
What are the implications of such potential developments for a democratic society? They are pernicious, leading to a divided society in which the “democracy” is only enjoyed by a few in the upper echelons of the wealthy and connected, while the disenfranchised lose all motivation to go through the motions of participation in the democratic machinery — leading to a truncated, oligarchic “democracy” in other words. At its worst, the disenfranchised may look for alternatives to the government which is non-functional from their perspective.
At the root of these negative developments lies an unhealthy and immoral desire to dominate the political processes of this country through whatever means are available, whether fair or not, to promote the objectives of a certain political philosophy. In the current political climate, that political ideology seems to be far-right conservatism or even libertarianism, i.e., as promoted by the Koch brothers and others of a similar mindset.f Moreover, I do not think it goes too far to posit that the underlying objective of those efforts is to further the acquisition of more wealth or power over the life and property of others by persons already enjoying substantial wealth. In other words, it appears driven by greed.
What can be done to counter these trends that are so destructive to our democratic ideal? Voter suppression can be drastically reduced if Congress has the integrity and courage to update the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to again pass constitutional muster even for the current conservative bloc of justices of the Supreme Court. Such an updating should also incorporate provisions to address the more recent suppression tactics that have emerged in the past decade or two. Consideration should be given to federal legislation setting uniform rules among the various states for determining qualified voters and conducting elections for federal candidates rather than the existing hodge-podge of state requirements. Federal legislation should also be considered to set standards for what constitutes impermissible gerrymandering with regard to congressional districts.
Undoing the damage caused by the Citizens United decision in the campaign financing arena will be more challenging. It is possible that future presidents may be able, fortuitously, to moderate the current conservative majority through new appointments. Or it may happen that a future majority of Supreme Court justices come to recognize the insidious impacts of the Citizens United decision and determine to overturn that result if a new case presents the opportunity. However, either of these possibilities involves a quite unpredictable prospect. The only available option of a more determinative sort is the adoption of a constitutional amendment to negate the rationale and holding of Citizens United — a process that requires a supermajority in both Houses of Congress and for which ratification by the states also requires a supermajority. It is uncertain when a critical mass of voters and states will emerge that finds this an appropriate course of action.
Endnotes
a The southern states were dominated by a predominately white population affiliated with the Democratic party of that time, who first surreptitiously and later openly resisted the Republicans’ Reconstruction program.
b Examples of voter suppression tactics used in recent elections include: (i) onerous ID requirements, such as special ID cards; (ii) provision of fewer voting venues in areas in which disfavored voters reside; and (iii) confusing or unreasonably rigid voter registration requirements. A more subtle form of voter suppression is revealed in the opposition of President Trump and Senate Republicans to the institution of voting by mail for federal elections. While not a suppression methodology, per se, a strategy frequently employed to dilute the impact of disfavored voters is the gerrymandering of voting districts within a state to minimize districts in which registered voters for the disfavored party are in the majority.
c In Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013), the Supreme Court held that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was unconstitutional as lacking a rational basis. This legislation was enacted to rectify entrenched and pervasive racial discrimination in voting by black populations. The key provisions were sections 4 and 5, which are interrelated. Section 5 is the operative provision, prohibiting states identified under Section 4 from making any change in state voting procedures without preapproval by federal authorities. Section 4 utilized a formula based on the existence in 1964 of state laws posing obstacles to voter registration and voting rates in the 1964 presidential election that were at least 12 percentage points below the national average. Although the Act had been reauthorized numerous times, the information on which Section 4 operated had not been updated to reflect improvements in voter participation over the intervening 50 years in the states initially identified as discriminatory. Thus, the Court concluded that there was no rational basis for continuing application of Section 5 of the Act.
d “How Trump’s Attack on the Post Office Could Backfire,” Z. Stanton, Politico, August 13, 2020.
e 558 U.S. 310, 130 S.Ct. 876, 175 L.Ed. 2d 753, 2010 U.S. LEXIS 766.
f Charles and David Koch inherited not only their father’s (Fred Koch’s) industrial empire, but also his long-term, ultra-right crusade to reshape America’s political landscape into a Libertarian redoubt. They continued their father’s investment of untold millions in the development and implementation of a cunning strategy to achieve the election or appointment of ultraconservative candidates to federal and state judiciaries and legislatures. The Citizens United decision can be, I believe, legitimately viewed as one of the fruits of this effort. See Dark Money, Jane Mayer, Penguin Random House 2016.
Author’s Note: Larry J. Kane is a retired environmental attorney who resides in Carmel, Indiana. He writes on environmental, political, and social issues.
