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As the Bush Administration and Congress open up the money spigots to bail out Wall Street, we are beginning to see a tsunami of taxpayer dollars being spent to bail out the financial services industry. While we will be arguing the pros and cons of this bailout of the industry, an equally pressing question is, how did we get here in the first place?

We have heard about the greed of the mortgage bankers lending to anything with a heart beat, selling off mortgages to the complacent Fannies and Freddies. In turn, the creative derivatives brokers crafted exotic financial instruments in pretty packages for willing traders who brought the trash because it was packaged so nicely.

How did this happen and why was nobody paying attention?

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Campaign Finance and the Undermining of Universal Rights

This is the first in a series of articles on corporate influence and corruption of the American political process and its implication on human rights.

Corporate funding of politics in America has corrupted our system of government and threatens our basic freedoms. Having grown accustomed to the status quo in campaign finance, we have lost sight of the fact that this system threatens our basic freedoms and put our basic rights as humans at serious risk.

“Human rights,” a term commonly used in the context of gross human injustice, refers to the “basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled.”  This includes rights and freedoms, which we think of as civil and political rights, such as the right to life and liberty, freedom of expression, and equality before the law. But the term also includes and social, cultural and economic rights, including the right to participate in culture, the right to food, the right to work, and the right to education. While genocide is clearly covered by such a definition, so too are other rights that we as Americans take for granted.

The growing power of transnational corporations and their extension of power through privatization, deregulation and the rolling back of government intended to protect its citizens cuts against the very rights set forth in this basic definition of human rights.

When these interests conflict, we often find that the later prevails. This can often be attributed not to what is best but what is most expedient for those decision makers who are unfairly influenced to make a decision not in the interests of citizens.

In many places in the world, this conflict is obvious. An official is bribed or a conflict is waged. In either case, the result is an infringement on a basic right of human kind. However, in developed countries, most notably in the U.S., human rights are infringed upon in much more subtle ways. The means by which human rights are violated can occur in a variety of ways: violence, abandonment of the rule of law, denial of the freedom of expression, corruption of the institutions of government. These are all means by which human rights can be abused.

When corruption is the means, the most successful tool developed by those of wealth and power is an art form of sorts known as political influence or campaign finance.

Miss “Corruption 2008″ – the Corporate Contribution

In the U.S., the greatest form of corruption that has been developed in all of history for influencing the lives of practically everybody on this planet is the campaign finance and political influence process. This system employs literally tens of thousands of people, involves billions of dollars and has massive implications for every aspect of our lives. This process takes various forms: political contributions, lobbying, issue advertising and so on. We hear about it on the news, we bemoan the fact that it happens and we have become numb to what it really is – Bribery.

Much has been written about this problem, laws have been passed to control it but it remains virtually intact. Anyone who has spent any time in Washington can attest to its continued vitality. As the presidential elections approach and millions are spent to influence both the election of our new president, senators and congressmen, we must not lose sight of who has bought their way into the political process and what that will mean for every American.

Who Stands to Gain

In the business world, politics is money. What happens in Washington impact business in myriad ways. The consequences of the mortgage and banking crisis will play out in unforeseen ways. Health care will remain at the top of the legislative agenda. Privatization of government services and government contracting will remain a huge item on the Congressional agenda. How these events will play out will occur as a result of an army of influence peddlers and political check writers and how they manage the process of corrupting the political process.

Exposing this process is the first step to limiting the power of political corruption. The information is readily available and the tools to expose the corruption are available to everybody with a computer and time. The greatest limitation is the will to do something about the problem and the recognition that allowing this process to continue will inevitably undermine our basic rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

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