Money talks

Say you own a store in downtown Bangor or at the Aroostook Centre Mall in Presque Isle or on Route 1 in Machias, and you’re wondering how the Internet is going to affect your ability to stay in business and, further, why Congress told store owners on the Internet they don’t have to collect taxes but you do. Or, conversely, say you run AT&T and you are now the largest cable operator in the United States and you don’t want to deal with that pesky FCC as you continue to merge and get even larger.

If you find yourself closer to the first group, you have a problem; for the second group, it’s clear opportunity from here to Washington, D.C. Without drawing absolute connections, the Common Cause explains why in one of its regular reports on campaign financing.

From January 1999 to June 2000, the time when Internet taxation was a hot topic in Congress, the computer and electronics industry quintupled the amount of soft money – supposedly the money used to strengthen the political parties – it gave to the major parties over what it gave four years ago. Democrats received $6.7 million from the industry during that time; Republicans got $6.5 million. Congress, in its best bipartisan manner, has already extended the Internet tax moratorium and may make it permanent. Well, local storeowner, how much did you give?

Pity the delays that unfortunate AT&T had to suffer as it bought up the cable firm MediaOne Group early this year. The Federal Communications Commission kept saying it did not think it healthy for a single entity to own 40 percent of the nation’s cable and satellite television market, and forced the merged firm below 30 percent of those markets. To make sure this sort of interference won’t happen again, a bill currently moving through Congress limits what the FCC can examine with mergers and sets a tougher deadline for FCC reviews. Time is money, after all. In this case, AT&T’s money set a record during this reporting time – more than a million ($1.8 million to the GOP; $1.1 million to Dems) to each party.

Overall, the two major parties have received $256 million, split nearly evenly, in soft money during this election cycle, with some interests giving nearly exclusively to one party – trial lawyers sent $7 million to Democrats; Republicans got $6.6 million from the oil and gas industry – while others hedge their bets by giving generously to both sides. The money, as seen on TV this campaign season is spent, not to attract new party members or to get out the vote, as is required, but to boost a particular candidate. This is particularly galling in the presidential election, where both Vice President Gore and Gov. Bush have accepted public dollars with the agreement that they would not be involved in using the party-building money to their advantage.

Common Cause has taken its complaints about the misuse of soft money to court. The public has little choice but to support this action. After several chances to pass a one of several versions of a ban on soft money – most prominently, the McCain-Feingold legislation – Congress has demonstrated only that it listens far more intently to big money instead of the small-business owner.