Reply #32: Ok: Here's a better one. [View All]

[loudsue]

http://www.blackcommentator.com/46/46_cover.html

<snip>

"Dreyfuss laid out the "New Democratic Network" fund-raising process in his American Prospect piece, "How the DLC Does It."

NDN's brochures sound like investment prospectuses. "NDN acts as a political venture capital fund to create a new generation of elected officials," says the PAC. "NDN provides the political intelligence you need to make well-informed decisions on how to spend your political capital. Just like an investment advisor, NDN exhaustively vets candidates and endorses only those who meet our narrowly defined criteria ..."
To ensure that liberals don't slip through the cracks, NDN requires each politician who seeks entree to its largesse and contacts to fill out a questionnaire that asks his or her views on trade, economics, education, welfare reform, and other issues. The questions are detailed, forcing candidates to state clearly whether or not they support views associated with the New Democrat Coalition, and it concludes by asking, "Will you join the NDC when you come to Congress?" Next, interviews each candidate, and then NDN determines which candidacies are viable before providing financial support.

It is a textbook model of 21st Century political accountability - not to voters, but to corporations that spend most of their dollars with Republicans. The DLC is, at root, a candidate shakeout mechanism for big business, a clearinghouse for betrayal. Candidates must agree to support the "narrowly defined criteria" of the boardrooms, rather than the needs and aspirations of their constituencies. Every candidate that embraces the DLC has signed off on very specific points of the corporate agenda - a kind of political receipt for services rendered.

Democratic elected officials and candidates from Congress to city council and in practically every state of the union complete detailed questionnaires probing their views on war and peace, on criminal justice, on trade, tax policy and corporate welfare. Their answers are funneled to the national organization where they are meticulously examined. The Democratic incumbents and hopefuls that pass muster are called in for personal interviews by senior staff. Democrats who clear the rigorous screening process are highly recommended to the organization's corporate constituents as worthy of their wholehearted and generous support.

A purely corporate edifice

The DLC doesn't represent any Democratic Party voters. Its masters include American and United Airlines, Aetna and New York Life Insurance, Microsoft, DuPont, the agribusiness and pharmaceutical industries, Citigroup and, until recently, Enron, among many others. The DLC is an organization conceived in the boardroom and dedicated to the proposition that moneyed interests trump all others. About two hundred corporations comprise its Board of Advisors (fee: $5,000), and nearly 100 pay the cost to be the boss on the DLC's Policy Roundtable ($10,000 each). For $25,000, around 30 corporate executives pretend to be Democrats as members of the DLC Executive Council. Enron sat there, along with Philip Morris, Texaco, Chevron, and Dupont."

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