When you’re a teenager, you may hear lectures from civics teachers and other adults telling you that it will be your responsibility as an adult American citizen to become familiar with the great issues facing our nation and to express your opinion on them through voting, writing your representatives, speaking at townhall meetings, etc. But how many adults actually do this? In 2008, the year of Obama, 56.8% of the adult population voted, the highest percentage since 1968. That’s good, but it’s still not that much more than half-and-half.

As to townhall meetings, they made a comeback this past summer amidst the health care debate. But in reality, townhall debates are mostly a footnote to the overall political process in our country. The summer townhall discussions on health care were an interesting side show, a welcome news item for the media during the summer news lul. But in the end they didn’t amount to much more than a rodeo clown along side the bulls and cowboys of health care politics. Ditto for letters (and now e-mails) and phone calls to your elected officials.

This stuff may have made a real difference in ancient Athens, the cradle of democracy. But in modern America, the bottom line question for our leaders is, what gets me elected and what expands my power. And in modern America, that amounts to big money, big media, and large-scale organization based around vested interests. Yes, vested interests – the nuclear power industry, labor unions, trial lawyers, fundamentalist Christians, insurance companies, the main-stream media, etc. Today we even have “big green”, i.e. increasingly powerful and established environmental lobbies. On the more local level – real estate developers and police unions hold sway, along with Wal Mart. These are the interests that can write the big checks and get out the vote. Your little e-mail to your local assemblyman or congressman might get a polite thank-you, but will be scattered in the dust as the big powers zoom past, getting the legislative provisions they want in return for the publicity that helps get or keep their patrons in office.

(And that hasn’t changed a whit with Barack Obama. I myself sent a few e-mails regarding policy issues to his campaign last year, and quickly received replies asking me to donate more cash.)

It makes me wonder sometimes, what can be done to move our political system and our government away from being a battle of the big interests and back to a process that ponders the long-term best interest for the masses, i.e. the “common – weal”. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to come up with much. When reading the other day about all the money that our Senators and Congressman get from the health care industry, I wondered why we couldn’t have a blanket law outlawing all political contributions and lobbying from business corporations. Why should a corporate commercial entity be allowed to sway our leaders? These entities are artificial creations of law, not people. Why should they be allowed to mold our political processes, given the disproportionate level of resources at their disposal? They don’t get to vote; so why should they have so much control over who we human beings vote for and how we decide who to vote for (via big media and the big political machines they fund, e.g. TV ads, paid community organizers, control over what the reporters tell us and show us, etc.)?

Unfortunately, there won’t be any radical solutions. The courts have interpreted our Constitution as giving corporate bodies equal rights under the First Amendment. Corporations are seen as people who band together for a particular cause (usually making money); the Constitution cannot prevent a group of individuals from assembling to forward a common interest. About the best our system can do is to try to limit campaign contributions and make them open to the public.

So, if you as an individual still care, despite the fact that you don’t have much chance of having any real influence on how the US will deal with Iran or how we will solve the health care dilemma, you can at least find out how much cash your local leaders take from the big interests. One good source is a web site run by the Center for Responsible Politics called OpenSecrets.org. They have a lot of good info on who takes how much from whom, and also present nice summaries of political contributions from major industries over the past 20 years.

I was perusing these summaries the other day, which compare how much an industry or labor group gave to the major parties for each major election cycle since 1990. For instance, accountants and dentists and morticians have generally favored Republicans since 1996; auto dealers were solidly GOP from 1990 on. Ditto for mining companies, trucking companies and livestock producers. Lawyers and motion picture producers/distributors unabashedly favor the Dems, and software companies also give more to them. Pharmaceutical manufacturers seem to go the way the wind is blowing; during the Clinton years they gave evenly to both sides, then during the Bush era they went overwhelmingly with the Republicans. But in 2008, they evened it up again. Ditto for HMO/health service firms. Pretty much the same for telephone utilities. And savings and loan banks. And defense aerospace. And the airlines. And clothing manufacturers. And construction services.

What’s also interesting is the growth in industry spending on politics. For instance, the coal mining industry went from $1,089,588 in 1992 (when Bill Clinton was elected) to $3,446,336 in 2008. Taking inflation into account, this still represents a 106% overall increase (i.e., a doubling in real spending). Religious and clergy organizations went from $358,345 in ’92 to $3,101,412 in ’08; in real dollars, this is a 464% overall increase (i.e., an increase to more then five and a half times the ’92 level), making religion just about as politically important today as the coal industry.

Bottom line: most industries hedge their bets, but follow the trends. When the GOP is doing well, corporate support for them increases. When the Democrats get their groove back, as in 2006 and 2008, the Democrats accept more checks from big business. Very interesting. But as to having an open political process encouraging careful, thoughtful consideration of the issues leading to good policies favoring the general interests of the populace – well, Toto, we’re not in Athens anymore.