Letter from America

As a proud, true flag-waving moderate, I applaud your zeal and effort to discredit Bush. I’m an American, but he’s not my president! A couple of quick questions:

1. Bush does a pretty good job at one thing – discrediting himself. Do you really feel that proposing to boycott Republican Party contributors is necessary? Or in Altria’s case, even feasible?

2. If you wish to portray yourselves as reasonably objective (and by proxy, reasonably credible), why not include the top 25 Democratic Party contributors? Are you concerned that the overlap in contributors might take the wind out of your sails?

Snippet from your website [www.boycottbush.net]:

“The American public can register their opinions at the ballot box, but for the rest of the world, all we can do is register our opinions via the marketplace.”

Gerd Leipold, Greenpeace International Executive Director

[It’s a] large misconception… that Americans can actually register their opinions at the ballot box. The charade we call the 2000 election was case in point that filling in ballots has zero to do with who gets elected and everything to do with pacifying the masses. Do not insult Americans by blaming us for who’s in power. We do not have as much control over that as you may think - only the semi-transparent illusion thereof. However, the quote does precipitate a valid connotation: that money dictates who is in power. That is spot on. But realise that the corporations on your top 25 not only also contribute to the Democratic Party, they will contribute just as much or more to it if they believe they can manipulate the party into giving them what they want. It is no different from how US politics has been for decades. Only the scale and the dollar amounts differ. This dead horse has been beaten to a pulp and is a red herring.

Politicians, in all too many cases, vote at the whim of someone else’s wallet: seldom in the public’s defence, but always at the public’s expense. We’ve seen that in Microsoft’s antitrust suit, the current snafu with Halliburton… you can name literally hundreds of examples since the beginning of this year alone! Do you believe that Democrats are intrinsically above being paid off, whilst Republicans are too weak to say no?

Right. Everyone’s got a price tag. Big corporations know that, and play the game because it’s perfectly legal for them to do so. QED. Of course, logic would then dictate that you want to take away the one thing that gives the corporation power – money. How do you do that? Boycotting them? Erm, I really don’t believe so. Do you realise what magnitude and what duration is necessary for a boycott to have significant economic impact to even make a difference? What can reasonably and realistically be achieved? And at what real cost? Where are your facts to show that a boycott could possibly be effective in this context? How does cutting back on Kool-Aid and Marlboros and switching to Linux get me better, less corrupt politicians? How do you quantify that?

No, I believe that what gives corporations power in this context is not money, but more precisely their right to utilise it to buy off politicians. My point is that you can’t blame Republicans for the contributions they received, nor the companies who donated. Everyone loves to be on the winning team, and corporations are no exception when it’s in their best interests to play hardball. Let me ask this – in four years, if we are re-electing Kerry and he’s done a crap job in office, will you be boycotting the companies that support him as well? Remember, Democrats get oil and tobacco money too. If you want to make any real difference in US politics, how about working to outlaw corporate contributions altogether? How about limiting campaign funding strictly to the general campaign fund? Criminalising lobbying? Actually prosecuting public officials when they break the law and imposing a fair sentence, instead of a slap on the wrist?

Politicians and corporations send a subliminal, conspicuous message that they feel they are above the law and are not subject to it. There are plenty of public examples of this. Fix that problem and everything else mends itself.

Accountability. A good word. A better concept. Something both you and the US Government need a lesson in. This one’s on the house.

Why do you give no American alternatives to the products of these ‘unethical’ companies, only UK counterparts? Too hard to do the homework? If you won’t bother, what makes you think us lazy, fat, stupid Americans (or anyone else) would?

Chad Plaster, via email

Editor's reply:

Regretfully, we don’t have the resources to provide ethical alternatives to US-owned brands.

How will Bush respond?

I've been a subscriber to EC magazine for a year now and it's made me into a more caring consumer. I can't help thinking, though, that the response by George Bush to the Boycott Bush campaign, when he sees the boycotted companies’ profits fall, will be to play even dirtier.

Nathan Catt, via email