Karl Rove's super PAC is hiding its donors by using 501(c)(4) affiliated groups.

Exciting news from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit…and no, that’s not an oxymoron. Nonprofit groups running campaign ads now have to reveal the names of their donors, thanks to a ruling by the court on campaign finance law.

NPR reports:

Several weeks ago, a federal court in Washington told the Federal Election Commission it could not allow the buyers of tens of millions of dollars’ worth of ads to remain anonymous.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit late Monday, on a 2-to-1 vote, refused to grant a stay of that decision pending appeal. It ordered the full appeal to be heard sometime this fall.

At issue is the ability of tax-exempt groups that run political ads within two months of the general election — or within one month of a primary — to keep secret the names of their donors. Such groups spent some $80 million in the 2010 congressional elections, primarily supporting conservative candidates or attacking their opponents. The donors behind less than 10 percent of that amount were ever disclosed.

The Huffington Post points out that this applies to Karl Rove’s Crossroads groups and those supported by the Koch Brothers. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll actually listen:

…But whether the non-disclosing groups will suddenly change their behavior — or gamble that they can continue to skirt disclosure requirements — remains unclear. ‘That is the million-dollar question,’ Malloy said. ‘Or more like the $100 million question.’ Campaign law expert Rick Hasen blogged that he expects the ‘stay request to now end up before the Supreme Court, where the outcome may be different.’”

The food and beverage industry has been relentless in Washington lately, more than doubling their spending in Washington during the past three years.

Nearly half of all Americans will be obese by 2030, researchers reported at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Weight of the Nation conference in Washington earlier this month. 42 percent of us are projected to be obese, placing a huge strain on our already compromised health care system. Brian Fung at The Atlantic points out that the healthcare costs of obesity — $550 billion over the next two decades — is more than the U.S. Department of Defense asked for in its fiscal year 2013 budget.

There are a lot of reasons — chemical, psychological, environmental — for why people are obese. But explaining societal obesity means looking at what the food system is providing for us to eat — and how government policies might promote certain foods over others.

“In the political arena, one side is winning the war on child obesity,” a new Reuters report on the food lobby begins. “The side with the fattest wallets.”

That’s entirely true. As Reuters reports, the food and beverage industry has been relentless in Washington lately, more than doubling their spending in Washington during the past three years, completely outpacing public interest groups looking out for children’s health:

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, widely regarded as the lead lobbying force for healthier food, spent about $70,000 lobbying last year — roughly what those opposing the stricter guidelines spent every 13 hours, the Reuters analysis showed.

The food and beverage industry has definitely outsmarted the federal government when it comes to targeting children: Efforts to tax soda have been crushed; 16 states have been persuaded to prohibit lawsuits over fatty foods; Congress has even declared pizza a vegetable, for Pete’s sake. The Boston Globe notes that young people fighting obesity have little chance against the food and beverage industry who “have waged an unprecedented war against even voluntary guidelines.” Even supposed Obama allies, like former White House communications director Anita Dunn, have been hired by the industry to lobby against obesity initiatives.

Obesity is complicated enough on an individual scale, societal obesity even more so. Certainly, we can blame marketing sugary cereals and 2,000-calorie burgers to kids for part of the obesity epidemic. But we can trace the roots of this problem even further, back to the 1930s, when taxpayers started subsidizing American agriculture.

The farm bill, first enacted during the Great Depression and renewed every five years or so, includes food stamps for the poor, international food aid, conservation programs, and subsidies for farmers, which lets them ride out bad crop years and compete with farmers in other countries. Critics have long derided subsidies, noting that they promote the growing of crops like corn and rice over others, like vegetables. The farm bill is up for reauthorization this year.

Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, is one of those critics. He traced the massive amounts of subsidies received by corn growers  – $73.8 billion over 15 years — to the rise of high fructose corn syrup, the fattening substance that Vice President Joe Biden said was more dangerous to Americans than terrorism. Variations of the farm bill over the years have helped make “Twinkies cheaper than carrots and Coca-Cola competitive with water,” Pollan wrote in the New York Times during the last debate over the farm bill, in 2007. The 2007 version of the farm bill expires in September.

The 2012 Farm Bill, which recently passed through the Senate Agriculture Committee, seems to reflect some of those criticisms. As part of the federal government’s effort to cut spending, the Ag Committee proposed a massive overhaul of the current subsidy program. The Senate bill eliminates $5 billion of annual subsidies in the form of direct payments and counter-cyclical payments to farmers, as well as the Average Crop Revenue Election Program, which started with the last farm bill. This might sound like Congress is actually listening to the concerns of food activists.

But the Senate proposal continues to give away tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to Big Agribusiness, at the expense of programs benefiting conservation, nutrition, and new farmers. The food blog Civil Eats calls the proposal an “all-you-can-eat-buffet for the subsidy lobby“:

[L]egislators created an expensive new entitlement program (called “shallow loss”) that guarantees nearly 90 percent of the income of farm businesses already enjoying record profits. It also leaves untouched a bloated $9-billion-a-year crop insurance program that pays about 60 percent of farmers’ crop insurance premiums, no matter how large the farm, and sends billions to crop insurance companies and their agents.

Most of the benefits of these proposed programs would flow to the big five commodity crops (corn, soy, cotton, rice, and wheat) that provide feed for livestock, raw material for processed food and corn ethanol fuel for our cars.

There’s no data available yet on lobbying on the new farm bill, but by taking a look at OpenSecrets’ database on the 2007 bill, provides a look at who might be involved this time around: Big Agriculture — which spends millions lobbying the federal government on food policy. The agriculture biotechnology giant Monsanto spent $8.8 million on lobbying in 2008, much of it on 22 specific issues contained within the farm bill (which was renewed a bit late). Other big names shelling out big cash on the farm bill are Verizon, the American Farm Bureau, Kraft Foods, PepsiCo, Koch Industries, the American Beverage Association, and, naturally, the American Corn Growers Association.

As the 2012 farm bill heads from the Senate to the House of Representatives, it’s important to keep in mind that this isn’t just a farm bill — it’s a food bill, helping to dictate what kinds of food people can afford. Not everyone on the House Agriculture Committee sees it that way: last month, Republicans on the committee voted to cut $33 billion from food stamps while keeping farm subsidies intact. With recent high crop prices and a record of $136.3 billion in farm exports in 2011, big farmers growing corn and soy don’t really need the help (even the powerful Iowa Farm Bureau agrees). Instead, the farm bill should work on making healthy foods, like fresh fruits and vegetables, available at lower prices. Because if there’s one thing that the country can’t afford, it’s having a population that’s half obese.

We must join together to get money out of politics.

The entire reason for United Republic’s existence is made plain on its front page: we are here to Get Money Out of Politics. The primary source of money in politics is corporate lobbying at all levels of government — local, state, and federal. Combating the corrupting influence of legalized corporate bribery (see Citizens United) is a daunting task — like being a fireman facing a raging 20,000 acre fire. Greed and corruption certainly have the capacity to burn down the global economy.

So…where to start?

Begin by recognizing corporate lobbying activity for what it is — a sophisticated, defensive organism, evolved over time toward pro-active self-preservation — highly resistant to attack, requiring multi-pronged approaches to overwhelm defenses. But much like living organisms, even transnational corporations have vulnerabilities.

Regardless of specific strategies, there are three ironclad rules that apply if we are to get money out of politics:

You must organize.
You must communicate.
You must be relentless.

Organize.

Let me restate that:

We must organize.
We must communicate.
We must be relentless.

Because none of us working independently will get this done.

No firefighter can put out a 20,000 acre fire. No citizen can sway the votes of every congressman. No one lobbyist can pass a new law — unless he comes with, say, 20,000 Ben Franklins to help make the case. Either way, it’s a numbers game — votes and dollars. Dollars can buy votes. But this is still a democracy, and voters can overwhelm dollars when they are sufficiently energized and organized.

You must take action, but for your effort to yield results, you must coordinate your effort with others.

The good news is, with Net access at our disposal, we are in a better position to organize than ever before. The main hurdle to doing so is an old one — apathy, our own and that of others. Daily people will tell you we live in an oligarchy or plutocracy, that political parties and candidates are all the same, that voting doesn’t matter. That attitude is poison for change — treat it as such. As Robert A. Heinlein noted:

“Of course the game is rigged. Don’t let that stop you – if you don’t bet, you can’t win.”

United Republic is a platform for organizing. Use it. Not only online, but in your local real world.

Communicate.

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.”

- Frederick Douglass

This oft-quoted recognition of reality is focused on people in power, but the people in power are only half of our situation. The other half are the voters who select the leadership. Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, had something relevant to say about that recently when asked what he would do if he were president:

“One objective reality is that our government doesn’t work, not because we have dysfunctional politicians, but because we have dysfunctional voters. As a scientist and educator, my goal, then, is not to become President and lead a dysfunctional electorate, but to enlighten the electorate so they might choose the right leaders in the first place.”

The point here is not to belittle voters, but to recognize that all efforts to reform power structures will fail if we keep electing leaders and lawmakers who obstruct and dismantle reforms. That’s not to say we should abandon reform, but we badly need a focus on education and enlightenment of the electorate.

This means changing the culture we live in. The single greatest influence in that direction over the past 30 years has been the Occupy movement, which raised awareness of gross inequities in income. Although the full potential of Occupy remains unrealized, it has already begun what we need to continue — inform, educate, enlighten. That’s how culture is changed. The impact of cultural change can be lasting.

“The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size.”

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Occupy’s initial tactics have been blunted, but the strategy of getting attention while bypassing traditional media remains essential. Here again, we’re looking at a numbers game. Traditional media, primarily the large television networks, count audiences in the millions. Online audiences are smaller and fragmented. How can we reach larger audiences and deliver our message — get money out of politics — in a way that resonates with people who discount any message that isn’t from someone they already know and trust?

We must earn trust. That’s precisely why United Republic’s credo includes a commitment to nonpartisanship. Regardless of whether you view it as realistic or not, a non-partisan approach is the only way to get people communicating. Hyperpartisanship simply drives people back to their skirmish lines. Verbal grenades soon follow. Fragging each other doesn’t get us closer to our goal.

The fastest, easiest way to earn trust is to listen — even if you have to grit your teeth and bite your tongue to do it.

Listen first.

Before you respond, remember this – facts follow feelings.

This is so important, it bears repeating – facts follow feelings.

Meaning: empathize first, acknowledge their concerns and fears. When you can, acknowledge that you share the same concerns and fears – from a different perspective. Use facts to explain why. If you overlook and dismiss how others feel, they sense this quickly and dismiss your facts. Trust blown, game over.

This approach requires us to get out of our comfort zones and engage with people we might not ordinarily deal with. And again, it’s a numbers game. You plant a thousand seeds through conversations. Some will take root and flourish, others won’t. That’s why you must…

Be Relentless.

Not relentless in the sense of an obsessive zombie in search of brains. This is about being relentless with yourself. Yes, you have many other obligations and responsibilities — school, family, work — and just the thought of evangelizing for the ideals you care about may be exhausting.

But let’s eat this cow one hamburger at a time. If you lack experience engaging with others, you’ll surely stumble and make mistakes. Okay — learning experience. Get over it, try again. And again. And again, with different people. When you get the hang of it, go back to the folks you messed up with and try again. You will make some new friends along the way, sometimes with people you never imagined you’d be friendly with.

Anytime you tackle something new, the early efforts are always hardest – that’s why it’s called a learning curve, and the curve goes UP. But eventually the art of persuasion becomes a skill like riding a bicycle — once you know how, you can can communicate your point of view effectively enough that you’re understood and respected. Practice and persistence pays.

All of us working together through United Republic is a wholesale operation for culture change. Individually we are the retail operation — we engage people one on one, changing minds, changing hearts, changing culture. But it only happens if we actually do it. So make a plan, make some mistakes, learn, and keep at it until we Get Money Out of Politics.

How much did Wall Street pay to get bailed out?

How is it that two years after passage of the much acclaimed Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform (four years after economic crash), Too Big To Fail (TBTF) institutions are not only bigger, but also too big to regulate and too big to jail? Don’t be fooled into believing that because a law has been passed by Congress and signed by the president, it has actually been implemented.

Keep in mind that Congress controls the funding for the federal regulators who are charged with carrying out the reform — Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Securities Exchange Commission. What would possess members of Congress, who bragged about banning banks from gambling with taxpayer money, to force regulators to strategically surrender significant rules by threatening budget cuts?

Answer: their livelihoods. Yes, the very livelihood of a member of Congress is indeed in the hands of the TBTF financial institutions. What better motivation is there than your career and financial future of your family? The financial sector is far and away the largest source of campaign contributions to federal candidates and parties, with insurance companies, securities and investment firms, real estate interests, and commercial banks providing the bulk of that money. In this 2012 election cycle alone, this industry has already donated $122 million to campaigns of members of Congress.

In addition to campaign contributions, this industry spends billions of dollars to lobby Congress. The tally since the financial collapse, 2009 – Q1 of 2012, for this industry is $1.5 billion. Do you think that over a billion dollars can influence members of Congress to threaten regulatory agencies with budget cuts? Of course the agencies are rewriting and redrafting and rehashing the most significant reform regulations until they are void of reform completely.

Linked very closely with lobbying is the high-income revolving door.  Practically every industry hires lobbyists to represent and defend their interests in Washington, D.C. But some industries specialize in employing those who previously worked for the federal government they’re now tasked with lobbying. Open Secrets has profiled 826 people who passed through the golden revolving door into this particular industry, capitalizing on the connections that they forged while in public service. Could these connections assist in influencing financial reform legislation?

Although Congress wields power over the legislative process and thus, the non-implementation of Wall Street reforms, the White House wields power over the law enforcement process. What would possess a President, who proclaimed loudly that those causing the economic crisis would be held accountable, to not hold TBTF accountable?  Answer: his livelihood. Apparently during our last presidential election, Obama had convinced TBTF that he would play by their rules better than his rival, John McCain, because by the end of January 2008, Obama had raised well over $7 million from the securities and investment industry. All told, Obama far outraised McCain on Wall Street — around $16 million to $9 million — and Goldman Sachs executives sent Obama more money than employees of any other company in the world. This presidential election, however, Romney has convinced TBTF that he will play by their rules better than Obama because at the end of January this year, Obama had only $2.4 million from Wall Street (compared to $7 million last time).

The very game Obama played so well in 2008 is now playing him with the opposing party putting up a shoe-in for Wall Street. Unfortunately, Obama did follow through on his commitment for those earlier campaign contributions. The top leadership appointed at the Department of Justice was drawn almost exclusively from law firms that represented the institutions that DOJ was supposed to be investigating. Covington and Burling, the firm from which both Attorney General Eric Holder and Associate Attorney General and head of the criminal division Lanny Breuer hail, has as its current clients Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, ING, Morgan Stanley, UBS, and MF Global among others. The work at Covington involves defending employees at TBTF institutions from prosecution by the federal government.  As Attorney General, Eric Holder was supposed to represent the federal government in prosecuting employees at TBTF institutions, who could have been defended by Covington. In other words, Obama made it clear to Wall Street in January 2009 that their empires were thus joined through an incestuous marriage. Holder’s loyalty to TBTF will be handsomely rewarded too. White collar criminal defense work, like that he performed at Covington and Burling, is “enormously lucrative” for large legal firms. Eric Holder left Covington with a $2.5 million salary and a seven figure bonus. If he returns to Covington (as two of his colleagues at Justice already have) a similar payday certainly awaits him. He would have been permanently banished from his “circle” and banned from his career if he had prosecuted TBTF while at the DOJ.

With members of Congress controlling the rule-making process and the White House controlling the law enforcement, and Wall Street money controlling both, TBTF can continue being bigger than too big to fail, as well as too big to regulate and too big to jail. After years of wrangling, the TBTF Wall Street institutions win the war against capitalism and the free market. These are the only financial institutions that get to keep the upside of their bets, no matter how reckless, but get to stick others, mostly the taxpayers, with the downside of any losses. They aren’t allowed to fail even if they are bankrupt and their management runs them into the ground. When any of the other banks in our economy fail, they get taken over, lose their jobs and shareholders lose their wealth. Capitalism died and we got an aristocracy of TBTF Wall Street and their elected/bought representatives.

Bill McKibben introduces a bill to end all fossil fuel subsidies.

Yesterday, climate change pioneer Bill McKibben and his organization, 350.org, joined with Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Keith Ellison to launch a new bill that would cut $113 billion in subsidies to the coal, oil, and gas lobby over the next decade.

The oil industry received about $7 billion in tax breaks in 2011, despite record-high profits earned by the five biggest oil companies, combined with a decrease in oil production in 2011. Instead of using the subsidies provided by American taxpayers to produce more oil at lower costs, all signs point to oil company executives pocketing the cash.

How do they get away with this?

Lobbying sure helps. According to Open Secrets, the oil and gas industry has already spent $37.6 million lobbying the federal government in the first few months of the year alone. They also spend buckets of money on campaign contributions to persuade our elected officials to vote for policies they favor. A recent vote in the Senate revealed just how persuasive campaign cash can be. A bid to end taxpayer subsidies for the five biggest oil companies failed to get the 60 votes it needed. The 57 senators who voted to end the subsidies received about $6 million from the oil and gas industries, compared to a whopping $24 million pocketed by the 41 senators who voted against the bill.

This new bill is especially ambitious, aimed not just at oil companies, but also coal and gas. When I asked McKibben about the last Senate vote on the issue, he acknowledged how campaign contributions cajole lawmakers to vote against the public good:

Nobody gets up and makes an argument in favor of subsides to the fossil fuel industry, there is no argument. This is the richest industry on the planet….The only reason that you would do it is if you’ve taken little gifts from the fossil fuel industry and now you want to give them big gifts back with somebody else’s money.

In spite of the long odds against passing this bill, McKibben remains optimistic:

[T]his is turning out to be the oiliest, gassiest, dirtiest Congress ever. The spending on these guys is up again, you know. So, what are you going to do? We’re going to fight.

Watch the video below:

Billionaire George Soros just donated $2 million to groups supporting Democrats.

How should Democrats — “squeamish” about super PACs — use the billions of dollars they’re expected to receive from big donors? Tell us below.

Democrats remain far behind Republicans when it comes to super PAC fundraising — Republican-oriented super PACs have raised $156.6 million so far compared with $43.4 million for Democrats. After George Soros pledged to give $2 million to progressive non-campaign organizations, some are predicting that major liberal donors could inject as much as $100 million to elect Democrats.

But liberal donors aren’t planning to spend much of their cash on the negative ads that have so far defined super PAC spending. Instead, they want to help out grassroots organizing efforts and get out the vote campaigns.

The Huffington Post reports:

Explaining the donations, longtime Soros adviser Michael Vachon said they were driven by Soros’ belief that Democrats had two comparative advantages over the GOP: organizing acumen and long-term infrastructure.

“Culturally, the left doesn’t do Swift Boat,” Vachon said, in reference to the trickster, ultimately effective ad campaign run against Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in the 2004 presidential campaign. “It’s not what we do well. If we did do it well, George W. Bush would not have been re-elected because he was a supremely swift-boat-able candidate. We don’t do it well. We do humor well.”

Apparently, this plan worries top Democrats who think it could “duplicate a similar effort by President Obama’s campaign and squander a chance to fend off an advertising onslaught from Republican groups.”

Jonathan Chait, writing for New York magazine, calls the big donors’ preference for get-out-the-vote efforts “the kind of weenie attitude that periodically afflicts liberalism”:

The future of the country is held hostage by money in politics.

“The gross national product includes air pollution and advertising for cigarettes, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors, and jails for the people who break them. The gross national product includes the destruction of the redwoods and the death of Lake Superior. It grows with the production of napalm and missiles and nuclear warheads.

“And if the gross national product includes all this, there is much that it does not comprehend. It does not allow for the health of our families, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials …

The gross national product measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile, and it can tell us everything about America – except whether we are proud to be Americans.”

- Robert Kennedy, 1968

Money in politics is nothing new — corruption has always been part of governance. It accumulates like rust on steel and barnacles on boatsides. Without regular maintenance, the decay grows and overwhelms the structure it builds upon. We recognize the problem, we understand we must deal with it — especially when there comes a point where corruption crosses a line from gaming the system to being the embodiment of evil.

Case in point: The Red Light Cam Scam. Traffic cameras — specifically the timing of the yellow lights — have been manipulated to optimize the chances drivers will cross the stop line at red lights. Here we have a system of traffic lights, designed to protect the safety of all — ALL, mind you, including children — and it’s being shamelessly perverted to generate money. If that’s not evil, what is?

In Orlando, courts are administering disparate treatment to citizens who fight back against unfair red-light camera tickets and those who passively accept the status quo.

We see a similar pattern emerge in lobbies to defeat efforts to reduce childhood obesity and promote healthier food. While the First Lady is advocating change in how food is created and marketed to children, food industry representatives are working to thwart movement in that direction.

For example, Reuters reports that 24 states and five cities contemplated taxes on soda to discourage consumption. Every single proposal failed, save one in Washington State — a tax of two cents per can. One win in 29 tries. But even there, an industry consortium mounted a $16 million referendum drive that defeated the tax proposal. Zero for 29. All this in direct conflict with a clear good — the health of our children.

There were congressional consequences as well. Supporters of the food and beverage industry saw contributions from PACs increase. Senator Tom Harkin, who supported tougher food standards, got nothing at all from the food and beverage people. That’s how Washington works.

The American Legislative Exchange Council — ALEC — is now working with industry leader ExxonMobil on disclosure rules for the fluids used in gas extraction. Why should you care? Because the ‘fracking’ technique injects these fluids into areas that may also contain groundwater used as drinking water.

If gas extraction products might be contaminating your drinking water, wouldn’t you want to know about it? ExxonMobil wants to limit disclosure by invoking a trade secrets clause in relevant law. And as far back as 2005, at the behest of energy interests, Congress exempted the practice of fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Corporations have, by law, a fiduciary duty to maximize profits. Moreover, CEOs, shareholders, and management all have ample incentive to bolster their income. Everyone wants the best deal. But when business effectively substitutes dollars for votes in our representative government, when it actively subverts our health, safety, and natural resources in the pursuit of endless growth, it has embraced evil.

This is why we fight.

The power of the people is not to be underestimated.

Through my volunteer work with Common Cause, I have gotten involved with the New Haven Votes Coalition here in Connecticut. While the primary purpose of NHVC is to increase voter registration and turnout, the overarching theme of the organization’s work is increasing overall civic engagement in the community. Working with the Civic Health Index formulated by the Secretary of State’s Office, we are seeking to encourage greater citizen participation in local community and faith-based civic organizations, municipal and state advisory boards, issues forums and so forth. This type of civic involvement (as well as other factors) is statistically correlated to higher voter turnout.

In our meetings, a recurring theme has been the lack of participation among the young – specifically college students. While there are several factors accounting for this, the primary one is a sense that the individual is powerless against large, organized, moneyed interests. This sentiment is not surprising, given that in six months we will all be choosing between Romney’s billionaires and Obama’s billionaires. Harshly negative attack ads funded by obfuscatory super PAC’s are indeed discouraging for those who care about our nation’s future yet feel that a place at the table is reserved only for those with deep pockets. I completely understand the sense of futility.

However, I am also struck by the power and effectiveness of organizations like United Republic. If you’ve read recent news stories about major corporations withdrawing from the American Legislative Exchange Council, and are happy about that, you need to thank United Republic. The people there used their passion and their bully pulpit to call out these corporations for their support of a cabal seeking to suppress voting and impose other nefarious change on ordinary and financially-outmatched citizens. The people at United Republic are not part of “the elite”; they are concerned citizens who care and want things to change. When I was growing up, if a story didn’t make the six o’clock evening news or the front page of the New York Times, nobody knew about it. The world is a very different place now. While there are certainly more major news outlets, specifically on cable television, there are also a plethora of internet-based media operations, many of which sprang from small, humble roots. The capital barrier to entry in this market has been virtually eliminated. Furthermore, the advent of social media networks such as Twitter has enabled individuals to disseminate information and organize like-minded people around a cause in a way that has never been possible until a few years ago. The barriers to organizing a political movement and effecting change have never been smaller.

As the smallest ripple can eventually create an enormous wave, so too can the voice of a lone individual create a massive political and social movement. To those who feel they are powerless to compete with large monied interests, I say this: All you need is passion and an internet connection.

Sí se puede.

Wal-Mart has tried to repair its image in Washington through lobbying, contributions, and good public relations.

Wal-Mart is under fire for its role in a growing controversy, where the multinational corporation is accused of paying $24 million in bribes to Mexican officials and covering up the payments. But the corporation is no stranger to scandal. And it’s worked hard to maintain its reputation, the New York Times reports:

The country’s biggest retailer has adroitly used millions of dollars in campaign contributions, charity drives, lobbying campaigns, and its work for popular causes like childhood nutrition and carbon emissions to build support in Congress and the White House.

It also uses these methods to increase its “favorable” ratings, especially with liberals. And as Wal-Mart’s top lobbyist explained to investors in 2010, the company thinks the strategy has worked.

“Across the board, our reputation with elected officials is improved, not only here in the U.S. but around the world,” the lobbyist, Leslie Dach, boasted as he ticked off poll numbers that he said demonstrated the company’s improving public profile. That popularity, he said, “makes it easier for us to stay out of the public limelight when we don’t want to be there.”

These strategies have earned the company beneficial relationships with lawmakers. During the 2010 election cycle, Wal-Mart’s political action committee and employees donated about $1.7 million to federal candidates and last year, spent $7.8 million on lobbying. Spreading the wealth has helped improve its stature with the traditionally hostile Democratic Party:

For years Wal-Mart had reliable allies in the Republican Party, while it struggled to develop support among Democrats. But in recent years it has joined with the Obama administration on a number of its initiatives, including President Obama’s health care plan, environmental safeguards and childhood obesity. At the same time, it has aggressively lobbied the administration and Congress on dozens of policies affecting its business operations, including global trade, taxes, immigration, business regulation and waste disposal standards.

Wal-Mart isn’t yet beyond corporate greenwashing. And as long as it has the money and the savvy to influence policy and politicians, it has no need to make meaningful reforms.