The Funky Homo Sapien

You can't put a dollar bill into a ballot box, can you?

by Isaiah Thompson

The sky is falling! The corporations are coming! To hear "good government" advocates tell it, last week's Supreme Court ruling — which upheld the notion that corporations have the same rights as flesh-and-blood homo sapiens to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections —was some kind of travesty of democracy.

Give me a break. Last time I checked, politicians were elected by votes, not money — I mean, you can't put a dollar bill into a ballot box, can you? Corporations can just spend money. But if money made such a big difference, Pennsylvania would limit its influence on elections, right? It doesn't: Individuals and PACs can contribute as much as they want to Penn pols. Next week, you or I — being homo sapiens — could walk right into the office of, say, state Rep. John Perzel and drop a million bucks into his campaign coffer with one hand while giving him a big pat on the back with the other. If, that is, you or I had a million bucks. And if Perzel weren't busy facing charges for allegedly using taxpayer money to establish a campaign database.

But my point, Chicken Little, is that corporations aren't allowed to make direct contributions the way we homo sapiens are. Type "Rendell" into the campaign contributor search engine and you won't see "Foxwoods" pop up. What you will see, of course, is "Cozen O'Connor State and Local PAC," the political action committee tied to super-lawyer Stephen A. Cozen. The Cozens — the homo sapien and the PAC — have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to politicians. It's personal money, not corporate money, though it is funny how the two work together: Cozen, The Philadelphia Inquirer recently reported, helped secure an extension for Foxwoods' license in the recent table games bill.

Corporations can't contribute, but they can lobby, and lobbyists can contribute, so maybe it's a wee bit fishy. But fear not: Transparency is on our side. All of this stuff has to be reported — Cozen the homo sapien doesn't have to say where he gets his money, but Cozen the PAC does. And we can do it right now, on the Internet. Let's see ... huh. The PAC's finances all seem to come from members of Cozen's own firm ... from homo sapiens, whose finances are private. So where did they get ... ?

Anyway, we've still got the vote.

The mighty, mighty vote.