United Liberty

While thousands of left-leaning folks took to the street last year to decry corporatism via the Occupy movement, many have managed to miss the corporatism of the left.

MapLight has conducted an analysis of campaign contributions from key industry groups to members of the U.S. Senate (July 1, 2005 - June 30, 2011) and found that:

• Entertainment interest groups that support these bills gave 7.2 times as much ($14,423,991) to members of the U.S. Senate as Internet interest groups that oppose these bills ($2,011,332).
• Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has received 4.8 times as much from entertainment interest groups that support these bills ($571,500) as from Internet interest groups that oppose these bills ($118,050).

Now, is’nt that just fascinating?

I’ve said before that, unlike many libertarians, I actually think that intellectual property deserves some protection.  SOPA and PIPA ain’t it. Frankly, we have a pretty decent system in place now domestically, and the international problem can’t be dealt with via laws passed by the United States Congress.

The Republican Party has gotten a reputation of being owned by corporate interests.  That’s not exactly unwarranted either.  However, it’s important to note that the left has its share of corporate interests as well.

Corporatism, regardless of the party, is a good part of what’s wrong with this nation.  A lot of Cap and Trade supporters don’t realize that an early champion of such legislation was Enron.  A lot of people also missed that the biggest supporter of a mandate that employers offer insurance as part of ObamaCare was Walmart.  Large corporations are often champions of legislation that will hurt smaller competitors, because they can weather the new regulations better.

Now, by looking at the numbers Maplight has provided, hopefully people can see that the GOP doesn’t have a lock on corporate masters.  The only real difference is which industries are holding the purse strings.