Lucas,
You are involved in a lot of really important issues as part of Public Citizen.
I think it might be helpful to put a face on what can seem like anonymous or amorphous forces opposed to the progress you and I are working for.
Here are 12 men (Notice how it's almost always men, not women?) who personify plutocracy.
These dirty dozen aren't, of course, the only representatives of the power that Public Citizen routinely goes up against — and defeats.
But they are certainly some of the worst.
Charles and David Koch
The Koch Brothers.
They are the 6th and 7th wealthiest people IN THE WORLD, with a combined net worth of $72 billion.
Emboldened by the Citizens United disgrace, they are spending hundreds of millions of dollars — which is really only a pittance to them — to distort elections and install in office candidates who will do their bidding.
They are among the leading funders of the Tea Party agenda. They are among the leading funders of climate change denial. They are among the leading funders of efforts to roll back regulatory safeguards that protect us all.
Donate now so that Public Citizen can keep fighting the Koch Brothers and other billionaires who use their unfathomable wealth to force their regressive and anti-democratic agenda on the rest of us.
Tom Donohue
Tom Donohue is the president of the United States Chamber of Commerce. Just in case there's any confusion, the Chamber is not part of the federal government — that's the Department of Commerce. And it is not like the Chamber of Commerce in your city or town, which may well be composed of local small business owners genuinely interested in their community.
No, the United States Chamber of Commerce is the world's top lobbyist for Big Business. Since 1998, it has spent over $1 billion on lobbying — far more than any other corporation or organization.
The Chamber is one of the largest sources of the "dark money" that is rotting our democracy. As The Wall Street Journal itself has acknowledged, Donohue's "most striking innovation has been to offer individual companies and industries the chance to use the Chamber as a means of anonymously pursuing their own political ends."
Donate now so that Public Citizen can keep fighting to dismantle the United States Chamber of Commerce's dark money machine.
Donald Trump
While the phrase "your public backing is marginal at best" might apply to Donald Trump himself, it's actually something his lawyer wrote in a letter threatening a baseless $25 million lawsuit over an online petition.
Public Citizen's legal team helped the activist who created the petition defend his constitutionally protected free speech rights against the Trump'ed-up accusations.
Donate now so that Public Citizen can keep fighting to defend everyday Americans from egomaniacal corporate tycoons trying to silence rightful criticism of corporate power.
Lloyd Blankfein
Lloyd Blankfein is the CEO of Wall Street mammoth Goldman Sachs. 2013 may end on a sour note for "The Blankster," as analysts expect bonuses for bank executives not to increase much over last year. I ask you: What is the world coming to when a person has to scrape by on a meager $21 million a year?
There's also that minor incident where manufacturers claim that Goldman Sachs has been manipulating global markets by stockpiling aluminum the way dragons hoard treasure. There's nothing mythical about Goldman Sachs' misdeeds, however.
Sarcasm aside, Blankfein alone makes far more each year than Public Citizen's entire operating budget. But we aren't about to let that stop us from continuing to hold Wall Street accountable for its greed and hubris.
Donate now so that Public Citizen can keep fighting to stand up for Main Street against Lloyd and the other lords of Wall Street.
Darrell Issa
When the richest member of Congress goes out of his way to complain specifically about Public Citizen, we know we're doing something right.
Public Citizen has led a two-year, multi-organizational campaign urging the Securities and Exchange Commission to require publicly traded corporations to disclose their political spending so that shareholders know how a company spends their money. The agency has received nearly 700,000 public comments — far more than it had ever received on any other topic — in favor of such a requirement.
Rep. Darrell Issa tried to impugn our campaign as partisan, despite 77% of Americans across the political spectrum — and 79% of Republican business executives — supporting disclosure.
Donate now so that Public Citizen can keep fighting corporate oligarchs and their friends like Darrel Issa, and win transparency in corporate political spending.
Larry Summers
Now is the Summers of our discontent.
This summer, Public Citizen helped lead a widespread campaign that was successful in preventing Larry Summers from being appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve.
When he was Treasury Secretary under Clinton, Summers was one of the chief pushers of Wall Street deregulation, which largely and predictably precipitated the 2008 economic crisis. Yet, after the damage was done, he never acknowledged any responsibility.
Does crashing the economy seem like a qualification to run the nation's central bank? We thought not.
Donate now so that Public Citizen can keep fighting to make sure unremorseful deregulators like Larry Summers are not rewarded with positions of power.
Sheldon Adelson
The casino magnate (who is merely the 15th wealthiest person on earth) spent more than $100 million on elections in 2012. He's already said he'll double that in 2016. If you think he's bluffing, consider this: Forbes estimates that his fortune increased by $42 million a day this year. A day!
Citizens United is enabling a handful of billionaire corporate moguls like Sheldon Adelson to make a mockery of the principle of democracy that is at the very heart of our national identity.
Nobody is doing more than Public Citizen to counteract and ultimately overturn Citizens United.
Donate now so that Public Citizen can keep fighting for a constitutional amendment to save democracy from a hostile corporate takeover by Sheldon Adelson and his ilk.
Paul Ryan
At a time when we should be talking about fortifying and expanding Medicare, Rep. Paul Ryan seeks to privatize and voucherize it right out of existence. Same goes for Social Security.
In 1999, Ryan voted to repeal key banking regulations enacted after the Great Depression. Then in 2008, when Wall Street — enabled by the deregulation he helped bring about — crashed the global economy, Ryan supported the taxpayer bailout of the Big Banks. And in 2010, he voted against the landmark Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform law, including the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, calling it "class warfare."
Ryan says that the majority of Americans are "takers," not "makers." This from a man who would take away Medicare and Social Security benefits from those who have earned them.
Donate now so that Public Citizen can keep fighting Paul Ryan and others in Congress who scheme to kill vital programs like Medicare and to undo all the progress we've made together.
Keith Alexander
Do you want to know a secret?
Well too bad, because the NSA already knows them all.
Revelations continue to mount about a pervasive surveillance program in which most Americans are being spied on by our own government, including monitoring of our phone calls and emails. As head of the National Security Agency, Keith Alexander has been the public face of an agency that has yet to acknowledge any wrongdoing.
This fall, Public Citizen successfully defended the First Amendment rights of an American who was being targeted by the NSA for parodying its domestic espionage activities.
Donate now so that Public Citizen can keep fighting to uphold the Constitution in the face of abuses of power by our own government.
Shaun McCutcheon
Kind of a "sleeper" on this list at the moment, Shaun McCutcheon's name may soon go down in infamy.
That's because the Supreme Court will rule this spring in a case that bears his name — McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission — which was conceived in early 2012 inside an upscale Washington, D.C., hotel ballroom during the "Ronald Reagan Banquet" at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.
Many are warning that McCutcheon may become another
Citizens United.
With McCutcheon, the court could essentially eliminate meaningful limits on election spending by individuals, allowing someone to directly ante up as much as $3.6 million per election cycle to a single party and its candidates.
Donate now so that Public Citizen can keep fighting Shaun McCutcheon and anyone else who would debase our democracy by turning elections into auctions.
Karl Rove
Last but not least. Then again, the word "leasty" — even though I just made it up — sort of has the right ring to it.
Republican operative Karl Rove is the Typhoid Mary behind the scourge of dark money infecting our democracy.
Rove's Crossroads GPS is the top "social welfare" organization exploiting the Citizens United ruling, along with lax FEC and IRS enforcement, to radically distort elections for the benefit of the far right corporate elite.
Donate now so that Public Citizen can keep fighting Karl Rove and bring the dark money into the light.
OK, that's 12. (I'm counting both Koch Brothers separately, because that's how bad they are.)
Permit me a few more words before a final link asking for your financial support.
I don't personally know any of the people on this list. Many or all of them are undoubtedly warm and caring with their family and friends.
And it does matter — quite a bit — how we treat the people we know and interact with every day.
But that's not all that matters.
When I say the people above "personify plutocracy" or impede progress, I'm talking about their impact as individuals of power and influence.
We may live in an age of celebrity, but our economy and society are driven by impersonal forces and institutions: financialization, deregulation, corporate globalization, multinational corporations, the national security state.
Sometimes, in order to make things understandable, it helps to focus on the individuals driving these processes or directing these institutions.
There's another reason to focus on individuals: to hold them to account.
If the people who run giant corporations or make big, bad decisions as government officials are fine human beings when it comes to their everyday dealings with the people they know, why are they so casual about harming people they don't know?
A critical part of the answer is that they don't feel any personal accountability because the people their decisions affect are, to them, mere abstractions.
Part of our project of making the world more humane is holding people in positions of power accountable and ensuring that they think through how their actions and policies impact the people they don't know.
For 42 years and counting, that's what Public Citizen has done.
The enemies of progress have always had more money than us.
But we've always had more people power than them.
And together, we've preserved and advanced policies that put the needs of everyday people before the greed of corporations.
Please help us keep fighting — and winning — by contributing whatever you can today.
Thank you.
Onward,
Robert Weissman
President, Public Citizen
P.S. If you've already made a year-end contribution, thank you. Please make an additional donation if you can so that we can hit the ground running in 2014.