When TV’s network goliaths squared off with a tiny New York Internet start-up last week at the Supreme Court, they had the best lawyer money could buy.
I watched as Paul Clement, a former Solicitor General who’s argued more than 70 times before the court, impressively left a lingering sense that Aereo is stealing the copyrighted content of CBS, NBC, ABC and others.
If he ultimately wins, he’d personify the conclusion of a provocative new study: the political and policy clout of the rich is accelerating and leaving the little guy in the dust.
Washington has always comforted the status quo. The rich and powerful tend to get their way, especially in deflecting change. Much-heralded democratic disruptions brought by social media and other technologies don’t surpass old-fashioned money and clout.
Now, a study by two political scientists expands on ample academic literature on how “policy is more responsive to the views of the wealthy or other elites than the average citizen,” as John Sides of George Washington University put it to me.
The study by political scientists Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern attempts to assess economic power’s impact on 1,779 policy cases over two decades.
They juxtaposed the outcomes with survey responses to those particular issues by income level. They find that the preferences of elites overrode those of regular citizens. And while some “mass-interest groups” displayed influence, it wasn’t close to that of business groups when the two clashed.
Most average citizens have “little or no independent influence” on policy. Their wants “may be largely or entirely spurious.”
A proposed policy change with low support among the economic elite was adopted 18 percent of the time, while those with high backing among the elite won out 45 percent of the time.
The policy preferences of that elite proved 15 times more influential than those of ordinary, lower-income Americans in the political scientists’ analysis.
“It is hardly surprising that affluent people have a disproportionate share of political power in America,” Larry Bartels, a Vanderbilt political scientist, told me.
“But Gilens and Page (with whom he’s both worked) shed clear light on the startling magnitude of that disparity, and they nicely highlight its significant implications for our broader understanding of American politics and public policy.”
One reads their handiwork, scans today’s Washington scene and is reminded that what does not happen in government is often more important than what does.
Thus, after years and years of arguably persuasive cases for true change, we’ve got no significant climate legislation. There’s no immigration reform.
Congress maintains an outrageous tax break for “carried interest” benefiting private equity companies and talks a good game but does zilch about an unfair corporate tax code.
Last week brought another example of big guys getting their way, involving a proposal for how your internet service provider should treat Web content.
It may mean that those providers will charge web companies more for faster service. Your favorite sites would not be treated equally. Little guys might get screwed as larger web companies, like Google, pay a heftier freight and you, the consumer, winds up paying more.
If there is a weakness in Gilens and Page’s study of how money talks, and drowns out ordinary voices, it’s the modest definition of affluence it uses. There’s not enough survey data of truly rich Americans for them to crunch, so they rely on research of those in the 90th income percentile, meaning household income of about $ 146,000.
“It doesn’t tell us anything directly about the political power of really rich people,” said Bartels, who’s now part of a pilot study of Chicago-area millionaires to discern how their political preferences differ from those of the public as a whole.
But do we have much adoubt about what that will tell us?
Kathy Kiely, a former journalist now with the Sunlight Foundation in Washington, rattled off examples of elite clout gathered by her group. It’s a nonpartisan, nonprofit based that promotes government transparency and studies the nexus of money and politics.
A few examples: Big banks flood the zone to rebuff implementation of Dodd-Frank financial rules. Chemical industry donations fend off new laws for toxic materials. The wealthy stymie moves to assure they pay a fairer percentage of their income in taxes.
She could go on, she says. But “We all know the score.”
jwarren@nydailynews.com
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