Sin Industries - The Major Force Behind the Republican Party

[This column is based on figures made available in 2000]

The Sin Industries and
The Republican Party

Although the Republican Party may claim the higher moral ground in politics...

...if you look behind the moral rhetoric you see a different story.

For example, while publicly deploring the damage that tobacco, gun and alcohol interests inflict on our society...

...and pretending to be doing something about it...

...the Republicans are quietly accepting the lion's share of the country's total political contributions from these "sin industries"...

...while sabotaging attempts to curtail the damage these industries are doing.

Consider these widely-available facts:

the combined gun, alcohol and tobacco interests contributed $18.8 million to Republicans, which represented 70% of their total political contributions

the tobacco industry is the #1 contributor to the GOP, giving 80% of its political contributions—about 7 million to Republicans—and this doesn't count the $100 million they spent lobbying for their cause
meanwhile, the guns and alcohol interests spent $23 million to persuade our elected officials that their interests should come before the general welfare. (The NRA is the fourth largest contributor to the GOP.)

(to be fair, since some people consider them "sin industries," the television, movie and music companies gave a total of $13.7 million to candidates for federal office in 2000, almost two-thirds of which went to Democrats. But, if you add up the figures, you find that the total tobacco, gun, and alcohol contributions to Republicans end up being a fraction of this total.)

Are the tobacco, alcohol and fire arms contributions paying off? (Dare we ask if all that money was foolishly spent?)

Consider these facts:

while increasing some 2001 budgets, the Bush White House has systematically cut the budgets of almost every agency with power to control the growth and profits of alcohol, guns, and smoking
alcohol consumption among U.S. youth continues to grow, and almost one-third of 12th graders said they had consumed five drinks or more at least once during the last 30 days
in view of this (and even though a huge pot of money had already been set aside to pay for anti-drinking public service ads), the ad effort was killed in both the House and the Senate after—you guessed it—intense lobbing efforts by the alcohol industry
meanwhile, more than one-third of 12th graders, three-fifths of 10th graders and about half of U.S. 8th graders smoked cigarettes last year
at the same time separate bills by McCain and Waxman that would have reduced teen smoking were both snuffed out
the second leading cause of death among our youth (after accidents) is murder
in 85 percent of these murders a gun was used
but, after intense lobbying, various types of legislation designed to keep guns from kids and crooks have been defeated
and the legislation that has passed has been so weakened along the way that it's been rendered largely meaningless—except as a symbolic gesture to placate voters

When the Religious-Right tries to sell us the Republican Party on the basis of the party's superior moral standing...

...one has to wonder if the RR people have their heads buried in the sand...

..if they aren't smart enough to see what's really going on...

...or if the high-priced lobbying and hundreds of millions spent on campaign ads has them bamboozled as well.