MSNBC "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" - Transcript

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Congressman James Clyburn, majority whip, using the word "corpocracy" to describe how our government might devolved, saying in a statement that the Supreme Court has now "opened floodgates that will allow special interest money to overrun our elections and turn our democracy into a coprocracy. As a result of this divisive ruling, insurance monopolies will have undue influence over your health care, fat cats on Wall Street will control your money, and big oil will wreak havoc upon the environment."

Congressman Clyburn joins us now.

Great thanks for your time tonight, sir.

REP. JAMES CLYBURN (D-SC), HOUSE MAJORITY WHIP: Thank you so much for having me, Keith.

OLBERMANN: You"ve used this word "corpocracy." What would, in your estimation of corpocracy look like and what about it should voters most fear?

CLYBURN: Well, if you were to look this word up, you would have a hard time finding it in various dictionaries but Google it. Look it up. And what you will find is that it is a government that is controlled by conglomerates, corporates, and many of them even with private entities. It is as clear to me as anything I"ve ever read anywhere that this opens the door, this ruling, this Supreme Court decision, opens the door to the corpocracy in our society.

OLBERMANN: As we mentioned, some chief executives writing congressional leadership today they were already tired of being viewed as, you know, ATMs for campaigns, and the corporations that they represent are asking for public financing of House and Senate campaigns. As a member of the leadership, what"s your reply to that idea and where it comes from?

CLYBURN: Well, I think it opens the door for a couple of other things as well. I think you mentioned it at the beginning of the program. We could very well see foreign corporations having undue pressure on our trade policies. I can see now these fair trade or open trade agreements that aren"t so fair being influenced by this sort of thing.

But, also, I believe very strongly that we need to sit down now and take a hard look at campaign finance reform that will include public financing of campaigns, because if we don"t, you will see too many people elected to office feeling beholding to these contributors, not so much because of the money that they give to them, but the kind of money they can now go out and spend against them.

All of us know that if you say anything 10, 12, maybe 14 times, somebody is going to believe it. And if you"ve got big corporations spending money against people, you will see people redefined in the media in a way that"s far beyond the truth. And that will be very, very bad for our system. People will be intimidated by that kind of a process and you will see bad government coming out of Washington. And that will be horrible for the American people.

OLBERMANN: Do you think there"s enough bipartisanship to act quickly? Because obviously, you"ll have to act quickly because the gates have been opened and the money is already there on the other side. I mean, if Ben Ginsberg, who--as I pointed out--was one of the lawyers for Mr. Bush in Bush v. Gore in 2000, is warning that political parties are threatened with extinction--"A," what does the fact that he said that mean symbolically? And, "B," how do you combat what he"s talking about?

CLYBURN: Well, he"s underscoring what I"ve been saying. If you render the political parties as we know them to be extinct, I don"t understand why a third party would be any different from the two parties we"ve got now. What you will have is all the parties being neutered, corpocracy being the order of the day. That, to me, cries out for some bipartisan consultation in the very near future.

Now, if you look at all of the reactions to this, my Republican friends seem to be very, very happy with this decision. Maybe with one or two exceptions, one being Senator McCain seemed to call this decision sort of "disappointing," I think is the word that he used. But I really believe that we need to get our heads together and do something to ameliorate the damage that"s being caused--that"s going to be caused by the Supreme Court decision.

OLBERMANN: Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina, the majority whip--always insightful and always a pleasure. Great thanks for your time, sir.

CLYBURN: Well, thank you so much for having me.

OLBERMANN: Always.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source