Republican politicos say that taking unlimited sums of campaign cash from corporations and billionaires is the American way, claiming that money is “free” speech. Democrats disagree, but say they can’t unilaterally disarm, so they join the ever-escalating arms race for fat cat money. Is politics of-by-and-for moneyed interests the only way?
Not for a candidate of real substance, offering ideas that actually appeal to workaday people, getting them excited enough to become involved in the grassroots work of democracy – including putting in small bits of their own money. “That’s populist poppycock,” squawk the political pros, “impossible in the real world.”
Well, welcome to Bernie’s world. Bernie Sanders, the unabashedly-progressive senator from Vermont, is running an all-out people’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. He’s proposing a bold agenda for change, calling it a revolution “to rebuild our middle class, reclaim our democracy, and save our planet.”
To the shock of the political know-it-alls who’d dismissed him as a non-contender, Sanders is catching on big time. With straight talk and rejection of politics as usual, he’s drawing huge crowds, generating a groundswell of enthusiasm that other candidates can only dream about, and moving up in the polls as more people learn about him. Even more shocking to the cognoscenti, Bernie is raising serious money for his campaign – more than $15 million in only three months. More impressive than the amount, Sanders notes that “we did it the right way.” No billionaires, SuperPACs, or dark money. Instead, more than 99 percent of his funding is coming from people giving under $250. Indeed, the average donation is just $33.
For information on this un-corporatized presidential campaign, go to www.BernieSanders.com.


Government of, by, and for Big Money

Your standard governor, congress critter, and other elected officials routinely insist that they represent “The People.” But when it Comes to making public policy, do they actually represent you… or Mr. Money, who writes big campaign checks?
Right.
Any pretension that we live in a self-governing democratic republic is gone. It’s been snuffed out by a tiny club of Big Money donors (only about, 600 people out of our population of 330 million). They’ve empowered themselves to choose candidates, control the public debate, and bend public policy to their selfish interests. Both major political parties are complicit in this kleptocratic transformation – Republicans by aggressively pushing it, and Democrats by passively acquiescing to it.
While Barack Obama has done nothing to stop this money-perversion of democracy, he’s at least made noise about making the thieves disclose their theft. But noise is not action, and the GOP’s enablers of the thievery have even moved to kill Obama’s modest disclosure ideas. In June, for example, House Republicans quietly voted to prohibit the SEC – the shareholder’s watchdog – from requiring CEOs to tell the corporate owners how much of their money is being spent on particular political candidates. Another GOP backroom proviso would keep the IRS from disclosing the names of corporate tax-law manipulators that use so-called “social-welfare” groups to funnel money anonymously into partisan political campaigns. Also, a third Republican hide-and-seek provision would allow corporations that get billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to avoid telling us the names of lawmakers they’re showering with campaign cash.
The torrent of secret corporate money in our elections is hosing our democratic ideals and possibilities, blasting the people out of the process and imposing Big Money governance over America.
“Dark Money’s Deepening Power,” The New York Times, June 29, 2015.
“The ‘Non-Candidate’ Money Spigot,” The New York Times May 31, 2015
“McCutcheon vs FEC,” www.opensectets.org, 2014.


The venality of the 2016 presidential election

Already, results of the first election of the 2016 presidential race are in!
It’s the Money Primary, controlled not by voters, but by superwealthy donors. In this exclusive election, Jeb is way out front of the GOP pack with a record haul of $100 million, while Hillary has bagged $45 million to lead among the Dems. But wait… here come the Koch brothers from out of nowhere, overwhelming all the other campaigns with nearly a billion dollars for their secretive effort to put the presidency under their private control.
Thanks to the absurd Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court’s corporate minions, running for America’s highest office in our democratic republic has been perverted into the venality of a gold rush. Candidates shamelessly grub for cash in the suites of corporate plutocrats, molding their policy proposals to fit the narrow interests of those moneyed elites.
The donors and political sychophants involved in this obscene corruption of the system are blithefully playing with dynamite. By using money to shove the vast majority of people out of the democratic process, they’re mocking America’s essential egalitarian ideal that we’re all in this together, destroying their own moral legitimacy, and fueling an explosive fury among alienated voters.
In a recent nationwide poll, 84 percent of Americans say that money has too much influence in elections, resulting in policies that favor the donors. The majority also rejects the Supreme Court’s coddling of fat cat donors, with three-fourths of the people wanting limits on how much any donor can give and demanding that “dark money” front groups reveal the sources of their money.
Of course, the aloof political-money class won’t stop their own corruption, but We the People can… and must. To help, go to www.DemocracyIsForPeople.org.
“Poll Shows Americans, Favor Overhaul of Campaign Financing,” www.nytimes.com, June 2, 2015.