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Greetings, Mustachio. :2wave:
All the various donors don't bother me, but I remember when the Democrats yelled foul after the Supreme Court leveled the playing field by allowing businesses, as well as unions, to also contribute monies to an election effort, and they are now accepting money from them, from the very top on down. Obama stated he would stop the practice, but it's still in place and both sides take advantage of it. Do they influence how a person votes by using advertising to sway a voter's opinion one way or another, which is really the most important thing? Maybe not, as Soros learned in the midterms after giving millions to Democrat candidates.
What I think needs to be changed is the electoral college, which over-rules the individual voter, since it's winner-take-all by State. It could be 51-49 statistically, but it disenfranchises millions of voters, and I don't think that's fair. State elections are a matter of how many votes a candidate gets, which determines who won. Period. If there's a question, vote counting can be redone. The electoral college is outdated, IMO, since the reason for it has changed since it was put in place hundreds of years ago, due to TV and the internet being used to keep people updated on what's going on - things they did not have available to them back then.
In 2012, there were 435 elections for the House of Representatives. The candidate who had and spent more money won 95% of those elections. The electoral college is a completely different matter and I don't strongly agree or disagree with your opinions regarding that institution.
But referring to the Supreme Court allowing businesses to spend as much money as they want during an election cycle as "leveling the playing field" is a joke. I mean it literally sounds like you're joking. I don't see how anybody could argue anything other than they made the playing field the least level it has ever been. Less than 1% of Americans contribute about 70% of the money for elections. How is that even a little bit level?
Look at for-profit education. There are colleges like the University of Phoenix who charge a huge amount of money for classes that are basically useless. They have huge enrollment levels because of their advertising, which both is a cause and result of the enormous amount of money they make. These for-profit colleges are complete garbage and when it comes right down to it, they are scams. But yet we have elected officials who are stonewalling any attempt to regulate the for-profit education field because they rely on for-profit colleges to donate huge amounts of money to their campaigns. I call that bribery. I call that lunacy. What is good for Americans is being ignored because corporate enterprise has purchased lawmakers. So, I guess I'd ask you who you think we're leveling the playing field for? Certainly not the American people.