Here's an idea. Auction the Presidency! Money ahead, put it into general revenue. Hell, it couldn't be a worse system than the crapshoot a federal election is now.
We don't do that for the presidency quite yet, but it happens all the time with governors and house members. Some of them are bought and sold so openly and brazenly that it's a wonder no one goes to jail for it. But there's a big enough portion of this country, as we see in this thread, that is pretty much in favor of letting the wealthiest among us purchase political influence.
And there's insane willful ignorance. Like this.
Nope. There's no evidence that they hold any more power than anyone else in this country when it comes to influencing politicians.
There is ample evidence. There was a century-long ban on corporate spending on elections on Montana because the coal companies were literally buying up elections. Just recently, John Oliver did a segment on a state lawmaker who lead the charge against regulating payday loan companies because of his own stake in several of them. This is the military industrial complex that Eisenhower was warning against. The evidence is everywhere. The only way not to see it is to shut your eyes.
Some people learn to love their chains.
Why does money from the left get a pass but Koch money gets scrutiny?
It doesn't. There's just a lot less of it and it doesn't come from such a small pool of billionaires. We'd gladly give that up in exchange for taking money out of politics.
Indications are that they have't influenced the electorate very much, so far as presidential races go.
Citizens United has not proven to be the boogie man once feared.
As above, in presidential races, no. We have yet to get a bought presidential race (though we got one decided by daddy's friends on bench). But we get bought governorships and house membership all the time.
Spending billions on a political campaign is money wasted. It doesn't create long term jobs in the economy. The money goes largely into advertising and developing political ads that never get aired, hair, make up, political coaching, etc. It's a very pretentious, nearly two year spectacle of turd polishing.
What it does do is make the politicians who get that money and win beholden to their benefactors. In order to get Sheldon Adelson's money, Republican candidates had to promise that they would enact his specific rules around shrimp, so that his casinos could be more profitable. Shrimp! That's what some of our elections are coming down to; one rich guy's not wanting to pay as much for shrimp.
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I think I've seen enough. This is what an aristocracy looks like. Even if you filter it through an election, the guys with all the money are the ones who really have power. If someone cares anything for real political liberty, you must keep all this wealth out of politics. And anyone who fights to keep it there on the delusion that someday they, too, will have the money to buy up elections like this, stop kidding yourself. You won't.