"Not only is income and wealth in America more concentrated in fewer hands than it’s been in 80 years, but those hands are buying our democracy as never before – and they’re doing it behind closed doors.
Hundreds of millions of secret dollars are pouring into congressional and state races in this election cycle. The Koch brothers (whose personal fortunes grew by $5 billion last year) appear to be behind some of it, Karl Rove has rounded up other multi-millionaires to fund right-wing candidates, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is funneling corporate dollars from around the world into congressional races, and Rupert Murdoch is evidently spending heavily.
No one knows for sure where this flood of money is coming from because it’s all secret."
Make sure you thank the nearest Republican for this--as this is the America they seem to love. Wealth concentrated in a few hands and the wealthy getting more and more power.
3 comments:
I looked at what he suggested people do at the end of the article. I have read the deceision and the dissent. I found the Steven's argument to be convuluted and not grounded in logic or jurisprudence. That being said, disclosure, IMO, is absolutely necessary and the fact that the GOP voted against it is nauseating.
I am not sure what Stephens' reasoning was, but I find that entire ruling to be horrific. I think at some point in the future, we may look back on that as the point where we lost our democracy. And Steve, with all due respect to those who are more conservative than me, I think elected Republicans are essentially only concerned with corporate profits. They are against any tax increases, and have tried to cut funding for the working poor and even for assistance to disaster areas in Haiti. They are for themselves. In the left, there are jokes about Republicorps, and I think that is sadly closer to reality than satire.
And meanwhile the Republicans I know vote for these scum because they give lip service to anti-abortion and hate gays.
I agree with your assessment of the current GOP, at least in that regard. I don't believe that the ruling means that democracy is lost by any stretch of the imagination. The wealthy (and any large well funded group) have always had more of a say in the process. The little guy can gain some level of influence by joining these kinds of groups. Besides, the reality was that corporations got around the restrictions in a variety of ways.
The best thing in this situation is transparency, which as we saw, was shot down by the GOP.
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