Will Politicians Help Rid Us of Corporate Money in Elections?

Money & Politics: The NY Times came out today and actually claimed that Campaign Finance Reform in America, the issue nearest and dearest to my heart after my wife and my liberty, is effectively dead. I don’t think so. The NY Times is not the Chief Medical Officer attached to the critical care unit of dying political reform. Campaign Finance Reform still has a pulse. However faint and intermittent it may be, and is still considered, even in this harsh world of absolutes, to be alive. There are still initiatives in several states for “Clean Money” elections. If people could be exposed to the idea, it may just germinate into something that could be used on a national level.

The chief “evil” that permeates the land, is this legal ruling that the Supreme Court made almost 90 years ago, about the “Personhood” of corporations. That Corporations should have the same rights and privileges afforded under the Constitution for individuals, makes the case for getting big corporate money out of political races very difficult. The people who claim that this "“influence buying" which in reality is what it really is are protected under the 1st Amendment. They claim that corporations are only exercising their freedom of speech by supporting candidates that are favorable to their business interests. That would be a logical argument if the amount of money we were talking about were $2,000.00 a year or less. If corporations do indeed have the same status as an individual, then hold them to an individual’s limit for campaign contributions. A Corporation that gives $50,000.00 to a congressman is not holding the corporations at the same level of financing as an individual.

The problem with all of this is that the very people who can change this sorry state of affairs are also corrupted by these same corporate contributions. It’s all falls under “conflict of interest”. As adults, we can make the logical assumption that it is going to be very difficult to wean these politicians away from the corporate tit. They will fight it at every turn, and with every weapon they have at their disposal. One such weapon is the media. Whether the media is influenced by the politicians or bought by the politicians is irrelevant. The situation is that they can use the media by downplaying the problem that corporate and special interest money is to our representative democracy. It has gotten well past the point where a few special and corporate interests equal individual citizen contributions; they are well past that point. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives had 66% of her campaign financed by special interest and corporate money. That is two thirds of her campaign funding and it came from PAC’s! How can the Speaker of the House support campaign finance reform when she apparently does so well under the system we have in place now? Who does Madame Speaker owe? When are people going to call in favors that she owes? Will it benefit the people when she pays these PAC’s for services rendered? You can bet you bottom dollar that it’s not going to benefit the common citizen. Do you believe that they have given her millions just to vote her conscience on the things that would be “right” for The American people? Sure, PAC’s are just that altruistic. They just want somebody in power that “will do the right thing”. Not.