Financing Elections
Financing Elections
Since 1990, the financial firms on Wall Street have contributed $638,000,000,000 to candidates running for Federal office.
Do you really think these folks are going to spend almost a trillion dollars and not ask Congress for special favors?
Do you really think Congress will not grant them special favors?
We are in a depression caused by reckless behavior in the financial industry, and the regulators were essentially paid to look the other way.
Are we ever going to solve serious problems as long as government can be bought?
I can almost hear that old Beach Boys’ song: “Wouldn’t it be nice if…”
Ask Diana McGinness (who is running against Rick Larsen’s $700,000 and growing war chest) if finance reform is a good idea; in fact, ask anyone who is attempting to challenge a party-backed incumbent—and they’d surely agree with you.
Problem is, the only way to get that kind of money and exposure is by gathering enough bucks to win is to take donations from Big Money. As Rick Larsen said, he’s against public campaign financing, mumbling something about it taking away from social programs. (Never mind that the money saved on payback earmarks to those donors would save enough to more than pay for campaign reform and actually increase social programs.)
That’s one incumbent’s excuse and he’s sticking to it. So, until we force incumbents to go along with saying “no” to corporate donors, serious challengers are in the trap of also accepting such money—just to get out the gate.
Of course, we all know that a good, pliable incumbent will also continue to be the biggest recipient of corporate money.
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