The 0.000063% election

[presence]

"This really is the selling of America"
[]
[T]he 2012 presidential election have become almost exclusively defined by the one per cent.
Or, to be more precise, the .000063 per cent. Those are the 196 individual donors who have provided nearly 80% of the money raised by Super PACs in 2011 by giving $100,000 or more each.
[]
[T]he amount spent this election season will be roughly the equivalent of the GDP of Haiti.
[]
If 2008 was the year of the small donor, when many political pundits (myself included) predicted that the fusion of grassroots organising and cyber-activism would transform how campaigns were run, then 2012 is "the year of the big donor", when a candidate is only as good as the amount of money in his Super PAC. "In this campaign, every candidate needs his own billionaires,"
[]
These political action committees, spawned by the Supreme Court's 5-4 Citizens United decision in January 2010, can raise unlimited amounts of money from individuals, corporations, or unions[] without any of the corresponding accountability.

Ari Berman
25 Feb 2012 11:47
Ari Berman is a contributing writer for The Nation magazine
Campaign finance has made this the 2012 presidential election for the one per cent of the one per cent
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opi...200429526.html


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Well if you can't beat 'em join 'em??? Besides Theil... any thoughts on some RP sugar daddies?

Perhaps more wisely, how do we go about getting a recount on the supreme court to reverse their decision on Super PAC money? Clearly allowing 196 people (with strong corporate interests) to direct our elections is not the way of a democratic republic; perhaps a fascist republic.

Montana is the only state where the SuperPAC's are still illegal... but that may be about to change:

"[i]mmediate relief is needed to prevent irreparable harm to the Corporations' First Amendment free-speech right."

http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/201...ited-round-two
Is the stage set for Citizens United Round Two?
Submitted by louisehartmann on 16. February 2012

[E]xperience teaches that money corrupts, and enough of it corrupts absolutely." He’s right – and as long as Citizens United stands – then our democracy is corrupted. Time to go to MoveToAmend.org to fight for a constitutional amendment to kick corporations out of our democracy.

Judge Napolitano on the subject:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/...supreme-court/

Where he notes that foreign corporations cannot make superPAC donations.

Ron Paul and Joseph Mercola on the subject:

"If we had a lot of people of high character in congress, the lobbist would come and nobody would listen"

I disagree, if we allow corporations to finance campaigns, the power of their big money propaganda, sways the minds of the electorate and stands in the face of putting people of high character, who are not influenced and corrupted by big money, into positions of power.

Romney's Restore Our Future Super PAC, [raised] $30 million, 98 per cent from donors who gave $25,000 or more. Ten million dollars came from just ten donors who gave $1 million each.

Doesn't Ron's arguement here contradict his position that corporations are NOT people and that groups have no rights, only individuals have rights:



For more info here is Citizen's United vs Federal Election Commission wikipedia page.

your democracy on meth,

presence

[Tannenzäpfle]

http://reason.com/archives/2010/11/0...bou/singlepage

Please read the above link. Laws that restrict political speech are antithetical to the freedoms which our country was founded upon.

[thoughtomator]

The problem is not the money, it's that it works, and that goes deeper than the donations.