Originally posted by Ski:
And it's going to get much worse now that the Supreme Court has overturned a century old decision that placed caps on corporate donations:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-a...0,850920.story

We're really going down the road of no return here. Corporations can now effectively buy their politician of choice.
Not sure I'd necessarily agree with that. Taking a contrarian viewpoint on this issue. Just a few points to consider:

1) These days, it needs to be more about disclosure than placing contribution caps. You place caps, all you do is incentivize the current players to find new & more creative ways around the System, as far as contribution caps go. Make then disclose EVERYTHING on the Internet within seven (7) calendar days, or $1k a day fine per non-disclosed contribution retroactive to the contribution date. That would put an end to all the nonsense real quick.

2) Issue you might want to consider is that the judges just decided that this whole approach of political contribution caps was an ongoing trap with the real potential for never-ending litigation. This may be a case of the SCOTUS simply sending the pols a message of "Try a different approach - we're done with this one". Can't blame them for trying to reduce their future workload.

3) Third, most pols are "A" type personalities. They are not into being controlled, certainly not by contributors (seen that effect up close and personal, more than once). And these days in particular, if you are bought and owned by "Big Anything" (Business, Labor, etc.), you are probably going to be in a world of hurt politically, because the message being received out there right from pols up for election/reelection is "You are subject to being replaced", if not outright "You're Fired!". And being an elected pol who is 'owned' by "Big Anything" looks to be a firing offense. There's a whole lot of very "cold angry" voters out there.

4) I can see why the newsies (main line old school media) are all upset over this SCOTUS decision. It doesn't do anything positive for them, but it can certainly energize the new media (Internet, the blogs, www.opensecrets.org, etc.) competition, which is already beating them (old line MSM) like a rented mule.

I look at this as "Change" - and we all know the magnificent effectiveness of these campaign contribution 'caps' to date - so let's try some "change" in the disclosure area. If the pols go out & screw it up worse, well, just a few more of then to toss out of office.