Your Politician Has Been Bribed

I hate to break it to ya, Mr and Mrs Voter, but you don't vote for a politician. You vote for the special interests who own that politician.

Since McCain/Feingold the barriers to nearly unlimited "campaign donations" have gradually broken down. The courts have consistently ruled that the First Amendment guarantees the right for people to use money for advertising on behalf of (or against) a candidate. And the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court extended that right to companies and unions -- in effect, saying that companies and unions have the First Amendment rights of individuals.

That opened the floodgates. The amount of money that can be spent on behalf of a candidate is now essentially is unlimited. And it cements the ability of special interests to buy access and influence.

Let's look at a couple of examples, courtesy of OpenSecrets.org. Here are the top donors to John McCain's 2010 Senate campaign; here are the top donors to Charles Schumer's. What you see is an assortment of various banking, lawyer, media and industrial interests. Here's what you don't see: individuals.

The politicians spend much of their time soliciting these bribes while the special interests spend much of their time trying to bribe politicians. With such a happy conflation of interests, it's a simple matter for monied interests and politicians to erect relationships both symbiotic and parasitic. The politician is now elected, with the use of the bribes to pay campaign costs; in return, he or she is now owned and told how to vote by organizations that could care less about you.

In the next post: It's Even Worse Than You Think.