In a disastrous decision unnoticed by most Americans, the Supreme Court voted, 5-4, to allow virtually unlimited corporate money to be spent influencing every political campaign in the country.
It isn’t enough that corporations already spend millions of dollars lobbying each and every one of the 435 members of the House of Representatives and all 100 senators. Now they want to flood the television networks, radio stations and newspapers across the nation with corporate propaganda on a scale that nonprofit groups from the Sierra Club to the National Rifle Association can’t possibly hope to compete with. They literally want to buy control of the national debate on any issue that advances their interests, at the expense of ours.
True participatory democracy requires a level playing field for all of us. To claim that a huge influx of corporate money into campaigns is simply “freedom of speech” is like saying a person quietly talking while being drowned out by a person shouting into a bullhorn are both being treated equally. Rubbish. It is destructive to civil discourse and damaging to the institutions on which our freedom and self determination depend.
It’s time to get the money out of politics. Money has bought us trillion-dollar bank bailouts while taxpaying homeowners who paid that tab are evicted from their homes. Money has brought us escalating health care costs and “medical bankruptcies,” denying access to care for tens of millions while big pharma and the insurance companies rake in record profits. Money has bought us a do-nothing Congress afraid of offending corporate interests, and by their inaction effectively cedes control of policy to them.
Enough! Please write your representatives, join groups like Public Citizen and Common Cause, get the money out of politics and restore our government to the people.
Donald Shank
Everett
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