http://skitch.com/lessig/nim7j/graph.002 from the Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-lessig/the-democrats-response-to_b_462412.htmlThe Democratic Leadership in Congress announced its response to the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United last week. Their plan builds upon "talking points" released by the President shortly after his State of the Union, describing his strategy for "cracking down on special interests" in light of the new threat created by the Court. "For too long," the White House wrote, "hardworking folks doing everything they can do to stay afloat have not been heard over the powerful voices of the special interests and their lobbyists in Washington." The Leadership and the President want to do something about this.
Some numbers will put this issue in perspective. Candidates for Congress raised $1.2 billion in the 2008 campaign cycle. 10% of that came from contributions of $200 or less. In 2009, the Center for Responsive Politics reports, the total spent on lobbying in Washington climbed to the highest level in American history: $3.47 billion in total were spent wooing Congress, with just over $1 billion by the health and financial services sector alone. 1.3% of that total came from organized labor. And having now been liberated by the Supreme Court to spend corporate funds to promote or oppose any political candidate, many fear the skew in these numbers will only increase. If the top 400 American corporations in 2008 spent just 1% of their profits in political campaigns, that would be $6 billions -- 5x the total amount spent in the 2008 cycle, almost 50x the amount contributed in $200 contributions or less.
So against this background of profound distortion in the political speech market, what have the Democrats proposed? A handful of puny measures, none which will come close to addressing this growing corruption of democracy in America -- a democracy less and less dependent, as the Federalist Papers promised, "upon the People," and more and more dependent upon the campaign funders.
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