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The opposite would be true I think, that along with Campaign finance reform should lessen the impact of lobbyists. http://www.publicampaign.org/blog/2011/02/11/lobbying-and-campaign-finance-theyre-related

It's very simple. Our system positively selects for corruption, and it always will so long as the support of a few wealthy men is necessary to successfully compete in an election. I volunteered in the finance office of a campaign for governor, and you have no idea just how expensive a campaign is and just how much that money hinges on a short list of generous donors until you've gone over the public finance disclosures of your candidate and their opponents. Only the super, super rich can self-finance.

With that sort of pressure, corruption is inevitable. With the exception of a few wealthy ideologues, nobody gives money to a campaign without expecting some sort of favorable legislation passed for them. No candidate can survive without this sort of favor swapping. The best you can do is to decide who you're willing to compromise yourself to.

Take Hillary Clinton for example. Back when her husband was President, she was instrumental in getting the White House back away from that horrible bankruptcy reform bill that would eventually get passed in 2005. You can read more about this in "The Two-Income Trap" because the author of the book was instrumental in convincing her it was a bad idea. The bill contains such gems as prioritizing the repayment of credit card debt before child support and alimony payments. Clinton was horrified by the bill originally and promised to defeat "that awful bill" which was "unfair to women and children."

Now a few years later after successfully running for the Senate after receiving $140,000 of campaign contributions from banking executives, Senator Clinton voted in favor of the bill when it came up unchanged in 2001 and in every other year it was introduced until its passage in 2005. This is what corruption is all about -- bills for bills.

Even the most principled politician has to hold their nose and do something terrible in exchange for getting to prioritize the issues that really matter to them. For some politicians, this eventually eats away at everything they did care about until nothing is left but the matters of power and money. For other politicians, pork spending, anti-consumer legislation, and corporate welfare were their highest principles to begin with.

This sort of thing happens constantly, and it will happen until we can somehow kill the relationship between big donations and a successful bid for office. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court is dead set on the idea that money equals free speech and forgets that the point of free speech is to give all citizens a chance to air their views. With big money being thrown around like this, the voices and opinions of the little guy mean absolutely jack outside of the voting booth. This means that some issues will never be properly examined (like copyright extension) because the few powerful interests have well bribed both sides on the issue.

This is why almost all of our elections are about "culture war" nonsense. It's a distraction from the real issues about government power and the spending of our tax dollars are decided with phone calls, industry drafted bills, and big fat checks. You just wave gay marriage or video game violence and the voters look that way while the other hand is busy digging in the graft.

I'm in favor of the latest raft of public election financing draft bills. You agree not to accept any money from private individuals, and in exchange the government matches what your opponent spends. The best part is that since they're voluntary, the Supreme Court can't knock them down without extremely tortured logic. To qualify, all you have to do is get a certain critical mass of signatures, and then you spend the entire election trying to speak to the people instead of spending (literally) 70-90% of your time begging for money. Trust me; this is what an election is really like -- candidates are just panhandlers trading dignity for much larger sums of cash than a homeless person. It's disheartening to watch.

Unti

1 - short year so far, stick around!

2 - sounds like you want to break copyright law and are therefore against DRM on principle

3 - "too many politicians bowing to people in power" - you (and everyone!) should be supporting publicly financed elections of some kind (see e.g. Public Campaign)

MP3

Related Links:

Americans for Campaign Reform
A group in support of public-funding for all federal elections

Public Campaign: A group supporting 'clean elections'
Clean Elections in your State

Arizona-Specific

Arizona - Citizens Clean Elections Commission
List of 2006 Candidates

Clean Elections Institute

Goldwater Institute
"Campaign Promises: A six-year review of Arizona's experiment with taxpayer-financed campaigns"

California-Specific

Californians for Clean Elections - Yes on 89
This group supports so-called clean elections. They believe "prop 89 is the antidote to negative ads paid for by rich special interests." It limits the amount corporations can spend on initiatives. It limits the amount everybody can give to candidates.

Californians to Stop 89
This group is against the clean elections movement and believe that the initiative "works to shut certain groups like small businesses, non-profits and some unions, out of the political process" therby creating an "unlevel playing field."

Maine-Specific

Maine Citizens for Clean Elections

Maine Commission of Government Actions and Election Practices
List of 2006 Candidates

What we need are publicly funded elections. To pass Constitutional muster (thanks to a disastrous Supreme Court decision equating spending disproportionate money with free speech), the law does not restrict people from taking money the old-fashioned way.

Instead, a candidate agrees to forgoe traditional funding and gets a long list of signatures in support of his campaign to prove he's a serious contender (instead of raising a certain amount of money before the election). Once qualified, he is given what the government estimates the election campaign should cost. If his opponent raises more money, he gets a matching amount so that the race is even.

This means that a traditional candidate is free to take money from special interest groups who are free to spend as much as they want. However, this will not buy their candidate a disproportionate advantage of the opponent which reduces the value of such an "investment." In the mean time, the public funded candidate is free to spend all their time talking to the people instead of fund-raising.

What you get are politicians who are more interested in attracting voters than attracting lobbyists. They have more time to meet with the people more often, and they don't have to beg and scrape for money from powerful interest groups. They are beholden only to the people -- the way representative democracy was intended to work.

I love this idea. I am seriously considering moving to a state that has already passed laws like these at some point later in life, and if a state possessed both this an some sort of non-partisan redistricting scheme that prevented the kind of gerrymandering that locks in uncompetitive races, I would start making my plans today -- even if it's one of those God-forsaken frozen northern states despite my hatred for cold weather. It would totally be worth it.

I have so many friends who label themselves Progressive, when they don't realize that the Progressive ideaology is no different than the political agenda of both the Democrats and the Republicans: to control others against their will in hopes of creating a better world.

You could make the same argument about anyone who supports any laws -- anti-drug laws, anti-fraud laws, anti-murder laws, anti-rape laws, etc. That's the point of government -- to prevent people from inflicting their will on others in bad ways in order to produce a more just and equitable world.

The central thrust of Progressive ideology was summed up very nicely by Howard Dean in a Daily Show episode from last year that I watched last night: "Love thy neighbor. And you don't get to pick your neighbor." This means two things: Don't hate people because they're different; we're all Americans and all Humans. Don't hurt people through malice or selfish indifference. That's all it really is.

You guys don't trust government. We don't really it either, but we trust it more than we trust corporations. A democratic government is at its highest level meant to serve the benefit of the whole people of the nation. A corporation is at its highest level meant to serve the benefit of only its shareholders even at the expense of all non-shareholders. That's a whole different height to fall from and a whole different set of people with the power to do anything about it.

We see other people suffering, and we wish to build institutions to give them a helping hand because that could one day be us after one job loss or one family illness or some other disaster. We don't want other people to be allowed to abuse others because they might be able to abuse us. We don't like concentrations of unaccountable power whether it be in our executive branch or in a newly merged boardroom.

Now that you can't use your money to speak for you, the minority view is reduced to only a few hundred dollars per person.

As opposed to the millions of dollars per person that we all previously had to voice our popular opinions with? Honestly, you should be ashamed if you think that restricting the power of the elite to have disproportionate speech over the masses is a bad thing.

Destroy the power of the federal government, and you'll see the big money disappear.

No, no you won't because the big money will prevent the parts of the government that favor them from being destroyed. Why do you think we spend so much money on crop subsidies, no-bid reconstruction projects, and private security companies? Deregulation means simply that every one can have as much say with the politicians as they want so long as they're fantastically rich. We can go back to the bad old days of Congressional patronage.

If you want to see the big money disappear, you have to make it worthless to spend. You need Clean Money Clean Elections laws. Big Corn wants to donate $300,000 dollars to an incumbent Senator? Okay, the state matches their opponent for $300,000 who instead spends all their time talking to the people instead of the lobbyists. Advantage lost unless the indebted Senator still wins. However, by eliminating the fund-raising advantage that all incumbents have, you make the race significantly more competitive than it was before. With publicly financed elections, the only "customer" of a politician is the people instead of the lobbyists.

• Clean Money Elections. That way Congress could actually have politicians who serve the people instead of special interest groups (of any political affiliation).
  
• A balanced budget amendment that prevented deficit spending and made it clear to the public that $X corporate wellfare == $Y out of your pocket.
  

There was no serious public discussion of GM in the United States. I presume someone paid the politicians, as has happened in so many other areas.

Support campaign finance reform!

McCain has the right idea.

When the corporate takeover of the government ends. The USPTO is acting in the interest of the technology industry, not the public. Same with the FDA. The FDA sees pharmaceutical companies as clients -- it doesn't even know it's supposed to be a regulatory agency. OSHA is basically asleep. Until public campaigns are financed by public dollars, the situation will only get worse.

In the meantime, consider producing works under licenses such as the GPL, the GNU Free Documentation License, the Free Art License, or a Creative Commons license with a "share-alike" provision. This is not perfect, but this would use copyright restrictions for preserving freedom. Those wanting to produce works under permissive licenses would have an advantage denied to the producers of proprietary-licensed works.

It is also worth considering the role of money in politics.

Santorum is not clueless. He knows exactly what he's doing, i.e. favors for corporations in exchange for massive campaign contributions later. It's against the public's will, but that's never stopped him before. The money in politics problem is systemic, and the only real hope for change is full public financing of campaigns so elected officials respond to the public instead of corporate interests.

Perhaps there is something to be said for public funding of political campaigns. Though it might sound expensive, it is important for the government to be responsive to all people.

Those who are interested can take a look at the following for starters:
Public Campaign -- A New Kind of Reform Politics
Public Campaign Action Fund
Campaign Finance Reform: The Issue
Money In Politics - Common Cause

Question: Which is more important, the end of such corruption in politics, or the assertion of digital rights?

Answer: Both. There's never been as great a need to end corporate influence over government as there is today. With the advent of the net, we have more to lose as a society (as a world) than ever before.

That being said, don't stop asserting digital rights. Furthermore, if you're serious about stopping political corruption now instead of later, take a look at the Clean Election movement. Cut out the campaign contributions and you instantly relieve the stranglehold that corporations have over government.

1. Write (with real paper, not email!) a firm but polite letter to your Congressional representatives in the House and in the Senate.
   
2. Help support Clean Elections.