Lawmakers Who Upheld NSA Phone Spying Received Double the Defense Industry Cash

An anonymous reader writes "The numbers tell the story — in votes and dollars. On Wednesday, the House voted 217 to 205 not to rein in the NSA's phone-spying dragnet. It turns out that those 217 'no' voters received twice as much campaign financing from the defense and intelligence industry as the 205 'yes' voters."

Comments

Re:*Sigh*

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Campaign contributions are not a bribe.

They are when they are sufficiently large. That is why we need a per citizen cap on them. The rich should have no more influence over the outcome of an election than the poor. The rich are not better citizens than the poor and should only get one vote.

People, and groups of people, show support politicians by making contributions to their election campaigns.

The only thing people need to do to show support is to vote for them and to convince as many people as they can to vote for them. That is what is honest and fair. Groups are not citizens and should have no say in politics. For the same reason that they don't get to vote, they shouldn't be allowed to contribute to campaigns.

How else would you fund political campaigns?

From the labor of dedicated volunteers. Also there should be limits on how much a candidate himself can spend on his own campaign. Rich candidates should not have an unfair advantage over poor ones. You could even limit the sorts of things that public money may be spent on.

Public Financing, aka welfare for politicians??

You are assuming that a significant amount of money is needed to "finance" a campaign. If no one has any advertisement money then you have a fair playing field for rich and poor candidates and it may also lower the barrier of entry for third party candidates. You could also have some standard fixed amount paid for by taxpayers to any candidate with a sufficiently large number of signatures to run.