2016 Election Cycle Led By Billionaire Donors

Nicola Hahn writes: The pluralist stance of American politics contends that true power in the United States has been constitutionally vested in "the people" through mechanisms like the electoral process, freedom of speech, and the ability to establish political parties. The traditional view is that these aspects of our political system result in a broad distribution of power that prevents any one faction from gaining an inordinate amount of influence. And today the New York Times has revealed the shortcomings of this narrative by publishing the names of the 158 wealthy families that have donated almost half of the money spent towards the 2016 presidential race. This group of donors is primarily Republican and is dominated by interests in the banking industry. These facts lend credence to the idea that national policy making is influenced heavily by a relatively small group of people. That the American body politic is largely controlled by a deep state.

Comments

Bernie Sanders Numbers

[goombah99]

https://www.opensecrets.org/pr...

bernie sanders largest contribution out of ~15 million is 15,000 from google.

Re:The Republicans are all about money!

[Anonymous Coward]

My favorite part is that 3 of the 4 top organizations are government unions and give 99+% to Democraps. No conflict of interest there!

Re:Numbers, please?

[fustakrakich]

Hillary is the best republican a republican banker can buy at this point.

Politics isn't about compeling

[rsilvergun]

it's about controlling. You're viewing the money issue in a vacuum, assuming it's the only factor at work here. The key to politics is to get out the vote. It's to make people who have a hundred other things to worry about and are exhausted at the end of the day drag their tired asses to the polls and vote. You do that with advertising. You make sure they don't forget to vote after their second shift at the Arby's or after the meds that keep their heart pumping kick in.

There's more to it. You Gerrymander so the people who vote against you don't count. You shut down pulling offices so they can't vote. You make it so signing up to vote gets them Jury duty they can't afford to serve. When you're a billionaire with an entire society's wealth at your disposal you can hedge your bets.

There's two really easy solutions to this. a. You're not allowed to donate to a politician you can't vote for and you're not allowed to buy advertisement in a race you can't vote in. There's your free speech issue solved. b. Mandatory voting. It's like Jury duty on steroids. Everyone over 18 votes unless their declared legally incompetent.