U.S. Government Has Been Bought For $14 Billion
Posted by freedomforall 2 years, 2 months ago to Humor
I posted this as humor because parts of it actually are funny, but the statistics are true and exhibit support for the title of this article.
Excerpt:
"But yes, our politicians are more bought-off than ever before. A new analysis from Americans For Tax Fairness found that total billionaire contributions have soared over the past few years. The cycle before the Citizens United decision only saw $16 million worth of donations from billionaires to campaigns. This past cycle saw $2.6 billion worth of donations.
And how does that much money impact our elections? Well, the candidate who spends the most wins in the Senate around 80% of the time and wins in the House close to 90% of the time. But the reality is actually worse than those two numbers illustrate because they don’t cover the fact that the two parties who spend the most money win 100% of the time — A third party (non-corporate) candidate basically wins 0% of the time. "
Excerpt:
"But yes, our politicians are more bought-off than ever before. A new analysis from Americans For Tax Fairness found that total billionaire contributions have soared over the past few years. The cycle before the Citizens United decision only saw $16 million worth of donations from billionaires to campaigns. This past cycle saw $2.6 billion worth of donations.
And how does that much money impact our elections? Well, the candidate who spends the most wins in the Senate around 80% of the time and wins in the House close to 90% of the time. But the reality is actually worse than those two numbers illustrate because they don’t cover the fact that the two parties who spend the most money win 100% of the time — A third party (non-corporate) candidate basically wins 0% of the time. "
Even that isn't enough. There will be no liberty until the federal government has been downsized by 99% (and not replaced with other government.)
The other two changes I would make would be to rescind the 17th Amendment (returning the election of US Senators to their respective State Legislators) and to increase the size of the House of Representatives so that an individual Rep represented at most 200,000 people. (Yes, I've done the math and it would mean a House of over 2000 members but it would certainly be a more representative government and MUCH more expensive to buy.)