Point of view

Money can buy you politicians

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The Beatles sang that money can’t buy you love, but in the case of campaign cash, it can certainly buy you an election or six or seven.

We can thank the five Republican members of the Supreme Court for unleashing the Frankenstein monsters called Koch and Rove upon the political village called the United States. I get at least 100 e-mails a day from Democratic candidates across the country literally begging me for money. The overwhelming fear in many of these e-mails is that the Democratic Party will lose six or seven Senate seats and usher in Republican control of the United States Senate.  

People whom I would never have heard of otherwise plead with me for five dollars, ten dollars, anything really, to promote their campaigns, from Kay Hagan in North Carolina to some guy named Eggman from I don’t know where (maybe Paul and Ringo are pushing his candidacy?)

I often wish I had a lot of money to give them, because I’m certainly concerned that the Republicans will take the Senate this November, and vote to limit what the Environmental Protection Agency can do to try to prevent carbon pollution, overturn Obamacare, and pass another huge tax cut for the wealthy that we can’t afford, but our family runs on a budget.  Even if I did give these candidates something, they would be back the next day for more, because who can really compete with the Koch brothers in doling out campaign cash when they are among the richest men in the history of the world?

The Republicans on the Supreme Court ruled a few years ago that money is speech. It is not. Money is money. Money can give you a megaphone the size of Texas to put your message out there to the public. The vote on Citizens United was 5-4, just like the vote to overturn key parts of the Voting Rights Act, and the vote to make George Bush our President in 2000. The votes were split five Republicans and four Democrats in all three cases. 

Mike Gold, Point of view
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