It may have occurred to you by now that you don’t count in our modern so-called democracy. It’s not one person one vote. It’s one dollar one vote. And it may also have occurred to you that you don’t have as many dollars as, say, the Koch brothers. So, if you want your candidate or issue to prevail at the ballot box, you better hope that millions of other like-minded and dollar-challenged citizens agree. Otherwise, plutocracy reigns.
The New York Times has been following the money. Not yours, of course, since you don’t have any. But “dark money,” the dollars invested by the likes of David and Charles Koch (actually, in their case, very dirty money, as the linked Rolling Stone article makes clear). Rich people with particular interests don’t want the Rest of Us to know how much money they’ve contributed nor to whom or what. But the Times did some financial sleuthing then reported on their findings.
More than half of the general election advertising aired by outside groups in the battle for control of Congress has come from organizations that disclose little or nothing about their donors, a flood of secret money that is now at the center of a debate over the line between free speech and corruption.
The article criticizes the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling. The majority are naive, ignorant, or deceitful. Pick your poison, Justice Kennedy, who wrote the decision.
Oh, and guess which political party has better exploited that terribly flawed opinion? Why, yes, it’s the Republicans. The Times:
…close to 80 percent of general election advertising by outside groups aiding Republicans has been paid for with secret money, donated to groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Freedom Partners — a trade association of donors with ties to Charles G. and David H. Koch — and Crossroads GPS, founded by Karl Rove.
Bush’s brain lives on, now tethered to the toxic Kochs, who, according to Tim Dickinson of Rolling Stone magazine, have essentially purchased the G.O.P. using money obtained by ever more nefarious ways. (Dickinson, it seems, got under the Koch’s skin. The brothers responded, kind of.)
The Observer 