Do any of you remember the movie All The President's Men? That was the dramatization of the
Watergate scandal. Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman portraying Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
Do you remember the advice given to them by Deep Throat..."Follow The Money".
The truth for almost any situation always tends to be at the end of the money trail.
If you're wondering why politicians take certain positions, change their positions, speak one way and vote another...follow the money.
A lot of people use the saying "Money is the Root of all Evil". However, in the Bible, it's actually
"The LOVE of Money is the Root of all Evil".
When you ask yourself, why we don't have single payer health care in the USA and couldn't even get
the much weaker "public option", what answer do you come up with? Was it the mean ole Republicans?
Was the public insufficiently excited about single payer and/or the public option? Was it that the
Administration wasn't skilled enough in their messaging to convince a Democratic Congress at the
time to do its bidding?
Or does it all ultimately come back to Money? Campaign contributions are protected under law as
free speech. But what happens when my wallet is bigger than your wallet? Is my free speech
accorded more weight than yours? Do I possess more influence than you? Do policies get shaped
to additionally benefit me, further enhancing my position?
Let's say that you have a friend, and that friend is in need of cash. And you generously provide
that friend with the needed sum. And at a later date, you make some request of that friend.
Do you expect that friend with which you were so very generous to ignore or dismiss your request?
Or do you expect that friend to be very compliant with your wishes in light of your previous generosity?
Now you may say that politics is very different from what I just described, but is it really?
In particular, when the very generous friend is able to form a Political Action Committee and
bundle millions of dollars in contributions and make them available for the cause of the friend's election. Is the recipient of this generosity really going to be uninfluenced by it?
Or is it more likely that the recipient finds themselves more willing to consider positions favorable
to the source of the contributions? Convincing themselves that once they are elected they will
be able to serve some greater good, after of course providing the appropriate considerations to
those generous friends who made their election possible.
It seems that the only way to eliminate this dynamic is to have all campaigns publicly financed.
I don't know what the details of this would be, but I do believe that money completely corrupts
the process and shuts out the voices of those without means to participate.
It's been demonstrated that it's very easy to ignore the individual donor who perhaps contributed
$5 to a campaign. I submit that it's probably equally easy to ignore the individual donor who
made the max contribution of $2,500 (although that might get you an autographed picture or something).
But the big moneyed interests don't get ignored. It's the rules of the game and everyone plays by them.
Maybe instead of monitoring other country's elections and providing critiques, we need to get our
own act cleaned up.
Is it Democracy, when 1% makes the rules?
Please visit http://www.leemanuel05.com
Watergate scandal. Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman portraying Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
Do you remember the advice given to them by Deep Throat..."Follow The Money".
The truth for almost any situation always tends to be at the end of the money trail.
If you're wondering why politicians take certain positions, change their positions, speak one way and vote another...follow the money.
A lot of people use the saying "Money is the Root of all Evil". However, in the Bible, it's actually
"The LOVE of Money is the Root of all Evil".
When you ask yourself, why we don't have single payer health care in the USA and couldn't even get
the much weaker "public option", what answer do you come up with? Was it the mean ole Republicans?
Was the public insufficiently excited about single payer and/or the public option? Was it that the
Administration wasn't skilled enough in their messaging to convince a Democratic Congress at the
time to do its bidding?
Or does it all ultimately come back to Money? Campaign contributions are protected under law as
free speech. But what happens when my wallet is bigger than your wallet? Is my free speech
accorded more weight than yours? Do I possess more influence than you? Do policies get shaped
to additionally benefit me, further enhancing my position?
Let's say that you have a friend, and that friend is in need of cash. And you generously provide
that friend with the needed sum. And at a later date, you make some request of that friend.
Do you expect that friend with which you were so very generous to ignore or dismiss your request?
Or do you expect that friend to be very compliant with your wishes in light of your previous generosity?
Now you may say that politics is very different from what I just described, but is it really?
In particular, when the very generous friend is able to form a Political Action Committee and
bundle millions of dollars in contributions and make them available for the cause of the friend's election. Is the recipient of this generosity really going to be uninfluenced by it?
Or is it more likely that the recipient finds themselves more willing to consider positions favorable
to the source of the contributions? Convincing themselves that once they are elected they will
be able to serve some greater good, after of course providing the appropriate considerations to
those generous friends who made their election possible.
It seems that the only way to eliminate this dynamic is to have all campaigns publicly financed.
I don't know what the details of this would be, but I do believe that money completely corrupts
the process and shuts out the voices of those without means to participate.
It's been demonstrated that it's very easy to ignore the individual donor who perhaps contributed
$5 to a campaign. I submit that it's probably equally easy to ignore the individual donor who
made the max contribution of $2,500 (although that might get you an autographed picture or something).
But the big moneyed interests don't get ignored. It's the rules of the game and everyone plays by them.
Maybe instead of monitoring other country's elections and providing critiques, we need to get our
own act cleaned up.
Is it Democracy, when 1% makes the rules?
Please visit http://www.leemanuel05.com
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