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01.25.12 - 8:05 PM
A Tilted Landscape
As election season looms, with its attendant sound and fury, Democrats are trying to fight an unlevel playing field - and the increased abuses born of Citizens' United - with legislation aimed at making Super PACs (more) transparent. But the numbers discourage. New surveys show a majority of Americans believe we need new campaign laws, and both political donation and media figures - Republicans essentially own the news cycle - back them up. So do (telling) charts.
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11 Comments so far
Show AllI'm not sure one can extrapolate anything meaningful from studying guests on cable news networks for only a three day period. According to the bottom graph, Fox News is the MOST "fair and balanced"(!) But the general thesis is correct, that the Republican Party owns the media, or rather, media owners and producers tend more often than not to lean Republican.
There is absolutely nothing fair or balanced about the lies on faux news!
Instead of individual donors, can we also see the corporate/union donors bar chart? Oh, wait, that one tells another story that does not match Abby's agenda...
Good point. However, the union donations in all likelyhood, were dwarfed by those of private industry. Regardless of where the $$ are coming from, I object to our one dollar = one vote model of democracy.
You'd be surprised about the amounts unions donate.
I didn't really follow this Citizens United fiasco, but once i started checking stuff, turns out most western European countries glamorized on this site allow unlimited political donations from both individuals as well as corporations.
In the US it took some twisted court decision, declaring corporate personhood, to have the same results as a simple change to campaign financing laws.
If you have proof that the evil unions can outspend the richest people and corporations on earth, I'd be very very surprised.
Personally I think you're acting like a baboon in a zoo, picking his butt and tossing the chunks.
I posted the link before, but here it is again, together with some juicy chunks I selected especially for you:
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?order=A
Also, if anyone had cared to check, the charts Abby posted are from an article in the WaPo, and the complete title is "Super PACs dominate Republican primary spending" so the fact that republican/conservatives are heavy on the list is not surprising. why would a Democrat fund the republican primaries?
If the unions put their money into social issue campaigns instead of the Democrats (who generally abuse them), our society would look completely different.
But that would work, so Dems aren't interested.
So now corporate mega-millionaires are neatly described as "liberal"?
Where was this concern for 'unfairness' when Obama took a record amount of corporate money in '08?
Is the elephant in the picture shitting lies?
Was Hitler a devout hypocrite and fruit cake, Neanderthal?