by W Thomas Payne

Created on: September 29, 2007   Last Updated: March 19, 2008

Politics in the United States grows ever-more disconnected from the people as the level of political contributions continues to rise.

Politicians, the media, and pundits alike are constantly reminding us of the amount of money that has been raised by political campaigns as an indicator of the success of those campaigns. The reality is that those heady amounts of cash are more an indicator of which wealthy individuals and international corporations have a politician in their pocket.

All it takes to see that limiting campaign contributions is to the greater good of the average citizen is to take a look at the campaign finance reports for the past four decades, then compare them to the overall economic status of the average citizen.

The disenfranchisement of the middle class, and the growing impotence for the 90% who are not wealthy having any impact on the laws affecting there lives began in 1963, when the Supreme Court ruled that corporations have the same right as a real person to contribute to political campaigns. The legal premise is that a corporation is a legal person, and grants these entities the same rights as natural born humans, including the same First Amendment privileges as an individual. Since then, the amount of cash it takes to get elected to a federal-level post has skyrocketed, and the squeeze on the middle class gotten stronger.

Is there any wonder that only 51% of the eligible voters even bother to vote, when their ability to actually influence the person elected to represent' them is negligible?

Campaign fundraising has no relationship to voter support. It only indicates how far a candidate has sold out to the rich and already-powerful.

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