[smallnamespace]

The sad truth is that most politicians aren't going to win elections without corporate money.

Think about it this way: the attention of voters is limited and expensive. Therefore communicating with them is a costly commodity. Right now it is controlled by media organizations, and the only way for politicians to pay that cost is (1) out of their own pockets (if they're independently wealthy), (2) out of corporate pockets, or (3) out of the pockets of excited and motivated party partisans.

Most people don't like (1) for obvious reasons -- it's easy to bash the rich as being elitist and out of touch. (3) has a chicken-and-egg problem of how a politician can reach people if they don't have any money initially to bootstrap the process. It also leads to politicians saying really controversial and divisive things to get the base excited -- the base's interests don't always align with the general electorate's.

So either we actually enact strong campaign finance reform (good luck getting that past the Supreme Court), we stop electing politicians that took corporate money, or we have robust public funding for elections so politicians don't need corporate money.

[danpalmer]

That is, in the current system. In the UK there are strict limits on campaign spending that get investigated and enforced, and the limits are low enough that individual contributions are important and corporate donations can only go so far.

[laythea]

Erm abuse of this happened recently with no consequences. Please don't speak like the UK is any better. People are all the same.

See https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/mar/16/conservativ...

[emn13]

Just look at the amounts involved however - the UK is orders of magnitude better.

Ignoring differences of degree like that is a sure way to end up in a terrible situation: "it's bad anyhow, who cares if it gets worse?"

[tolien]

To be fair the UK is an order of magnitude smaller and election spending hasn’t reached the stratospheric levels of the USA.

There’s also the example of a number of the pro-Leave campaigns in the EU referendum receiving donations from unknown donors, then all spending it with the same strategic communications company behind Ted Cruz’s primary and Trump’s presidential campaigns [1]. In this cases, the sums involved were of the order of millions of pounds — a bit more significant.

1: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great...

[danpalmer]

> and election spending hasn’t reached the stratospheric levels of the USA.

This is because election spending in the UK is limited by the Electoral Commission. Also the spending must be published.

[tolien]

Assuming the parties correctly report the spending, or anyone bothers to investigate. I think that is the weak point - if it wasn't for a fairly dogged campaign by Channel 4 the problem with the Tories overspending to promote particular candidates might never have come to light.

For the record, the magic number is £30k per seat contested on "campaign spending" (to promote the national party), and another about £10-16k of "candidate spending" (to promote a particular candidate) depending on the size of the constituency.

https://fullfact.org/law/election-spending-rules-conservativ...

[emn13]

That's not really fair at all; given that accounting for size differences really barely nudges the needle - and grey money is likely a factor in US elections too. I can't find a single very trusted source for US spending, but various links (e.g. https://www.statista.com/statistics/216793/fundraising-and-s...) suggest it's been in the billions for quite some time now.

(Not that I'm suggesting the UK is perfect; simply that there is a nevertheless a huge difference)

[willvarfar]

Well, objectively the UK does seem better.

[danpalmer]

The headline of that article is that the Conservatives have been fined for it. They were investigated, they were punished.

Whether the punishment is enough or not I don't know, maybe, maybe not, but we are better than the US on this, the US does not have any requirements/legislation about it, let alone levy fines on parties for going over them.

[ransom1538]

"The sad truth is that most politicians aren't going to win elections without corporate money."

True. But is anyone else surprised how cheap a congressman is? 30k and you can have private phone calls, dinners, etc. You don't need a large international corporation to shell out 30k - hell, some of the congressmen are cheaper than 5k.

[ek750]

This reminds me of this npr story, https://www.npr.org/2017/03/29/521954033/stanford-professor-..., where the tax law professor found it more effective to buy access to the congess-people.

[mtgx]

There have been quite a few elections recently where politicians won with people's support and money. And they often won because they rejected corporate money. See Ro Khanna, who I think has a real shot of becoming the U.S. president in the next 8-12 years.

If Alison Hartson can also win against the military industry complex and intelligence community-backed Dianne Feinstein in the upcoming Senate election in California, I think it will show a real reversal from politicians winning with corporate money alone and a trend that people and sick and tired of this type of politicians.

But if you really want to solve this corporate money problem, you can. Just ban all corporate donations and limit individual donations to less than $500 per politician per year. Donations above $1,000 still seem to incentivize politicians to hold "fundraisers" with rich people and cocktail parties, instead of actually appealing to the masses.

The "money vote" needs to be "equal and universal" just like the actual vote. Right now it's way skewed in favor of rich people and companies.

The FBI would also need to launch automatic investigations against any politicians that are found to have >$10,000 donated (in total) to her or him that isn't coming from such <$500 individual donations. For instance, the fact that the latest Supreme Court Justice was backed by $25 million "dark money" is a spit in the face of democracy. He should have been investigated immediately over that by the FBI/an anti-corruption agency.

You can't excuse this type of behavior with "well, they need the money to win!" anymore. It's destroying whatever is left of US' democracy, and it's regular people that will have to suffer the consequences for that. Winning isn't important anymore when the winners are also the "baddies."

[Lazare]

> For instance, the fact that the latest Supreme Court Justice was backed by $25 million "dark money" is a spit in the face of democracy.

Okay, let's break this down a bit. What you're saying is:

1. A private individual (or collection of private individuals; we don't know) spent $25m promoting their views about an important political issue of the day.

2. This is bad.

That's an interesting argument, but do keep in mind that you're describing is about as pure exercise of the first amendment as you're likely to find. The founders would recognise a wealthy, powerful individual using the best communication technology available to spread their views, possibly anonymously, because that's precisely what they did, and precisely what they aimed to protect. Even if you think it's a good idea not to let people have an unrestricted voice to speak about political topics (and I'm unconvinced, to say the least), that's super not going to happen in the US of all places.

> He should have been investigated immediately over that by the FBI/an anti-corruption agency.

Investigated for what? Unless you're imagining some sort of blatant, explicit quid pro quo, any law you're hoping to find a violation of would itself be ridiculously unconstitutional.

Campaign finance reform is a great idea, but you need to keep in mind that in the US you can restrict money donated to campaigns, but you can't restrict money spent speaking about political issues. (Which I think is probably for the best, given how many people would like to silence Greenpeace, the ACLU, pro-choice groups, the New York Times, etc., etc. Especially these days...)

[pmoriarty]

"The founders would recognise a wealthy, powerful individual using the best communication technology available to spread their views, possibly anonymously, because that's precisely what they did, and precisely what they aimed to protect."

They also used the best weapons available at the time and aimed to protect their ownership by individuals. That doesn't mean they either foresaw the development of nuclear weapons or would approve their ownership by individuals.

[petre]

There should be no career politicians. Terms should be limited to 8 or 10 years just like the presidents'.

[imron]

Donald Trump campaigned on this very issue, but it didn't nearly as much press coverage as some of his other policies.