I'm going to crib from my own post from two days ago:
Donations don't literally buy votes, but what they do literally buy is face time. That is, people in Congress will hold fundraisers, and lobbyists pay to attend those fundraisers. The understanding is that the lobbyists who attend those fundraisers will have time to talk to the politician about the issues their clients care about.
Edit: I remove the SOPA specific stuff, and didn't realize that in doing so, I removed the punchline. The implication of the above is that politicians' agenda becomes set by those who have the money to pay lobbyists. When you spend a lot of time talking to a bunch of people with an agenda, you will start to think about that agenda a lot. It's a natural consequence of the circumstances and the incentives.
I've harped on this point several times in the last few days. My reason is simple: we must understand the real problem before we can fix it. And the real problem is not "Vote for x and I'll give you money." That is illegal. What I described above is legal, and while it is not illegal corruption, it is a corruption of how we want the system to work.
And I stole that last sentiment from Lawrence Lessig: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik1AK56FtVc Someone else here linked to that a few days ago, and it's worth watching.
I don't understand your point--wouldn't public financing of elections remove the need to hold fundraisers?
The problem as I see it is that representatives are forced (due to the exorbitant cost of campaigning) to win over wealthy interests. This manifests itself as what we've seen with the whole SOPA debacle: representatives who are completely out of touch with their constituents.
My point is that the site itself, and many people here, present a caricature of the problem. If you talk too much abou the caricature, someone may say "Oh, yes, I see, so let's do a better job of investigating and prosecuting people who buy and sell votes." The real problem is more sublte, and it is inherent in how the system works.
How would public financing solve anything? If we gave each candidate a billion dollars it seems like there would still be an incentive to raise even more money from rich corporations.
Thanks for an incorrect non-answer. The definition of public financing does not by itself preclude corporate financing.
Even if you adopted additional restrictions on corporate financing I'm pretty sure there would be all kinds of ways to shadow-fund a candidate. This creates a situation where honest candidates are unfairly penalized against candidates that still play the money game.
I guess I meant the de facto definition. Literally every attempt at a public financing bill/amendment I've seen in Congress has the express purpose of precluding direct corporate financing[1].
Also, I was not arguing whether or not any of these proposals can be 100% effective (like you clearly deny). This is a straw man, but it is definitely worth debate on a case-by-case basis.
Donations don't literally buy votes, but what they do literally buy is face time. That is, people in Congress will hold fundraisers, and lobbyists pay to attend those fundraisers. The understanding is that the lobbyists who attend those fundraisers will have time to talk to the politician about the issues their clients care about.
This episode of Planet Money clearly demonstrates this: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/11/01/141913370/the-tues...
Edit: I remove the SOPA specific stuff, and didn't realize that in doing so, I removed the punchline. The implication of the above is that politicians' agenda becomes set by those who have the money to pay lobbyists. When you spend a lot of time talking to a bunch of people with an agenda, you will start to think about that agenda a lot. It's a natural consequence of the circumstances and the incentives.
I've harped on this point several times in the last few days. My reason is simple: we must understand the real problem before we can fix it. And the real problem is not "Vote for x and I'll give you money." That is illegal. What I described above is legal, and while it is not illegal corruption, it is a corruption of how we want the system to work.
And I stole that last sentiment from Lawrence Lessig: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik1AK56FtVc Someone else here linked to that a few days ago, and it's worth watching.