It cracks me up that people believe that money is the only way to influence legislators.
How many congressmen have kids, siblings, spouses, mistresses who work for companies in their districts? How many Senators have golden parachutes into the private sector after leaving? How many politicians, advisors, etc have book deals, speaking tours, etc.. which happen to be announced right after (days) their retirement?
> It cracks me up that people believe that money is the only way to influence legislators.
Not only that, but there's an overemphasis on the idea that donations are an implicit quid pro quo exchange for policy.
Let's say we could somehow ban any kind of "exchange" -- not just donations, but these other soft influence deals where money doesn't change hands directly.
We'd still have a fundamental problem: people who have lots of money can hire other people to represent their interests to congress.
Conversely, how many citizens spend time trying to influence their congressional offices? Not just via vote, not just via the occasional phone call or letter, but by actually meeting with congressional staff.
I don't mean to suggest that at all -- I think there are a variety of things we could try to mitigate some of the problems associated with campaign finance.
What I'm trying to communicate is mostly that when it comes to "buying influence", the problem is a lot deeper than any access/influence purchased via donor-driven fundraising. It's actually inherent in any arrangement where money can be used to hire people to lobby on an employer's behalf. And it's particularly unbalanced when most people don't lobby on a volunteer basis.
How many congressmen have kids, siblings, spouses, mistresses who work for companies in their districts? How many Senators have golden parachutes into the private sector after leaving? How many politicians, advisors, etc have book deals, speaking tours, etc.. which happen to be announced right after (days) their retirement?
And that's not even including the fact that Congress' staffs and spouses are not covered by insider trading rules: http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/19/politics/stock-act-loophole