Chuck Darwin on Nostr: Unregulated money continues to corrode US politics -- Reforms are needed Watergate ...

Unregulated money continues to corrode US politics -- Reforms are needed

Watergate was not just about abuse of presidential power. It was also a major campaign finance scandal.

By the time Nixon resigned, Americans were outraged to learn that the Watergate break-in and cover-up and other “dirty tricks” had been 🔸financed from a secret slush fund made up of donations from corporations and wealthy individuals. 🔸

In response, Congress passed historic reforms designed to increase #transparency and curb the influence of #BigMoney in politics.

This was a watershed moment that helped reshape the ethos of government in America.

Today, however, ♦️our elections are once again dominated by big money and secret spending. ♦️
The post-Watergate reforms are in dire need of repair.

Thanks to a combination of factors, campaign finance in 2024 looks much like it did before Watergate.

Ultra-wealthy donors can pour unlimited amounts of money into key races using lightly regulated #SuperPacs that are supposed to be independent from candidates
but can actually work hand-in-glove with them.
In the 2022 midterms, the top 100 federal #individual #donors together spent more than $1.2bn, mostly through Super Pacs,
swamping contributions from the millions of Americans who gave $200 or less.

Billionaires are also set to pour vast amounts of money into the 2024 presidential race,
including a small group of tech oligarchs with anti-democratic views and vastamounts of business with the government.

More and more spending is also done in secret in the form of “#dark #money” from non-profit organizations and shell companies that don’t disclose their donors
– often a favored vehicle for controversial industries like the #cryptocurrency sector,
which is working feverishly to secure favorable regulatory treatment.

All of this spending has helped drive a broad collapse of #trust in democratic institutions.
Recent polling shows that 80% of Americans think major political donors have too much influence over our politics.
Nearly two-thirds – including majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents – say Congress should do more to limit big money’s sway.

This mirrors the mood after Watergate, when the public’s faith in government plummetedand Congress listened.
Lawmakers passed tougher disclosure requirements, tighter limits on campaign contributions and spending, and created a presidential public financing system.
These changes shaped national politics for decades.
Running for re-election in 1984 under the post-Watergate system, Ronald Reagan won in a landslide without holding a single fundraiser.

This system was never perfect, but it held together relatively well,
especially after Congress passed a bipartisan overhaul in 2002 that closed several major loopholes.

But then it started to unravel.
In a series of highly ideological 5-4 decisions
– most notably, Citizens United v FEC
– the #supreme #court swept away key limits on big money,
launching the era of Super Pacs and opening the door for dark money in our campaigns.

Lawmakers have done nothing to respond to these rulings,
repeatedly failing to update the law to limit the damage from the court’s decisions
or respond to new developments in campaign fundraising, like using email, the web and other technologies for appeals and advertising.

And the agency charged with enforcing campaign finance law, the #Federal #Election #Commission, has proved even more feckless.
Evenly divided and often deadlocked, the #FEC often ⭐️fails to enforce even laws still on the books, ⭐️like restrictions on candidate “coordination” with notionally independent Super Pacs.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/09/unregulated-money-us-politics-reforms-needed?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other