“Money and Politics”, or “How transparently corrupt do things have to get before anyone really cares?”
It’s been a long time since Matt Hoosier and I were “on the air” doing political talk radio, and I’ve slowly grown much more apathetic since that time. Particularly, it amazes me just how obviously bad things can be while the majority of people don’t care.
This article by Wired is disheartening, but with a bit of a silver lining. The article highlights a press release by the awesome MAPLight.org group where a stunningly clear connection is shown:
Maplight.org analyzed the contributions to both sets of the Democrats and found that those who switched their votes received, on average, 40 percent more money in campaign contributions over the last three years from Sprint, Verizon and AT&T’s political action committees.
It begs the question, “How transparently corrupt does our government have to get before anyone really cares?” Perhaps people like to joke about corruption and greed in politics, but somehow are in denial that it’s true? It’s hard to guess what the rationale is for maintaining the status quo when the status quo is so broken.
Of course, it’s unlikely–understatement–that it’s only the telco PACs that are padding the votes in this manner. It seems likely that there’s a huge correlation between “donations” and voting records. What seems to be the silver lining on the dark cloud is this MAPLight organization; who subtitle themselves “Money and Politics: Illuminating the Connection”.
It would probably be best if you just visited MAPLight.org yourself, but I think that this referral mentioned on their site is the thesis for my appreciation:
“What used to take hours to dig up and analyze is now laid bare for you to see in seconds or minutes.”
— California Progress Report
Maybe people really do manage to keep their head in the sand when it comes to corruption and politics, but in this “new information age”–with projects like MAPLight–I like to think that ignorance will no longer be an option.