Thursday, June 21, 2012

At Last...

Remember my mention of an article in Harper's on campaign finance?  It's now online, at least for now.

A taste:
Here we begin to see the real consequence of all this getting and spending. It’s not that campaign money has direct power over the public mind—that one advertising dollar can be counted upon to yield one vote. Nor is it true that the public is invulnerable, that we judiciously weigh these messages and see through the lies. The problem is that by putting such a price tag on the White House, we have imported market logic directly into our politics. Yes, even the village socialist will still get to vote, not to mention the village idiot. But in order to be a candidate—to be the kind of person who can make those calls to billionaires and get them to “double down”—Americans will have to undergo a far more rigorous process of ideological winnowing and executive training. And anyone who isn’t an absolute zealot about maximizing shareholder value will fail to make the cut.
We may be in trouble...

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