Dark Money and the Demise of Democracy

Everyone in this country should see the film Dark Money and be outraged if they are not already! This documentary depicts the sinister clandestine corporate takeover of our government through the use of illegal as well as increasingly legal unlimited campaign contributions by giant corporations and other wealthy special interests, legally funneled through and concealed by a web of tax exempt political action committees with patriotic sounding names, in this case focused on the state government of Montana, but happening nationwide. The documentary includes one case of successfully prosecuted state campaign finance law violation by an influential Montana state legislator, only made possible through a freak set of occurrences which brought to light reams of documents from one of these PACs, as well as corroboration from a whistleblower working for the PAC (the crime stemming from undisclosed coordination between the PAC and the candidate). These entities provide extensive campaign support and assistance to politicians who they have “vetted”, i.e. determined to be willing to be bought and vote as instructed to support the interests of the corporate funders. The opposing candidates who are “normally” funded usually cannot adequately counter the overwhelming and frequently false and inflammatory campaign ads provided by the PACs. Once a sufficient number of legislators and other politicians including governors have been bought in this way, the results are sadly predictable. Alarmingly, this pernicious process is also being aimed at elected judges in an effort to buy and control the courts, particularly at the appellate level. Multiple books have also been written on this topic. These activities have in many cases been made possible and facilitated by the SCOTUS Citizens United decision, which was also used to strike down many state campaign finance laws limiting corporate campaign contributions, although some have been re-instituted or remain in place. Since existing laws do not mandate the public identification of contributors to PACs, including foreign governments or other entities, which are likely also involved, the voting public has no way to judge the interests and motivations of these candidate backers. Although corruption in politics is as old as government itself, and no party has a monopoly on corruption, it is clear that it has been mostly the conservatives and Republicans who have been openly championing and making possible the corporate funding/buying of elections and consequent corporate takeover of our democracy, including the five conservative Supreme Court justices who passed the Citizens United decision. The film also documents the complete impotence of the Federal Elections Commission due to its Republican members who always vote together to block any enforcement of corporate election law violations.  Unfortunately, most of this insidious process remains completely hidden from the public, the majority of which is opposed to such blatant corporate political corruption, but is powerless to prevent it. This may well be the leading factor in the progressive demise of what is left of democracy, both in this country and around the world.

On a totally unrelated matter, I heard the interesting speculation that the reason that Don Jr., some other senior campaign officials and possibly Trump himself have not been subpoenaed for interview by Mueller's team is that they are now targets rather than merely subjects of the investigation, in which case a subpoena during investigation is considered inappropriate! That may explain why Mueller‘s team is still willing to negotiate over voluntary testimony by Trump, which still seems very unlikely, rather than just issuing a subpoena. Of course they may also be trying to buy more time while continuing their investigation and may want to avoid what would be like pouring gasoline on the smoldering ash heap which is Donald Trump and might trigger the firing of Rosenstein and Mueller.