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+--- Thread: Why public oversight and regulation are required (/showthread.php?tid=132180)
Why public oversight and regulation are required - Chakravartin - 02-18-2012
Not just because the president can get away with sh!t like this, but because everyone in the biz does it and gets away with it.
Editorial:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb/17/obama-super-pac-america-dollar-democracy?newsfeed=true
When Obama's re-election campaign announced that it would begin to play nice with Super Pacs – independent groups that can raise unlimited cash in support of a political candidate – many of Obama's progressive supporters cried foul. Agreeing to send senior level administration and campaign officials to fundraising events for the pro-Obama Super Pac, Priorities USA, it seemed, was yet more evidence of Obama's willingness to sacrifice principle for pragmatic gain. And not just any principle – arguably, the principle that undergirded Obama's candidacy in 2008 and his first term as president: a determination to clean up Washington.
I'm as appalled as anyone by the degree to which money rules the American electoral process, but I was neither surprised nor disappointed by Obama's move.
My first reaction was that politics is war and the move was a tactical necessity – that, in the words of Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, refusing to cooperate with Super Pacs would have been "unilateral disarmament"...
Thanks for nothing, SCOTUS.
Re: Why public oversight and regulation are required - BCam - 02-18-2012
It's like General Electric paying no Federal taxes. They are not BREAKING the law. They use buildings full of lawyers and accountants who use every loophole available in our tax code for their employer's benefit.
I don't like it, but, right now, it's legal.
Thanks, Congress.