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[MetalSlimeHunt]

It makes me wonder if Citizens United won't end up eventually backfiring on politicians. Money isn't unlimited, and if they ratchet the stakes up enough they may well crash their own fortunes trying to win elections.

[mainiac]

Drop in the bucket man, drop in the bucket.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

These campaign funds are getting into the multimillions. Politicians have money, but they don't have obscene amounts of money.

Hell, Ron Paul quit the election because he ran out of money.

[Osmosis Jones]

Yes; which means money becomes a limiting factor. As a result, barring Gingrich-esque backers, the last man left standing will be the richest. The richest are those like Romney; big business types, with both their own billions, and a large number of business buddies. Meanwhile, the moralists, those like Perry, will quickly drop out, as their particular brand crazy isn't as profitable.


...


So, business as usual, pretty much.

[penguinofhonor]

Where is the money going though? I feel like enough of it just gets passed around between politicians and companies that it'll just go around in a circle funding elections for quite a while.

[Sheb]

Well, it's going to advertisers, TV companies, robocall seller...

By the way, is that thing about the robocall real? They had something similar in Canada (Robocall pretending to be the other party's and saying inanae shit if I'm right) and it was a pretty big deal.

[RedKing]

These campaign funds are getting into the multimillions. Politicians have money, but they don't have obscene amounts of money.

Hell, Ron Paul quit the election because he ran out of money.

To be fair, that's been a standard Ron Paul result since *before* Citizens United.

But yeah, I'm increasingly convinced that democracy as we know it is well and truly fucked in this country. Maybe it's just the way that the North Carolina legislature seems to be steering directly for the sun that's fueling my despair, but I just feel more and more that there's no good options out there in American politics. It's choosing between the bad option (and watching everything implode quickly) or the less bad option (and having everything fall apart gradually instead). *shrug* Luckily, I'm liable to be dead before you guys will. Just hope my kids find somewhere decent to land.

[PTTG??]

Correct, we are not.

Meanwhile in Wisconsin, Scott Walker will be remaining in office, by a margin of... about ten percent?  Only took seven times as much money as his opposition, more than two-thirds of it from outside Wisconsin.  This will be a very interesting precedent.

I'm really disgusted with Wisconsin. In California, we kicked out our Governor and he hadn't even done anything wrong!

PS: If you think the primaries were bad, just wait until the actual elections. Also, I'd like to remind everyone that despite what you may have heard, Obama is going to win this election handily. His only opposition is the weakest republican candidate. Obama personally punched Osama's heart out while screaming the national anthem.

Remember, now is a good time to send a message to the Democrats by voting for independents and third parties. Tell the Dems and the Repubs that their policies are bad and they should feel bad.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

To be fair, that's been a standard Ron Paul result since *before* Citizens United.

But yeah, I'm increasingly convinced that democracy as we know it is well and truly fucked in this country. Maybe it's just the way that the North Carolina legislature seems to be steering directly for the sun that's fueling my despair, but I just feel more and more that there's no good options out there in American politics. It's choosing between the bad option (and watching everything implode quickly) or the less bad option (and having everything fall apart gradually instead). *shrug* Luckily, I'm liable to be dead before you guys will. Just hope my kids find somewhere decent to land.

You speak the truth, though. I really wish Citizen's United never happened. That's about #14 on my list of fixes to implement during time-travel.

[PTTG??]

History books will show this as possibly the worst supreme court of all time. Perhaps I'm forgetting the supreme court that ordered that they all get sold gold robes or the one that went on a murder-suicide spree in LA, but besides those two, this one has caused the most chaos and been the most obviously corrupt of all time.

[Sheb]

I must say, I'm really glad I'm not an American. Well, we still got to live with a world-spanning bully that decided he could fuck the environment or kill anyone in a 15-m radius around someone that may or may not be an islamist terrorist, anywhere in the world. But at least we only suffer from your foreign policies, while you have to deal with the rest.

[nenjin]

You also have to suffer all our commercial products too. Enjoy your Type-II Diabetes imports, trashy pop music icons and the eternal summer blockbuster!

[Sheb]

Well, it's easier to boycott crappy music than an Hellfire missile :p.

[mainiac]

These campaign funds are getting into the multimillions. Politicians have money, but they don't have obscene amounts of money.

Hell, Ron Paul quit the election because he ran out of money.

Gingrich spent 40 million on the campaign.  His main backer was a man with $21.5 billion.  So all of Gingrich's spending represents less then %.2 of his patron's wealth.  A 10 liter bucket would have about 15,000 drops worth of water in it so a drop represents about %.006.  So it's ~40 drops in a bucket.

Given an not unreasonably expectation of a %3 growth in the value of said patron's portfolio he could afford to drop a billion dollars into elections every couple of years and still have growing wealth.  And given the sort of favorable treatment that a billion dollars in election spending buys he could do quite well for himself.  It's not like the democrats are going to go after government contracts that favor him.

[kaijyuu]

Rich folk who stay rich are going to be savvy with money, so yeah, not likely any of those wells are going to run dry.