Campaign Finance

This donation to the Republican Governors Association is notable for its size, but big media companies make political contributions all the time. As POLITICO and others have reported, GE (the parent of NBC and MSNBC), Disney (the parent of ABC), and CBS have all given through their political action committees in recent cycles. One can argue that GE and Disney have given to influence specific policies affecting other parts of their business, or that News Corp.

It's not a case of tilting rightward so much as it is a sign of Google growing up. This is a corporation with a wide range of interests to represent in Washington, and that requires good relations with both sides of the aisle.

The following excerpt is from the virtual book Republic to Principate: The Decline and Fall of Representative Democracy in America, published in the year 2052 A.D.

...Advocates of public campaign financing were worried the money would not be there for candidates in future years.

“You are setting a precedent of making this a slush fund to fund your favorite projects,” said Steven Hill, director of Political Reform at the nonprofit New America Foundation... LINK

In 2000, San Francisco voters approved a system of public financing of campaigns for the Board of Supervisors, which in 2006 was expanded to the mayoral race. By eliminating the need for candidates to raise large amounts of private money, the program has been extremely successful at helping sever the link between big money and political decisions. But now this flagship program is threatened: Mayor Gavin Newsom is proposing to raid several million dollars from the public campaign fund.

In late March, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig came to DC to draw back the curtain on the second act of his career. Lessig, with his placid mien and quiet voice, does not exude the aura of a star, but over the past decade he's become one of the most influential public intellectuals of the Internet age. Along with a small group of activists, legal academics and computer geeks, Lessig has built from scratch a global grassroots movement to reform copyright and intellectual property law. Videos of his lectures are passed along like samizdat by bloggers.

In Thousand Oaks, the owner of a local chain of home improvement stores called Do It Centers is locked in fierce, expensive competition with Home Depot. But the contest has nothing to do with which can offer the lowest prices and the friendliest service, or which will sell you the better chain saw.

No, even though this war is all about business, it's being fought on a political battlefield, and will come to a head on June 3, when the residents of Thousand Oaks vote on a municipal ballot initiative known as Measure B.

Ever since "authenticity" became the quality we most value in our politicians, its converse, "hypocrisy," has been the political vice of which we are most conscious. Thus, those who have noticed that Sen. John McCain enjoys a reputation as a "maverick" who "stands up to special interests" while leading a campaign that is operated and funded entirely by lobbyists have seen this as a contradiction. Is McCain a hypocrite, or perhaps a divided soul, with the angelic maverick voice of reform perched on one shoulder and a diabolical little influence-peddler on the other?

Which detergent do you use?  Procter & Gamble spent $3.3 billion on media in 2006 to get customers to buy its products. Which beer will you opt for at the end of a long day's work? Beer marketers spent $1.2 billion during that same year to influence your choice. Who will you pick to be your next president? That's another costly decision: The two major parties are expected to blow a combined $1 billion during this election cycle in their quest to land the $400,000-a-year gig.