March 6, 2001
7:25 AM Subscribe
The donors complain in this article about how much they have to shell out. Are their complaints legitimate? Is this simply the cost of doing business? Is this the way campaigns should be funded?
posted by bshort at 8:08 AM on March 6, 2001
posted by vanderwal2 at 8:21 AM on March 6, 2001
posted by Postroad at 8:36 AM on March 6, 2001
posted by snakey at 12:59 PM on March 6, 2001
"a record $3 billion poured into federal campaigns during the last election. An estimated 55 percent went to Bush and GOP candidates for Congress -- and $696 million of that came from corporations and wealthy executives eager to underwrite the Republicans' hands-off approach to business. "
Another way to put this is:
-Republicans were hardly the beneficiaries of all this cash, garnering only 5% more money than the Dems.
-Instead of saying that 695$ came from "corporations and wealty executives" why not say that only 700$ million came from that group, and the rest from individual contributors?
And that's just 1 paragraph. This is hardly a fair account.
posted by Witold at 1:06 PM on March 6, 2001
Also, you can tell you're a republican, cause the first thing you do is try to counter-attack democrats. In no way is this article saying that democrats are doing the right thing. The GOP just won the election. I'm sorry, BOUGHT.
posted by Doug at 3:02 PM on March 6, 2001
Same fact, different spin. Which is Witold's point: the article seeps liberal bias merely by the facts it chooses to emphasize. MoJo reports the portion of Republican funding that came from corporations as $696 million, a large number that impresses with its sheer magnitude, while omitting the actual percentage of funding this number represents. (It turns out to be about 42%.) A publication could, as I just illustrated, do the reverse and put the emphasis on the individual contributors, if their goal was to minimize the appearance of corporate influence.
But then Mother Jones has never pretended to be anything but a liberal/progressive publication. Obviously corporate influence is one of the issues they focus on and just as obviously they will report facts in such a way as to support their position. Every publication does this. To their credit, they did not round up and report the amount as "nearly $700 million," which would have been a fair rhetorical tactic.
posted by kindall at 4:25 PM on March 6, 2001
posted by Doug at 6:22 PM on March 6, 2001
posted by Postroad at 6:57 PM on March 6, 2001
55 - 45 is 10 percent. I think the fact that Republicans received $300 million more than Democrats in a single election is worth pointing out, though I'll certainly concede that the Democrats are no slouches at whoring for money.
posted by rcade at 7:37 PM on March 6, 2001
posted by kindall at 9:36 PM on March 6, 2001
How do we get rid of this rampant legalized bribery, assuming that's possible or desirable?
posted by Potsy at 2:46 AM on March 7, 2001
Supporting McCain-Feingold is a good start.
posted by rcade at 7:01 AM on March 7, 2001
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TomPaine.com: "Women and Children Step Aside! Make Room for the Credit Card Lenders!"
Putting the squeeze on American Families
As for the WSJ question, is their site setup so that the same user can't be logged in more than once simultaneously? I would think so, but does anyone know for certain?
posted by carte at 7:50 AM on March 6, 2001