Money & Politics

I’ve been struggling to get out from under. And not writing my usual weekly Blog.

This week Blog is me quoting the following:

Wendell Potter & Nick Penniman, Nation on the Take: How Big Money Corrupts Our Democracy and What We Can Do About It, Bloomsbury Press, 2016.

“You might conclude, at this point in the book [Wendell Potter & Nick Penniman, Nation on the Take: How Big Money Corrupts Our Democracy and What We Can Do About It, p 191], that there’s nothing to be done to solve the crisis of money in politics, and that a truly representative republic—a government of, by, and for the people—has become an impossible dream.
You would be wrong.
In fact, the good-government community has spent decades thinking through solutions and creating working models of those solutions at the state and local levels.. . . Compared to, say, overhauling the ways we produce, distribute, and consume energy in America—which involves hundreds of millions of consumers, thousands of corporations, decades of technological development, trillions of tons of equipment, and a mind-boggling amount of natural resources—campaign finance and ethics laws are remarkably simple to turn into new realities. (And, of course, overhauling our energy infrastructure would be easier if we first reduced the control the energy companies have over politics and policy making.)
Winning back American democracy is not a logistical or technical challenge, it’s a matter of political will. That is, our will to make our elected representatives, whose salaries we pay, make it happen, pp 191-2″ (Underlining mine.)

Wendell Potter & Nick Penniman, Nation on the Take: How Big Money Corrupts Our Democracy and What We Can Do About It, Bloomsbury Press, 2016.

[last two chapters (It’s Fixable, The Makings of an All-American Movement) are worth reading for inspiration and for practical ideas.]

           Thank You for reading, JoAnnLordahl.com    

[My apologies: Reading, Writing currently consumes most of my dwindling energy.]