It's about the flow of national riches (?and international?) into individual states, guaranteeing bought 'n' paid-for elections. Start with the "A's": Alabama.
Alabama joined the rapidly growing fraternity of states where government is controlled by a single political party, now the largest it has been in more than half a century.
Alabama’s transformation was the product, in part, of a sophisticated political apparatus designed to channel political money from around the country into states where conditions were ripe for Republican takeover. In 2010, the effort achieved striking success, moving a dozen states to sole Republican control, including presidential swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. ...NYT
The money came from out-of-state individual money-bags from Texas and beyond, and, Nicholas Confessore reports in the Times, from Altria, Facebook, Google, and Exxon Mobile. The trend continued in 2012, only this time it was Democrats trying to catch up. In the case of the Dems, the money came from rich individuals and labor unions.
Let's take a moment here to let the penny drop: when Republicans boast of popular support for conservativism and when Democrats do the same boasting from the opposite side, they're deluding themselves and us.
In some states, the shifts are largely organic, the product of Latino immigration, economic transformation and other demographic forces. But elsewhere, the strategic deployment of campaign cash has helped consultants and donors accelerate or arrest states’ natural drift toward one party or the other, defying national election trends or voter registration advantages. ...NYT
A system has been developed by both parties to avoid regulation on how the money reaches them and on how they use it. And the money always seems to get channeled through organizations inside the nation's capitol -- through Corruption Central.
From 2006 to 2010, the volume of campaign cash flowing from Beltway-based groups to state parties and candidates almost doubled, to $139 million from $79 million, according to an analysis by The New York Times of data collected by the National Institute on Money in State Politics.
That figure is widely expected to grow in this year’s midterm elections: Strategists say donors are persuaded that dollars spent in relatively low-budget state elections can go further in advancing their agenda than money burned in the ceaseless trench warfare of Washington. ...NYT
Okay. We've tried the Supreme Court's legalization of buying elections, of enslaved government. Is a return to democracy possible?
