Who Is Buying America's Democracy?

Corporations and the obscenely wealthy, of course. But we need a list of exactly who buys, how much they pay, and who gets paid.

The Hightower Lowdown has the details.

Politicians are the sellers, but who--specifically--is buying America's democracy? We will devote this and one other issue of the Lowdown to answering this crucial question.

This month, drawing on donor reports that individuals and corporations must file with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), we're identifying many of the largest givers to last year's Republican victors in the House and Senate. With officials in Washington now pushing hard to strengthen the grip that big bankers and corporations have over consumers, workers, the environment, and others, the public has a right to follow the money, including--where possible--tracing the funds to recognizable brand names and logos.

In our second issue, we'll do the best we can to lift the veil on the massive amounts of secret cash that was funneled into the 2010 elections through corporate front groups. This "mystery money" is the diabolical product of the Supreme Court's edict last year that corporations are "persons" with a First Amendment right to spend unlimited and unreported sums of their shareholders' funds to pervert America's elections.

Both issues of the Logo Lowdown are largely based on the exhaustive, nationally recognized research of two excellent public interest groups: www.opensecrets.org and www.sunlightfoundation.com. In this month's report, we break the donors into industry groups, listing corporate interests that gave $100,000 or more, with at least 60 percent of their money going to support Republican candidates. We also list the top Democratic donors.

Read the whole thing.

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