One of the biggest problems with a super pac is that it allows millions upon millions of dollars to be funnelled into the political process, which is bad enough on it's own, without a requirement of identifying where that money comes from. This means a candidate can have "supporters" that have a HUGE amount of financial influence on the candidate and the American public will have no idea what type of people are influencing a candidates position.
It doesn't matter if you are pro-life or pro-choice, anti-gay or a LGBT supporter, pro-big business or pro-middle America, a corporation or a real life flesh and blood person. If a candidate has supporters donating millions upon millions of dollars to a candidate or a super pac supporting that candidate then you have a right to know about that support because you would have to have a hole in the head the size of a base ball to think that those people don't have a unbelievably large amount of influence over the candidate's political stance. If you are against gay marriage I'm sure you'd want to know if your "family values candidate" received large amounts of money from prominent gay activists. If you say to yourself "No, I don't need to know about that because it won't influence my candidates position!" then please immediately proceed to a mirror and check your forehead for that hole right now.
Obama has led the way. Picking what I would call the lesser of 2 evils which is accepting fund from super pac but requiring them to reveal their major donors. In effect the super pac becomes less of a super pac and more of a normal political fund raising tool. Obama gets funding to compete with the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent by the top 1% for the GOP candidates and still the American people get to see what type of "company" the candidate, running for the top political position of the USA, keeps.
It amazes me that right wing media like Fox News will use Obama accepting super pac donations as a negative position but have no problem with all of the GOP candidates using funds from super pacs. It is just one more, in a long line of, tools that apparently the GOP candidates are allowed to use freely but if Obama uses them then it is some how Un-American.
I'm always torn because I want both parties to put forth a candidate that, at the end of the day, I could accept as president. This time I'm really torn because, while I like some of the things that done under Mitt Romney's term as governor of MA, his stance on corporations and capital gains disgusts me along with his seeming disconnect from the average American. He seems to be a stereo typical politician that will say anything, no matter how stupid, and isn't afraid to repeat said stupid comments. How he can pander to the people of Michigan about how he loves American cars while he still defends his "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" stance is beyond me.
What is even more disturbing to me is how one of Mitt's major supporters is so actively, and successfully, killing people freedom of speech via use of a almost bottomless pit of money used to threaten people with legal action over legitimate free speech issues.
It disturbs me that many American's, and honestly many people's around the world, don't really know what "Freedom of Speech" actually means. It doesn't mean that I can say something about my neighbour like "Joe bloggs likes to perform sexual acts with goats!" when there is no evidence to that fact. But if you are a public figure the bar is a bit lower. Not to say I can say things like "Richard Gere likes to use gerbils for personal pleasure". But if a person makes a public stance against the LGBT community by putting up billboards all over the state it is not defamation to point out that that person is against LGBT rights.
Read a short article here on Frank VanderSloot or a very good long article here and see how he repeatedly uses very questionable tactics to suppress other peoples 1st Amendment rights and understand that Mitt Romney is VERY close to this man. I'm not part of the "liberal media". I'll let someone be a bigot if they are one but if you put yourself out there and become a public figure then try to suppress my 1st amendment rights to point out to the world your bigoted views that you've already made known in the public domain then you can take your billions of dollars and see if it gives you pleasure to use in a way that some people say Richard Gere uses gerbils.
Contact your politicians and let them know you support the Disclose Act and over turn the "Citizens United" which should have been named "Corporations United". Corporations might be considered people but they don't have the rights of a full Citizen yet....tho I'd argue they have stronger rights then real people like you and me.
Not that this was all I got from this blog ... but the Richard Gere thing was hilarious! haha
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