Midway through this summer, a high-quality poll found that Democrats in California were overwhelmingly in favor of the upcoming ballot measure for a one-time 5% tax on billionaire wealth.
The ratio was more than 4 to 1. But the state’s most powerful Democrats – including the governor Gavin Newsom, his near-certain successor Xavier Becerra and the Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass – have lined up with Silicon Valley billionaires who’ve raised upward of $340m to defeat the initiative.
It absolutely does make a difference. The good way to have term limits is to not vote for someone when they get captured by lobbyists.
Congress gets bought for cheap. Making the house bigger so each rep covers fewer people is probably good but I doubt it makes bribery unaffordable.
Yeah, at this point we’re dealing with guys like Musk single-handedly pouring half a billion into elections, I don’t think it’s an affordability problem. And historically, smaller seats tend to be easier to bribe for, not harder. Look at any local government, especially in less populous areas, they’re some of the most corrupt politicians.
More directly, corporate dollars just don’t have any place in our politics, for any size election.
That sentiment is a good way to perpetuate the corrupt status-quo, because it is unrealistic to expect most people to be paying attention until after the primary, when the captured incumbent is already the candidate.
hence why we also need to tax the rich. They never should have gotten that rich to begin with.