Check on your neighbors donations.

[xoxoxoBruce]

There is a website where you can type in your address and it will tell you what political contributions your neighbors made. It's not surprising the lawyer gave $2000 to Bush or the Jewish family gave $1500 to Lieberman. But the redneck with the NRA and confederate flag stickers on his pick-um-up truck, gave $150 to Sharpton. Whoda thunk it.

[Happy Monkey]

Well, a ton of prominent republicans are giving money to Nader, hoping he'll spoil Kerry's campaign.

Wow! Interesting site, almost spooky in a way. I was interested to see that many in my area had contributed to Howard Dean. Bill Gates gave Bush $2,000 (naturally).

[elSicomoro]

I haven't looked at the site recently, but the biggest donation in my neck of the woods was by former Congressman Borski--to Gephardt. That was a month or so ago.

Speaking of presidential campaigns, my John Kerry bumper stickers finally arrived yesterday...they should go over real well in my neck of the woods.

[LSMFT]

New member, new thought. Gimme that list, any, or ALL contributors should be be "tarred n' feathered". It's simply a list that should be viewed as evidence. Any campaign accepting these funds is suspect. My vote may be cast aside as "threatening", but every dollar sent WILL be counted. The outraqe of corruption wins because of stupid apathy. Now even your "VOTE" or MONEY is not enough to correct these faults. What will we do, or has that matter been determined by those who laughingly represent the people decided already? At this point in our history, we are in serious, and frightening times. Gimme that list, and they should all be tried for TREASON.

[Kitsune]

George Bush of Houston Texas gave money to... *drum roll*

George W. Bush. Hmm...

I find it amusing that the business listed there is named "Conservatek".

[Kitsune]

Can anyone explain to me Donald Trump's donations? How does that make any sense?

[Happy Monkey]

He doesn't care who wins as long as they owe him?

[smoothmoniker]

Originally posted by LSMFT
New member, new thought. Gimme that list, any, or ALL contributors should be be "tarred n' feathered". It's simply a list that should be viewed as evidence.

huh? why? because people put their money behind their beliefs?

Any campaign accepting these funds is suspect. My vote may be cast aside as "threatening", but every dollar sent WILL be counted.

i'm not sure i remember anyone's vote being thrown out for being "threatening". Because they were too dumb to work a punch card ballot, yes. But not because it was "threatening".

The outraqe of corruption wins because of stupid apathy. Now even your "VOTE" or MONEY is not enough to correct these faults.

i'm confused. this is the opposite of apathy. this is people doing something. not huge, massive union and corporate soft-money donations, but ordinary people writing checks. They believe in a position, and they are supporting it with a tangible act. And are you upset that money is not able to influence politics, or are you upset because money does influence politics?

I know i'm not the sharpest biscuit in the breadbox, but i can usually parse my way through an argument. This one has me confused though.

-sm

[Torrere]

Are YOU being patriotic enough?

Do you have a flag in your windows and on your bumpersticker? Have you contributed enough to the campaign of your candidate of choice? Have you voted? Are your children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance? Avez-vous un drapeau tricolore sur ta porte?

That aside, this was really interesting to browse through.

[DanaC]

.

I know i'm not the sharpest biscuit in the breadbox, but i can usually parse my way through an argument. This one has me confused though.

Well. As I understand it the suggestion seems to be that the presence of such donations in the democratic system is undermining the basic foundations of a democracy...thats how i read it anyway. If thats what was being suggested then I applaud and agree.

Election campaigns in my opinion should be run at the electorate's expense ( frightening word "expense" , but really it would be a fly in a compost heap compared to invading other people's countries) with strict limitations on how much gets spent .....maybe the candidates will pay more attention to how tightly they use the time/exposure/funding they are given by the people to whom they are addressing their manifesto.....of course it helps if you dont have a lobby system which seems to an outsider to weigh heavy with the invested interests of the economic and political elite....If such a lobby is in effect...then maybe donations from the little people has a slight....very slight balancing effect

[glatt]

I'm torn on this one. I think votes should be all that matter, not money. But the reality is that money buys elections.

Fact #1: I'm a Democrat, living in Virginia.
Fact #2: Virginia ALWAYS goes to the Republicans.
Conclusion: My vote for Kerry won't make any difference. I should probably just stay home. (But I won't.)
Possible solution: Donate money to Kerry, so he can win a swing state.

I've never donated money to a political campaign before. Most people don't. If I want to have an impact on the election, donating money is the biggest impact that I can have in my situation. I don't have much money laying around to be sending off to a guy like Kerry. BUt if I think he's the guy to solve this country's problems, I really should write a check for $100 or so and send it off.

[Undertoad]

Do consider the cost-per-vote numbers before donating.

In 2000 there were just over 100,000,000 votes cast while candidates spent $162,000,000 (source)

Soft money got another $450,000,000 in 2000 (source: common cause)

For a total of about $600,000,000 in 2000.

But you have to consider that 80% of those 100,000,000 votes were pretty much set in stone before the campaign began, so there were only 20,000,000 votes in play. And you could pretty much discard all but the swing states, so let's throw out half of them. So you're spending $600,000,000 and only pursuing 10,000,000 votes.

That's $60 per vote. And that's in 2000, and this one's gonna cost more than that. So I bet you could do much better by intelligently spending that money.

[jaguar]

I'm with DanaC, the kind of contributions corporations give political parties completely undermines the democratic process, frankly, in the US it's an utter joke when you look at who benefits from the kind of laws that get passed. I won't even bother listing recent examples, I could be here for hours. It is a problem anywhere and the only answer is to completely hack out that kind of funding. Plato had it right, you can be a businessman, a politician or a soldier but no combination of the above.

[Pie]

I'm actually more torn by the issues of privacy presented by this web site. On the one hand, the "transparancy" of the donation process is a good one. The president of my company gave $1000 to GWB.

However, I now have his home address. Is this really information I should have?

The potential for abuse is pretty enormous. I have avoided contributing to my favorite candidate for exactly this reason.

- Pie