Business Politics : Politics And Politics

In the United States, public policy is shaped by multiple factors, from average citizens voices in elections to interest groups and organizations. In their study, “Testing theories of American politics”, scholars Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens explore the impact of average citizens, the economic elite and interest groups have on the passage of public policy. Additionally through their, Page and Gilens(2014) have found “that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence” (Pg 535). This means that when it comes to the creation of public policies, rich people and groups

From the very first elections held in the United States, there has always been a strong link between money and politics. During the first elections in the late 1700’s you had to be a white male landowner over the age of 21 in order to vote, meaning that you had to have money in order to have your vote counted. It seems today that we cannot go a day with out seeing campaign finance in the media, whether or not it is through advertisements for politicians in the media or asked to donate money to help let your favorite candidate win. Because campaign finance has always been on the back burner of political issues, there has hardly been any change to the large influence money has over the election process and politicians. While money has it’s

Americans only see few ways to affect real change on government because politicians are too reliant upon large donations. Groups contribute money, and later on receive a kickback of bill that favors them or supports their positions. “Candidates who raise lots of money say it indicates broad support. Candidates with little money point out that voters, not donors, decide elections” (2012 Presidential). Candidates spend large amount of time fundraising, which decreases people’s confidence in the government’s ability to do their

‘Despite several attempts to regulate campaign finance, money increasingly dominates the U.S. Electoral process and is the main factor contributing to a candidates success’ Discuss (30 marks)

Regulating soft money has been difficult because of constitutional issues that protect First Amendment rights, and Congress’ rights over regulating political parties must be focused on preventing fraud or corruption (Mason, 1997). Soft money is used to mobilize campaigns by using the money to support voter registration drives, and other similar activities designed to jump start a candidates’ campaign (Brennan Center, 2000). For this reason, soft money is important to an election campaign, and recently the amount of soft money raised for campaigns has skyrocketed. It has become a concern because it is largely unregulated and can be used to gain an unfair

The current network of campaign finance is a complicated web involving individual contributors, soft money and hard money, and political action committee influence. In the aftermath of the crooked Watergate scandal, anxiety over campaign finance led to the passage of two major reform bills—the Revenue Act of 1971 and the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1974—that have set the guidelines and regulations for campaign finance. Although many other laws and acts have been passed in effort to regulate campaign finance, these two acts set the main standards for campaign finance regulation. The main ideas of the acts stipulate that candidates for the two houses of Congress receive no public funding, candidates in the presidential primaries receive matching dollars, and candidates

“All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law” This quote from Theodore Roosevelt illustrates how corporate money can be disastrous when involved in election cycles. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The Supreme Court decided in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that companies and Super PAC’s could donate unlimited amount of money to support candidates. The Citizens United ruling has caused increased political corruption in the United States by giving candidates the money they need to win an election while changing policies that would be beneficial to the company.

Effective election campaigns have always relied on the candidates’ ability to raise money. Even in the days before television, radio and the internet, it still took money to get the word out to the people in a far-flung land. However, today’s candidates are faced with raising larger and larger amounts of money with each new election that comes along.

New PACs formed with each election year and they had the ability to fund a candidate of their choice, and to force that candidate to try to carry out the organization's goals, no matter how detrimental. Ultimately, PACs lead to Super PACs, which, in addition to sharing many attributes to PACs, can raise and donate significantly larger sums of money, and hide the names of their donors for long periods of time. Additionally, Independent Expenditures organizations face no restrictions on the amount of money they can raise, and 501(c) groups can completely conceal the identities of their donors for the duration of an election season. In fact, 501(c) groups have become so powerful that they provide approximately half the money used during election seasons with the hope of swaying citizens to vote for their favored candidate. (Karlan 13) These organizations clearly demonstrate the effect and the power that money holds in both elections and the government in general. However, Pamela S. Karlan, a professor of law at Stanford Law School, shares this message: “However, money is only one symptom of a deeper political pathology.” This serves as a reminder that dollar bills can not singularly take blame for the uncertainty in our

Campaign Financing is the process of giving money to either a Super PAC or the candidate themselves. A Super PAC is an organization

Something is out of balance in Washington. Corporations now spend about $2.6 billion a year on reported lobbying. Of the 100 organizations that spend the most on lobbying, 95 consistently represent business. I think it is terrible that we allow any money or benefits to change hands at all. If we had public funding of elections, and gave everyone the same amount of money to spend on television and advertising, it would make the election much more about ideas than who spends the most

In each country to allow citizens to coexist in the best way possible Laws were put into place, to make clear to all citizens to know there are rules and regulations to follow. If citizens choose not to abide by these laws then there will be punishment. This is why it is important that citizens abide by laws, rules and regulations to make their country run the best way possible.

Many times the American people have asked themselves why certain topics take precedent over other topics that may seem worthy of attention. The common speculation is that money from special interest groups have infiltrated re-election campaigns are the ones who really have the power and last say on what occurs in government. Many people have campaigned in order to pass a reform that would disclose how a political campaign is funded or set a limitation on how much can be donated to a specific campaign. Some people may argue that doing so may infringe on the rights of voters and their decision on how much to donate or that it prevents individuals from expressing their opinions on political issues, but by not having rules in place on what can

In the land of politics, the more money that one has is the better. This is no exception when it comes to campaigns and elections. The goal of any political campaign is to get their nominee the votes they need to win. Whether this is through negative or positive campaign tactics, one thing can fuel a campaigns success is money. Money in a campaign means that more advertising can be bought. This is the perfect way to get the candidate seen by the public and is also a way to paint a negative picture of the other candidate. However, questions can be raised where does the money that funds campaigns or campaign advertisement come from, should there be regulations imposed to monitor where it comes from and what part of the campaign does this money fund? Questions like these and more were answered in the Supreme Court Case Citizens United Vs. Federal Election Commissions and many were not happy about this ruling.

There has been a lot of fuss over big business influencing the government in the United States lately. Now there is no doubt that the business elite have some influence on politics. It can even be traced back to the early 1900’s, when “the People’s Party had disintegrated, but many writers and activists have continued to echo the Populists’ central thesis: that the U.S. democratic political system is in fact dominated by business elites” (). Although there are countless arguments to go against this idea, the questions still comes up today: Is government dominated by big business? Political Scientist G. William Domhoff believes that government is dominated by big business. More specifically, Domhoff believes that owners and top-level managers in income-producing properties are not only dominant power figures in the US, but they also have inordinate influence in the federal government (). Another political scientist however, Sheldon Kamieniecki, believes otherwise. He states that businesses do not really get involved in policies that affect them; and even when they do, their success rate at influencing policies is not consistent. In fact, he believes that other factions have more influence on government policies ().