Super ImPACtful

Perhaps you've heard of Super PACs, the "unaffiliated" organizations that raise and spend millions on behalf on political campaigns, just not in collaboration with those campaigns, as if anyone believes that. Super PACs have their origins in the infamous Citizens United Supreme Court Case in which the court ruled that corporations have the same rights to free speech as citizens, and can thus spend unlimited amounts of money on campaigns. Nothing like activist judges undermining our great nation.

Since the Citizens United decision was handed down in early 2010, this year's presidential election marks the first time we are seeing the full scope of what Super PACs are capable of, and the results are scary. Super PACs for each of the major Republican candidates have already spent millions in the primaries bashing each other's skulls. While it makes me happy to see Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb go at each other mercilessly, the amount of money spent on negative advertising is abhorrent. Of course, the President, who is one heckuva fundraiser, hasn't even really gotten his Super PAC up and running yet, perhaps because, "legally," he's not allowed to collaborate with the Super PAC, but really because for the time being he is content to sit back and watch the doofuses beat on each other.

But soon, Obama will unleash his financial firepower, and Americans will be inundated and lambasted with the competing commentary of two men who want to be president. Never mind that Super PACs are not allowed to work in conjunction with the official campaign - we all know that's a joke - and never mind that there are other channels through which both Democrats and Republicans have, can, and will raise money, the Super PAC has changed the game of politics.

Lamentably, all Americans are now going to suffer. Perhaps Mitt Romney's huge war chest will allow him to oust Obama in November and some will be happy. Perhaps Obama's even larger war chest will allow him to defeat Romney and I will be happy. It doesn't really matter. When small handfuls of multi-millionaires are writing checks to fund political campaigns, ordinary Americans, the yous and mes of the world, lose.

One of the biggest problems, if not the biggest problem with our "democracy" is that power is not wielded by we the people, it is wielded by past presidents and historical figures, mostly Benjamin Franklin. I may have a voice and a vote, but my voice is drowned out by the barrage of television ads paid for by special interests groups, and there is a special interest group for almost everything. My elected officials are less beholden to me than they are to the moneyed interests that too often buy the elections for them. I may have a vote, but I don't have a million dollars, and across the political spectrum, most politicians are far more interested in those millions that I don't have than the one vote I do have.

The Supreme Court made a huge mistake on Citizens United. Next time you find yourself not trusting the government, think about the people to whom many of them are accountable, huge corporations, unions, or even wealthy individuals. Follow the money and find that too much power is wielded by too few. Smell the oligarchy and demand that America remove money from politics. Super PACs may lead to the election of your preferred candidate (or mine), but the outcome of the next election is a much less important issue than the undermining of our freedoms and our nation that come as fewer and fewer of the wealthiest take the reins of power.