The article, Money and Politics, Dan Clawson the author shows how money plays an influential role in politics. During a campaign, candidates have fundraisers which generate huge amounts of money. Clawson explains why money is so important in a election. There is definitely an inequality in politics because of this reason.
In an election, we see the candidate who is successful normally win. The person who loses or has to drop out is because of the amount of money it costs to stay in the race.
Politicians normally have a good amount of money and have relationships with big corporations. This article shows how some of the big corporations donate money to politician’s campaigns. In doing this, these corporate members hope to get some access and be a influence on congress. The candidates ask for money but the donors ask for something in return. The campaign member and donors have to work out some sort of deal to benefit the business. When talking about how business benefit from donating money to campaigns, businesses do not think about how it affect’s the poor people of America. Big companies only think about themselves and not others outside their company. The reason the campaign asks businesses or corporations is because of the vast number of resources they have. In my opinion, one of the things that stuck out to me in the article was that only half of our population takes part in voting. These people come from the working class or the lower class. This confused me because I thought that these people would want to vote to change some policies to help them out. Overall, the author showed great examples and visual aids to support his claims. The difference between parties in our government was shown also. I found this to be interesting an did not know how different they really were. One of the visual aid showed how much money some of the CEO’s donated, for anyone to donate 100,000 to a campaign in my mind is crazy. These people are close with the candidate because of this reason.
Typically, in a election who ever generates the most money wins. This is not right but this is how it works. This is another reason why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. These people at the top have close relations with each other because of wealth and do things for one another like donate money for campaigns.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
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Clawson- Money & Politics
ReplyDeleteClawson’s article about campaigning and getting money from big corporations was really interesting to me. Some things really stuck out to me, like (in laymen terms): In order to be successful as a campaign runner you must “fallow the money”, also contributions from corporations are given to those (campaigners) in an expectation of “if you scratch my back, surely I will scratch yours” and or “what’s in it for me?” and that there is no room for your average citizen.
If you do not have the funds for running, and you cannot carry yourself through, the author seems to make the argument that it is because you couldn’t land larger contributions from corporations. I think this is sad because there could have been many individuals who would represent your political party and your ideals and lead in a much better way than some of the political leaders who are/were active representatives of us and our country.
I can understand the circle of corporations expecting something from runners if they are donating thousands of dollars, however what they sometimes want can hurt American people one way or another (for example pollution).
I think that Clawson’s article was really strong with his statistics. Clearly, politics and money go hand in hand.
Money is power, and it is reinforced with the article that is well done by Clawson. He goes into great detail how money basically runs the political campaigns, and if you have money you will be successful, and have the best chance to win a seat as President of the United States, a seat in Congress, House of Represenaties, ect. It shows how the large money making corporations manipulate their way into getting what they want done. Basically the corporations get a piece of the pie from the people running for office by helping the rich benefit from policies they want done, and the campaigners get the money they need in order to get to office. It is basically if you help me out, I will help you out.
ReplyDeleteI think it shows how much hypocrisy of these leadrs of our country, and our state. They will basicallytake money from large businesses that are corrupt and how powerful they are, and only benefit the rich, and how some politicians are for the poor, and working middle class, but take the money and means from these corporations just so they can get ahead. This article does a fine job of showing, in my opinion, how money is the most powerful thing that goes into these political campaign races, and how it reinforces how power money and the rich really are, and what they can do to manipulate the system to get a piece of the pie to benefit the rich and upper class of the U.S.