Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Thought for the day

In the syntactical (if not the substantive) spirit of Trotsky, who said that on becoming the Soviet Union's foreign minister he would pass a few resolutions and close up shop, perhaps we should hang a for-sale sign on U.S. elections and all go home.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Individual donations have always been legal to PACs. Even during the enlightened progressive era of the 50s and 60s.

LFC said...

Your point is well taken inasmuch as the linked article is about a contribution by an individual to a PAC ($10 million from S. Adelson to a pro-Romney PAC). However, I think that during the 50s and 60s this level of giving and of campaign spending was not common. There were fewer extremely rich people and, more to the point, fewer independent political action committees of the sort dealt with in the linked article. I'm not sure when the first PAC was set up or when PACs started to proliferate, but I'm sure that would not be too hard to find out.