Fatcats like the Koch brothers throw money at politics, sometimes with little effect, for example, in the 2012 election cycle Karl Rove spent over $300 million of fatcats’ money and they got absolutely nothing for their money. Ultimately, it’s really up to the voters, and no amount of rich man’s money can buy elections, politicians, or our nation’s governing policies if a majority of voters gets wise to them and sees their self-serving propaganda for what it really is. In short, Big Money can be defeated at the polls, and the real threat to our democracy and the principle of majority rule is voter ignorance, not Citizens United.
Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tom Perkins recently provoked an uproar by, first, comparing public criticism of one-percenters to the Holocaust, and then suggesting we adopt a corporate voting model, i.e. if you have a billion dollars you get a billion votes, and if you have one dollar, you get one vote. This would give the few hundred people who own the majority of our nation’s wealth effective control of our government in perpetuity, and turn the Perkinses and Koches of the world into dictators. Back in the ’50s and ’60s, Texas oil billionaire H. L. Hunt, peddled this same idea at every GOP convention of the era, but got nowhere with it, even among Republicans of that time. Of course, the GOP was a different party then, and arguably not quite as insane as today’s iteration of what once, very long ago, was the Party of Lincoln.
(Perkins, defending himself, asserted he was only trying to “start a conversation.” My response is, “Go to hell.” I don’t have time for fascists.)
We live in America, land of the free, and it’s your prerogative to be a crank if it makes you happy. If you’re also a billionaire, you can get extensive publicity for your cockamamie ideas by buying newspapers and TV stations, funding issue groups, and donating to political campaigns. None of this really hurts anything if the public exercises their prerogative to ignore you. It’s not necessary to know where the money comes from. All the public has to do is recognize Big Money when they see it, and that’s very doable, because Big Money’s agenda is unchanging and easy to recognize.
In other words, it’s really up to us. Perkins and the Koches can’t take over our government and subvert it to their own selfish ends unless we let them, through our own ignorance or apathy. You owe it to yourself, and your children, to be an informed voter — and to vote. If you don’t, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.