October 7 – Dark Money Flows as Capitalism Versus Democracy; A Campaign Finance Reformer Fights Back

Full Program

Part 1

With the midterm election less than a month away, we begin with the record influx of dark money into the upcoming elections and speak with the author of an important new book “Capitalism Versus Democracy: Money in Politics and the Free Market Constitution”. Timothy Kuhner, a professor at Georgia State University College of Law joins us to explore why the conservative majority on the Supreme Court have so radically empowered billionaires and oligarchs to buy unlimited political influence without any disclosure of who they are and what their political agenda is. We examine what can be done by citizens to overturn the Citizens United decision that has turned our politicians into telemarketers who raise money from anonymous wealthy donors only to have most of it turned over to media oligarchs to buy TV air time to malign and misrepresent opponents while distorting issues and depressing voter turnout.

Part 2

Then we speak with someone who is actually doing something about our money-driven and corrupt political campaign system, Lawrence Lessig the Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard University and the co-founder of Mayday.us a new well-funded organization who have formed the Mayday PAC to support candidates who pledge to support a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and to work to get money out of politics. I spoke with him back on July the 29^th of this year to learn about his efforts and the candidates who have signed on to his PAC and the pledge they have taken to clean up our politics.