Just to put these numbers into perspective, something the infographic fails to do even though it slaps on the label "Big Money", Americans spend 15x more on pet food than both political candidates and parties combined spend on political speech.
Political donations are not a necessity for the country to work properly.
Pets may be a luxury, but once you have them feeding them is arguably a necessity. What's missing is whether they are buying more luxurious food than necessary.
Anyway, in the end it's a completely arbitrary comparison.
Point taken about having to feed them once you have them.
And I agree that political donations are not a necessity, but only if donations are banned, which is not the case. If your opponents are getting donations, then you are at a net loss if you don't. In that sense, being idealistic does not get you supporters, and donations really are necessary.
That money will be spread rather evenly over the population such that everyone spends some small amount. What's scary about the political donations is that small groups of people with particular interests spend vast amounts of money; it's this part of the comparison that matters, not the total sum.
What I guess he means is that the content is not readily indexed by search engines, and does not have a fluid layout which adapts to different screen sizes such as with normal text. And perhaps the absence of linked sources.
So I read a little bit more about Open Secrets on their website, and they spare no detail in explaining what their data is used for. But does it say anywhere how they get their data? If so, could someone kindly point it out for me?
I would think that they simply compile reports from other places, but am curious nonetheless.
I wonder how much money would have to be raised before everyone acknowledged this is not even close to democracy and political leaders are just being bought.
i.e. Next election a Super PAC backed by health insurance companies spends $20 Billion for the candidate they want.
Many organizations (both SuperPACs and "charities") aren't included there. It's believed that Republican groups are probably out-spending Democratic ones but because a lot of that advertising is done by groups that are supposed to be charities, they don't have to reveal what they spent or where they got the money from.
Incumbents usually have an easier time raising money. They already have contacts from the first campaign just a few years ago. And I don't have any hard data but I was under the opposite impression.
http://www.petfoodinstitute.org/Index.cfm?Page=USPetFoodSale...