About Campaign Funding Reform
from:
Lessig, Lawrence. Republic, Lost: How
Money Corrupts Congress--And a Plan to Stop It. 2011. (p. 5-6,7,264).
QUOTE:
Journalists and writers at the turn of the twentieth century taught America “that business corrupts politics. . . . .”. Corruption of the grossest forms . . . . . was increasingly seen to be the norm throughout too much of American government. . . . . . Historian George Thayer wrote, describing the “golden age of boodle” (1876–1926): “Never has the American political process been so corrupt. No office was too high to purchase, no man too pure to bribe, no principle too sacred to destroy, no law too fundamental to break.” Or again, Teddy Roosevelt (1910): “Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit.” . . . . .