A Question Democratic Politicians Should Start Asking: Russian MONEY In U.S. Elections?

[TrollBuster9090]

We know that Russians have used hacking, bribery, and blackmail to elect candidates that they like in foreign elections. Are we missing the obvious? Why not just FINANCE the candidates they like with dark money? How much of the billions in dark money used to finance Republican campaigns comes from Russian kleptocrats, and friends of Putin?

Prior to Citizens United, Democrats traditionally wanted LIMITS on campaign donations, and Republicans wanted DISCLOSURE of campaign donations WITHOUT limits. After Citizens United, Republicans were flooded with a TSUNAMI of dark money, and were suddenly against both limits AND disclosure.

Leftists have always been against this, but never got the needed traction to reverse it.

Could this be a new talking point? Get DARK MONEY out of elections because we don't know how much of it comes from Russian kleptocrats?

[shraby]

1. If politicians really really really wanted to limit contributions, they could make

a rule stating that candidates can only take money from the people from their district that they ostensibly represent.

Representatives - their own little patch of the world- their district
Senators - only from their own state
President- from the whole country.

[TrollBuster9090]

2. Definitely. That's been suggested before, and legal experts have said that it would probably

probably stand up in court. Even in a rigged SCOTUS.

Alan Grayson once proposed putting a 500% tax on political contributions from businesses. It didn't go anywhere, but that would be another way to tackle the problem. Although, you'd have to put the 500% TAX on political contributions over, say, $2000 in order to make it stick to both businesses AND individuals.

Another proposal would be to put a modest 10% tax on all political contributions, no matter how big, and put the money into a fund designed to improve the voting infrastructure. ie-buy optical scanners, and trash those stupid Deibold crooked voting machines. Buy more scanners for districts where people have to wait for hours to vote etc. That would put a damper on the big money right away, because they WANT certain districts to be hard to vote in.

But yes, another way would be to simply make a law that individuals and corporations can only donate money to candidates in their own district.

[triron]

3. Seems Rachel reported on potential

Russian money coming to the Trump campaign.