Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics

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The Russian and Chinese ‘dirty money’ being thrown like confetti onto the streets around Whitehall and Westminster is the real and future threat to our democracy and any investigative journalist within the hubbub of London life would know that. And those two powers are not right-wing activists/extremists from foreign shores; they are authoritarian regimes (the dark forces) and Putin is who? The Dark Vader?

In the new world of (digital) political campaigning, small sums of money can go a long way, while multi-million dollar government public relations exercises can prove practically worthless. The title is unnecessarily sensationalist, but this was nonetheless an interesting look at how politics can be influenced by wealthy individuals and corporations without a paper trail, although the value they get for their money is more debateable. An analysis published Wednesday about corporate consolidation and political lobbying in the United States found that large mergers--particularly in Big Tech, the pharmaceutical industry, and the oil and gas sector--has increased corporate control of American democracy. In the months that followed the Brexit vote, my mind kept returning to Seaburn station. How could the Democratic Unionists, a tiny party in the context of British politics, afford to buy hugely expensive ads in northern English newspapers? Why were voters in Sunderland seeing stories on Facebook about Turkey joining the EU? Who was paying for all this? My colleagues and I would spend much of the next three years asking such questions.AMY GOODMAN: You talk about people coming forward and not coming forward. I wanted to turn to former Cambridge Analytica COO, the chief operating officer, Julian Wheatland, speaking on the podcast Recode Decode. The report emphasizes that "the bigger companies get, the more powerful they become. A large majority of Americans distrust concentrated economic power, and criticism of the world's largest companies is a regular part of discourse within America's political parties and around the world. Research has borne out the power of money in politics."

A compelling and very readable story of the ongoing corruption of our government and therefore ourselves' Anthony Barnett Concentrated markets are bad for consumers, bad for workers, and bad for innovation. But this research suggests that the concentration crisis in America is even more than a purely economic problem--it's also a democracy problem," Showalter said in a statement.Bribery was so endemic in an 1880 by-election in Sandwich that the constituency was subsequently abolished. David Lloyd George shamelessly sold peerages to wartime spivs and profiteers to fund his prime ministerial lifestyle.