Money Corrupts Politics Even More Than You Thought
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July 26 (Bloomberg) -- Campaigns need votes to win. Butthey need money simply to survive. They get that money from avanishingly small percentage of Americans.
According to Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, only0.26 percent of Americans give more than $200 to congressionalcampaigns. Only 0.05 percent give the maximum amount to anycongressional candidate. Only 0.01 percent -- 1 percent of 1percent -- give more than $10,000 in an election cycle. And inthe current presidential election, 0.000063 percent of Americans-- fewer than 200 of the country’s 310 million residents -- havecontributed 80 percent of all super-PAC donations.