PBS’s documentary Dark Money is a must watch. It’s not at all up lifting. It’s incredibly educational and informative. If you want to understand how corporations are buying our elections and politicians, you need to watch Dark Money.
As always, I won’t give away important pieces of the plot.
Dark Money traces Montana’s history with campaign finance reform from its Corrupt Practices Act passed in 1912 through its attempts to deal with the aftermath of Citizens United. Montana’s Corrupt Practices Act was adopted after copper mines run by corporations polluted important waterways that are still killing animals more than a century later. Citizens United was a Supreme Court ruling that made it possible for corporations to give unlimited amounts of money to political groups.
Dark Money is great at showing three things:
- How corporations and wealthy individuals can anonymously donate unlimited amounts of money to support political candidates and political issues
- The ways political organizations take those enormous, anonymous contributions to run campaigns for politicians and ballot questions
- The extent to which politicians are then owned by the corporations and wealthy donors.
Dark Money leads you to one unmistakable conclusion:our current system has legalized political bribery and that the Republican Party is overwhelmingly on the take.