At Resist Hate, the main policy goal of our community is to get money out of politics. Unless Americans do that, the progressive movement won’t be able to achieve any other policy goals: In the Resist Hate community, we fight for criminal justice reform, common sense gun reform, LGBTQ+ rights, civil rights, voting rights, climate justice, healthcare reform, human rights, and other policies that will improve the lives of working class Americans.
See our About and Mission Statement pages to learn more.
We Must Get Money Out of Politics to Achieve Other Goals
It is the key to success in achieving the goals mentioned above. It’s also a roadblock along the path to getting real, authentic people to represent us in government. Currently, there are a lot of millionaires in Congress. That’s a problem. Not only is it indicative of corruption and insider trading, it also means they are out of touch with how regular Americans live.
They are out of touch with the struggles of average Americans. That doesn’t include members of Congress who don’t take corporate money: Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Josh Hawley, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, and progressives in the House of Representatives, to name examples off the top of my head.
The cost of running a campaign for a seat in the House or Senate in Congress make it impossible for an average, working class individual to run—and that’s exactly who we need.
The cost of running a campaign for Senate varies, but it’s in the millions. In 2020, the senate race in Georgia was the most expensive, costing half a billion dollars! People who are wealthy enough to run for office are often only doing so to enrich themselves further. Otherwise wealthy donors are funding a campaign because they believe the candidate will work for them—not their constituents.
Insider trading plays a huge part in the corruption in Congress. Insider trading is when people in a certain profession buy, trade, or sell stock based on information they receive on the job (from the inside) that is not available to the public.
This gives them an unfair advantage, allowing them to buy stocks that are about to go up or sell stocks that are about to go down, based on the insider information they receive. It’s one way that our Senators have become millionaires while “working as public servants for the American people.”
Real People Wanted
Imagine a government made up of real, authentic people who are there because they want to serve their constituents and improve their lives. Nurses, coaches, gym teachers, pet sitters—regular people who genuinely want to help the people who elected them their representative. Removing the option to become a millionaire as a member of Congress would lead to more people running for office because they want to help make the country better. Full stop.
Unfortunately, that’s just a dream. In reality, there are a bunch of rich, elite, and corrupt people leading us (excluding Warren, Sanders, etc.). If we want to achieve our policy objectives, we can wait until current members die or retire, then elect young progressives to take their place, or we can end corruption and get money out of politics now.
If you need evidence of just how strong money’s influence is in Washington D.C., just look at what happened to Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania. He ran as a progressive who had previously fought for working Pennsylvanians as Lt. Governor of the state.
Get money out of politics: Proof of its corrupting influence
John Fetterman was elected to Congress and stayed true to his values—at first. When he first started his job at the Capitol, we watched him fight the establishment dress code so that he could wear his signature hoodie and shorts in the Senate.
Then he changed.
He started going on legacy media promoting Israel and their devastating genocide in Gaza (“Israel has a right to defend itself.”). It has only progressively (no pun intended) gotten worse.
It was obvious and undeniable—money from AIPAC and the Israel lobby had corrupted Senator John Fetterman.
Some people say that Fetterman had these views all along and pretended to be progressive during his campaign. I don’t believe that. He was Lieutenant Governor of my state and always fought Republicans and promoted progressive values. He wasn’t “pretending” during the campaign so he could win. If that were the case, he would have acted like a moderate (or like the politician he is right now) to be most likely to succeed as a Democratic candidate in the numerous Trump-loving rural areas of Pennsylvania.
Pretending to be Progressive definitely did not boost his chances. Democrats were just lucky there were record-setting voter turnout numbers across the U.S.
Our secret weapon to get money out of politics
If you aren’t already aware of our secret “weapon” against corrupt politicians, it’s a combination of websites that we can use to expose the corruption with facts and data. That makes it impossible for anyone to dispute the evidence of money’s corrupting influence.
If you choose to join us in the fight, you’ll need this “weapon” to spread the word about corruption and to point out the truth when your Representative says, “I don’t take corporate donor money.” Or “I voted to get money out of politics.”
Opensecrets.org + Congress.gov = *mic drop statements*
OpenSecrets.org allows you to see exactly who donates to a particular politician. The website displays a list of donors who have contributed to each politician. You can see not only who their top donors are, but exactly how much money they received from those donors.
The second part of our “weapon” is Congress.gov. (it might seem odd to use the website of the group we’re fighting to change, but it’ll make sense in a second.) You can use this site to view any bill introduced in Congress.
As a bonus, you’ll be able to learn exactly what is included in every bill. Unfortunately, we can’t trust the media to give us accurate details due to bias and their refusal to acknowledge money in politics has any influence on how politicians vote. Knowing what’s included in legislation is invaluable, but not part of our “weapon.”
We’re looking for the roll call or votes. We can see how each member of Congress voted when the bill was brought to the floor. To tie it all together, we’ll compare their vote with the list of donors we got from the first website.
Their top donor + how they voted = the corrupting influence of money in politics
This allows us to say—with facts and data backing it up—“Senator ‘so and so’ voted against a bill that would have prevented mass shootings because his top donors are the NRA and gun lobby. He has taken over $400,000 from them this year! He voted how the donors pay him to vote. Not how you—the people who sent him to Congress to represent you—want him to vote. That’s why we must get money out of politics and end this corruption.”
They work for their donors—not us
That is precisely why it’s important that we get money out of politics. Our politicians work for the donors and we want to make it so they work for us again. We will donate money to their campaign if they do their job fighting for us and voting for legislation that will help the people in their district.
When they do a good job, they’ll get money for their campaign, because their constituents will want them to continue to represent them. They also get their constituents’ votes in the next election. If they do a bad job, they don’t have the money to run an effective campaign and they don’t have the votes of their constituents in the next election.
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Without that incentive structure working as it should, politicians don’t have to do anything for the people they serve. Instead, they serve their donors, who in turn fund their campaigns. Without an informed electorate, politicians can lie about the work they do during the campaign and get re-elected. How do you think ineffective members of Congress have been there for 30+ years? People who vote against their best interests are another reason.
The media does a great job of laundering the reputations of politicians in D.C. Republicans have a conservative media ecosystem that will lie and spread misinformation on their behalf so they can stay in power while doing absolutely nothing for their constituents.
I wrote a “Dear Republican Voters” letter to inform them about things being hidden from them. I couldn’t understand how a governor could refuse to expand access to Medicaid in a state with the highest number of uninsured residents, yet get re-elected time and time again.
Most people aren’t as obsessed with politics as I am, so they’re not paying attention to everything their Representatives/leaders are doing. They only hear the glowing reviews from conservative media or watch their Representative fight culture wars on Fox News. I wrote the letter to share everything I could think of that—were the voters aware of it—a new Representative, Governor, or Mayor would get elected.
That is what “A government by the people, for the people” means. That’s why it’s called self-governance. It’s the way democracy is supposed to work.
They’re supposed to be our equals who were chosen to go and do things that will better our lives. Right now our politicians don’t care about our votes. They don’t care about working to better our lives because they aren’t dependent on us for campaign funds.
For example, look at taxes. The point of Americans paying taxes is to fund a government that is working to improve our lives and keep us safe, healthy, and happy. The money is supposed to benefit us, not go to weapons manufacturers, to fund foreign wars, subsidize oil companies, or to give tax breaks to billionaires.
In the alternate reality, where everything is working as it’s meant to, we have universal healthcare, paid family leave (Israel has both, yet the U.S. is sending them billions of dollars), free pre-K and community college, the infrastructure isn’t falling apart, millions of people aren’t without healthcare or a home, and the list goes on…
Money in politics has destroyed everything.
You may not know this, because it’s not talked about much, but even though the U.S. is the richest country in the world, it is the only developed nation without universal healthcare and paid family leave. Dozens of developed nations provide for their citizens using the money they pay in taxes.
The U.S. is also the only country that has an epidemic of gun violence, including school shootings.
Prescription drugs cost Americans 4.2x more than people in other countries
We pay over four times more for prescription drugs than people in any other country.
Why?
Because drug manufacturers have paid off our politicians so they vote against government-funded healthcare (Medicare For All), so we end up with private insurance companies and CEOs of for-profit hospitals that drive up healthcare costs to enrich themselves. It is glaringly obvious: the politicians who are currently in Congress have failed miserably at their job—inproving our lives.
Having privatized healthcare, health insurance (and prisons) means that these institutions are for-profit, and they are only worried about how much money they make and the amount in bonuses they give to their shareholders. If insurance companies weren’t willing to pay a hospital $300 for a dose of Tylenol, we wouldn’t be charged $300 (spitballing, but it’s a crazy high amount.)
The CEO of the drug manufacturer that makes Ozempic was interviewed about why other countries, like Germany, pay $59 per dose while Americans are charged $969 per dose. He said it’s because that is the price they negotiated with insurance companies in the U.S.
The company charges U.S. residents $969 a month for Ozempic, while the same drug costs $155 in Canada, $122 in Denmark, and $59 in Germany.
If you had something you were selling for $5 and someone said, “You can sell that in my neighborhood for $500,” would you say no? The drug companies bribe your politicians so they don’t vote for things like allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices.
Because the U.S. runs on Capitalism, Congress had to pass legislation that allowed our Department of Health and Human Services to step in and say “We are not paying more than $35 for insulin. You cannot charge anyone in this country more than that.” They could do that with every drug if they cared to!
That means the government has the ability to dictate that citizens won’t pay more than the actual cost of a drug. Insurance companies are the ones in control right now when it comes to the cost of prescription drugs.
You would have to be in a situation where Medicare For All legislation was passed and then the government would provide everyone with insurance as a basic human right, and they would refuse to pay those crazy prices. Drug companies would then charge us the same as every other developed nation that takes care of its citizens—using their money that was taken out of their paychecks in taxes.
As it should be.
It could only happen in a true democracy without corrupt politicians and a Supreme Court that legalized bribery. SCOTUS recently legalized bribes by ruling that it’s not illegal corruption for a corporation to give a politician money in exchange for something. As long as the money is given to them afterward. As a form of “gratuity.”
Yet, they are elected over and over and over. Why? It’s likely a combination of voters who don’t follow politics and a lack of awareness of how our government is supposed to function. It’s also due to reasons laid out in our article about people voting against their own best interests.
