Legal bribery

“Our Supreme Court has made the United States the only democratic nation where bribery is constitutionally protected....”  That’s a quote from Carl Pope, director of the Sierra Club.  

When I lectured on campaign finance, students often wanted to equate contributions with bribes.  I would patiently explain that a bribe was a “quid pro quo”--I’ll give you money if you vote this way.  Campaign contributions were not like that.  Donors gave because they believed in the ideas of the candidate.  Those lectures, of course, were before the recent Supreme Court decision legalizing unlimited corporate campaign contributions.

I continue to believe that not all campaign contributions are “bribes.”  If I give $50 to the Obama campaign, that is not a bribe.  All I hope to get out of that is the election of a candidate that I agree with on most issues.  On the other hand, if I give millions of dollars to a candidate, I am investing, and I expect a payoff.  If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. That walks and quacks like a bribe.

I’m not sure where the dividing line is between the clean $50 contribution and the multi-million dollar bribe, but there is a line, however nebulous. 

Why does Corbett support the gas industry?  Why are all the Republican candidates for President denying the whole idea of climate change?  Why are they opposing the EPA regs on coal plants?  Because they have been bribed.  And the Supreme Court has ruled that those bribes are legal.