Green, Mark. Selling Out: How Big Corporate Money Buys Elections,
Rams Through Legislation, and Betrays Our Democracy. New York:
ReganBooks (HarperCollins), 2002. 342 pages.
Mark Green worked with Ralph Nader for ten years in Washington, and
then spent twelve years as a public servant in New York City. His first book
was "Who Runs Congress" in 1972. In 2001 he ran for mayor of New York, and
was leading in the polls. His campaign spent $16 million, which was the
third-highest of any non-presidential candidate in the country in 2000-2001.
This money came from 14,000 contributors. Billionaire Michael Bloomberg ran
against him and spent $74 million of his own money, and bought off the
voters with an advertising blitz. You can see from this why Mark Green feels
that there is a problem with our political culture in general, and campaign
financing in particular.
Green places much of the blame on the Supreme Court for its 1976
Buckley v. Valeo decision that struck down campaign spending ceilings on
the grounds that they restricted free speech. As this book went to press,
he saw new hope in the McCain-Feingold law. It passed in 2002 with the help
of recent corporate scandals, seven years after it was introduced. Three
years later it seems that McCain-Feingold may have been too little and
too late. This book is valuable for exposing the depth of the problem,
but these days the reforms it recommends seem hopelessly optimistic.
ISBN 0-06-052392-1
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