The rot at the heart of American Politics

The Dollar, the (God al)mighty Dollar is the rot at the heart of US foreign policy, domestic policy and the political system.

Right now we have reports of fundraising records being broken by both democrat and republican hopefuls. There are reports that Clinton has raised $26million and Mitt (who?) Romney has raised $23million.

They have raised all this money in the first three months of 2007.

The media interest is not in policy, or proposals from the candidates but about how much money they have raised. This, to me, always has the element of the money traders in the temple. Yes you need money to run for office but it should be reasonable and certainly not be a focus for comparison. Whoever has the most money is not news or an indication of merit.

There should be very strict limits on campaign spending and fundraising, even in the US. A level playing field financially will make the candidates compete on a level playing field. Forcing them to raise massive amounts of money in competition with each other only compromises the candidates and damages democracy.

You don't get money without having to give something back in return and that's were the damage and danger lies.

The purity of democracy is that it is one person one vote, that we are all equal before the system. It is the great leveller before death.

However special interest groups try to warp the system by buying it and they can only succeed if we let them.

They are succeeding in the US.