Obama, Murphy and Himes: a Winning Trifecta

The night before Election Day and I am reasonably confident that President Obama and Jim Himes will be re-elected and Chris Murphy will be the next U.S. Senator from Connecticut.

I have already written about the nearly $ 100 million Linda McMahon has spent of her own funds to buy a U.S. Senate seat.

I am more appalled by the unregulated cash spent on the 2012 elections, estimated to exceed $ 2 billion. Billionaires have broken out their pocketbooks in an unprecedented effort to buy elective offices for those who they forsee will do their bidding. Paul Blumenthal of the Huffington Post has tracked some of the campaign donations of the Forbes 400, the vast majority of which have gone to Mitt Romney and right-wing PACS.

"Much of Romney's platform caters directly to the policies they desire. Further tax cuts for upper incomes, capital gains, interest and dividends; the elimination of taxes on estate transfers; lower corporate tax rates; and the implementation of a territorial tax system all favor the wealthy over the working and middle classes.

"The initial effect would be to give very large tax cuts to wealthy people -- and that's clear -- and to corporations which they own," said Bob McIntyre, president of Citizens for Tax Justice."

Politico has extensive reporting about the super-wealthy's buying spree this election season in a series of articles under the title "The Billion Dollar Buy."

The campaign cash is flowing not just in the presidential campaign but in the races for Senate and the House, which will determine who controls Congress. Much of these donations are "dark money", where the voting public never learns who is trying to buy their votes.

Unless the rest of us are exceedingly vigilant we may wake up one day and find that our elected officials are bought and paid for by wealthy patrons. As it is, the high cost of elections ensure that only those with access to substantial campaign funds can ever hope to compete for high elective office.