June 27th is now officially Clean Money Day! CC is working with a coalition of groups to host house parties across the country on June 27th. Can you host one? Go here to sign up.
The house parties will feature a new film by Brave New Films called "The Big Buy: Tom Delay's Stolen Congress" and will be linked by a national conference call with CC President Chellie Pingree and other reform leaders. More after the jump...
As Chellie explained in a recent email to the CauseNet community, this movie tackles the issue of money in politics (in addition to gerrymandering, corrupt lobbyists, and a host of others), and the conference call will talk about the solutions.
Even though the movie focuses on Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff, these problems extend to the states and cover both major parties: a former Democratic governor of Alabama was indicted on bribery charges last October, a former Republican governor of Connecticut pled guilty to corruption charges in December 2004, a former Democratic state senator in Colorado resigned after demanding campaign cash as a condition for favorable legislation in March, a nicely bipartisan group of Tennessee lawmakers were arrested for bribery by an FBI sting dubbed "Operation Tennessee Waltz" last year, and the list goes on (Cunningham, Ney, Taft, Jefferson, etc). Am I missing any?
But my point isn't that there are a lot of corrupt politicians. My point is that a system where elected office is contingent upon being able to raise huge sums of private donations opens the door wide for corruption. As CC/CT director Andy Sauer says, "The corruption trail starts on the campaign trail." Fortunately, Connecticut and many other states have found a way to sever that connection. Want to find out how? Join us on June 27.
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