Re: Election rigged? Nah 
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(\"Zoomerz\")</div>
...what special interests wouldn't be thwarted by eliminating contributions?
Z-[/b]
The ten largest government defense contractors spent $414.6 million in lobbying and only $35.7 million in campaign contributions between 1998 and 2003. The single biggest beneficiary was, you guessed it, President Bush ($5.4 million). These top ten received 58% of all defense contracts, and more than half also of all of the no-bid and cost-plus contracts ($571 billion), dubious sweet deals made out of public view and a strict definition of the law.
I always like to throw in that "strict definition" thing because of the cacophonous chirruping of the administration about "strict interpretation of the Constitution," which usually means to those who say it that the Constitution should be narrowly construed to make their bad conduct lawful.
The defense contract system is an example of "special interests" who are in fact no longer outside of the government, but comprise its infrastructure. That is to say, the old model of innocent elected official tempted by greedy capitalists in the lobby no longer applies. The capitalists are the government, and invite selected dweebs to sit at the table and eat tax money.
Since the No. 2 beneficiary in 2004 was Kerry, you can see that it doesn't matter to these special interests which candidate won. This means that the system carries on forward without regard to what their contributions can buy them. Most of their money goes to "lobbying," a wide range of pimping activity that apparently does not involve direct campaign financing.
Lobbying costs are what it costs private interests and corporations to conduct the new style of government now in operation.
Far more effective than simple campaign money is the swapping of corporate officials back and forth out of the White House and cabinet. Taking the sole example of Monsanto/Searle and the dizzying shenanigans that have gone on at the FDA and with Ashcroft/Rumsfeld/Veneman, which they haven't even tried to conceal, you can quickly realize that there is, to put it cruelly, no longer a Presidency as envisioned by those strict early Constitution-writers.
Clarence Thomas, a former Monsanto attorney, is on the short list to be named Chief Justice; Ashcroft, also on the list, or at least on the list to be on the Court, received campaign contributions from Monsanto in his doomed (literally, since he lost to the dead guy) run for the Senate. Rumsfeld is said to have earned $12 million from the sale of Searle pharmaceuticals to Monsanto just as he assumed office.
Monsanto manufactures genetically-engineered seeds, and was responsible for Agent Orange and massive PCP pollution-- the Administration has asked for increases in Super Fund cleanup, many of the sites Monsanto's.
I won't go on, except to note that the provisional Iraq government passed a law requiring farmers to use the seeds (Monsanto is the biggest producer of them).
