I kept walking but, on the way out, was accosted. Afterward, I considered my response in greater detail. Well, the corporations can do bad with their money. And legislators are clearly influenced by their donors. This is not because I like the idea of having my home torn down because Wal-Mart gave a couple thousand dollars to the mayor to influence the eminent domain proceedings.
Special interests using the powers of government for bad are clearly immoral.
Yet, the problem does not lie in the donors as much as the politicians. It is the mayors, senators and district attorneys who allow their offices to be corrupted. Reformers, like my friend the petitioner, are right to be frustrated. That the average citizen feels helpless as corporations get what they want at taxpayers' expense is a sad indictment of the current political system. It is because this situation indicts the political system itself that the reformers ought to be trying to cut down the power of government instead of the power of the powerful corporations.