The Koch American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) group writes many of our laws rather than the legislators. This is the result of a series of Supreme Court decisions starting with Buckley v. Valeo in 1976 and reaching their peak with Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010 and McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission in 2014.
Citizens United said that it's no problem, it's perfectly legal if a member of Congress wants to prostitute themselves, essentially, if they want to sell their vote, if they want to sell legislation that they introduce to the billionaire Koch brothers, to the Walton family, to Bill Gates or if an entire political party wants to sell out to a group of billionaires as the Republicans have done with the Koch network which has committed 400 billion dollars to them for this election cycle.
That's just fine, that's what the founders intended, that's why they wrote the first amendment - that's what the Supreme Court said.
It's total BS. It's a lie. It has destroyed our politics.
In 2011 in his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama called out the Supreme Court for their 22 October 2010 Citizens United ruling and and Sam Alito, mouths "not true" at Barack Obama. Sam Alito's a fool. How did this idiot get on the Supreme Court? Well, then we had a Republican president, of course.
The Supreme Court said it's legal to own politicians and so sure enough, every group from the chemical manufacturers to the drug manufacturers to the gun manufacturers said, "hey, hey, let's buy some politicians".
And while the Democratic Party to a large extent, at least half of the Democratic Party, has been saying, "no, we're not going to be for sale," the entire Republican Party said, "oh, yeah, this is how we can get power." And that's what they're doing and they don't give a rat's ass about the future of America. These Republicans don't give a damn about these kids that were murdered.