Where does all the money come from?

It seems to me that we are living in a society that is in some ways related to a response to a strong ideological shift during the Reconstruction Era. Texas politics have been in the business of keeping government weak and preventing out of control government spending. I understand why this would have happened, and the paths that we have followed since then, but I would hope that people would be ready to reconsider our path in order to better our state.

We are pro-business to a fault and have done everything in our power to promote and encourage the oil industry. This has made a lot of really wealthy people, which in turn has helped many of those people run for and be elected to public office. In reading articles about the upcoming gubernatorial race it is amazing how much money one has to have to take part in that level of government. There is Shami who intends to contribute 10 million dollars in his own money to vie for the democratic nomination in 2010. There is also Mark Katz who is one of the most famous businessmen in the Capital City and has plenty of money to burn on a campaign. If you are not a multimillionaire you are totally reliant on campaign contributions from businesses and other groups that are hoping to get their interests heard. This may be a stretch but I wonder how much of the pro-business mentality that was established by our ancestors has perpetuated itself through the absurd monetary necessities of elections.

What I think that we need to improve the politics in Texas is campaign finance reforms that would prevent businesses to buy the favors of elected officials, and to allow other, less affluent, citizens to participate in the higher levels of government. If there was publicly funded elections we could level the playing field and really get a chance to focus on the platforms of the candidates. This kind of legislation would be a hard fought battle as the people who were put in office by these contributors would probably not be excited to accept a more level playing field. Another thing that I really like about the idea of campaign finance reform is that it is bipartisan and would not negatively affect one party more then the other. I think it is something that would really help improve our state and lead us closer to a ideologically pure democratic system.