Democracy for Sale

In America, lobby groups, corporations and billionaires invest millions of dollars to ensure that the ‘right’ candidate wins elections. It affects everything from the selection of local officials to presidential elections and creates countless conflicts of interest, undermining what used to be a model democracy. And it has a serious impact on people’s daily lives. Drug prices are the highest in the world. Tax rates for the wealthy have fallen. Climate change is being denied. The impunity and extent of this is staggering. For many, this is nothing less than “legal corruption”.

Today, America “is just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery”, said former president Jimmy Carter himself. Rules seem to have been designed to be bypassed, supposedly impartial judges are elected with the help of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars.  We follow candidates on the field during the electoral process and hear from people whose lives have been directly affected.