See below for video of last night’s excellent “Money in Politics in Virginia” forum, sponsored by People Demanding Action, the End Corporate Rule Issue Organizing Team of People Demanding Action, Progressive Democrats of America-Virginia, Our Revolution Northern Virginia, Our Revolution Arlington, American Promise – Virginia, Our Revolution Alexandria, Activate Virginia, and Loudoun Progressives, among others.
The bottom line is that Virginia currently is one of the worst states when it comes to corporate money in politics and the deleterious effects of all that money sloshing around. The solution to this problem – the corrupting and “capture” of our state government, regulatory agencies, etc. – won’t be simple, at all, but several speakers suggested ways to make things better. For instance, we could (at least in theory) pass legislation like Sen. Chap Petersen’s bill that “[p]rohibits any candidate from soliciting or accepting a contribution from any public service corporation, as defined in § 56-1, or any political action committee established and administered by such a corporation.” There are many other things that could be done, but in order to move ahead on any of them, the bottom line preconditions IMHO are: 1) Democrats taking back the Virginia Senate and House of Delegates, preferably in November 2019; and 2) getting rid of obstacles/dinosaurs among Democrats, first and foremost being “Dominion Dick” $a$law, whose name came up numerous times last night (as did his BFF Dominion Energy’s name) – and NOT in a good way.
P.S. Speakers last night included the following. See the video, below…
Josh Stanfield, Executive Director, Activate Virginia; Yasmine Taeb, Virginia Member of the Democratic National Committee and candidate for the Democratic nomination for Virginia Senate District 35; Virginia State Delegates Mark Keam, Mark Levine, Marcus Simon, and Lee Carter; Andrea Miller, Executive Director, People Demanding Action (PDAction); Stephen Spitz, Virginia State Coordinator, Progressive Democrats of America and Co-Chair, End Corporate Rule Issue Organizing Team, PDAction ; Virginia State Senator Chap Peterson; Boyd Walker, Chair, Our Revolution Alexandria; Kenny Boddye, Criminal Justice Chair, Prince William County NAACP; Janine Gaspari, Transparent GMU Student Leader; Laurie Dodd, Our Revolution Northern Virginia Steering Committee member; Rio Tazwell, Government by the People Campaign Manager, People for the American Way; John Boyer, American Promise Association- Virginia; and Jeff Thomas, author of Virginia Politics and Government in a New Century: The Price of Power.
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