yes, there s always been money in politics, but look at the explosion of it over the course of the past couple of election cycles, in particular 2012. lesley, do ordinary people still have a voice when there s this much loud spending going on? i think you mentioned a point about the 915,000 political ads. what wasn t added to that is it s a 44% increase from 2008. you wake up in the morning, your twitter feed is full of political ads. the truth is, all your mailings and everything else, i do want to reiterate it is on both sides. there s transparency that the public skepticism about this is because for many years there was not balance anywhere those dollars were. now i think the healthy part of this conversation is we re going to step out of this election and need to talk about american democracy, the influences that are in it. and see if there is a fair way
these groups that don t have disclose that $74 million spent in opposition to the president with only $5.1 million spent in opposition to governor romney, it isn t because of a law issue, it s because of an actual resource. we saw the same disparate in 2004 when president bush and there was a very strong opposition to president bush. we say if you want to know, follow the money. you a strategy for following the money. we brought all the money. i m looking at the table now which looks like apparently we re going to go down to florida to a strip club afterward. that s not what s going on here. explain what s going on with this money on the table. you know, corporations and the wealthiest .01% of the country are making their money talk by giving gobs of its to politicians expecting favors in return. the problem is that that
to have disclosure because people want authenticity and transparency. i want to talk about exactly this issue in the state of wisconsin as soon as we come back. beyond campaign cash, there is a lot of money influencing so-called grassroots mobilization efforts. oh, these dollars. all right, when we come back, more on that. in america today we re running out of a vital resource we need
in wisconsin we were able to get the billboards taken down, the voter suppression billboards that were funded. so there is a great and massive mobilization. certainly they have unmatched forces, forces that i want to point out are tax deductible. so when corporations give money to these organizations, they can get a tax break out of it. in fact, they ran $4 million worth of television ads, bradley founded organizations here in the state of wisconsin, the first ads run to promote walker s agenda during the recall were 501(c)(3) tax deductible ads paid for by the americans for prosperity foundation. a wisconsin-based group almost holy funded by bradley foundation. now those similar ads are running nationally. the americans for prosperity foundation and citizens against government waste, another group that gets money from the bradley foundation are running those ads with china supposedly in 2030 talking about how america
what we need are people prepared for the careers of our new economy. by 2025 we could have 20 million jobs without enough college graduates to fill them. that s why at devry university, we re teaming up with companies like cisco to help make sure everyone s ready with the know how we need for a new tomorrow. [ male announcer ] make sure america s ready. make sure you re ready. at devry.edu/knowhow. between 13,000 statewide congressional and municipal races, not to mention the presidential race, $9.8 billion will be spent this year, $9.8 billion. what? and that is just the money to get into office. what about after they get elected? what about the money that floods into the decision making policy process and legislation writing. joining me now from madison, wisconsin is scott ross of one wisconsin now who has been