Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 4 · column 8 of 9 · from the scan, no model involved
the problem starkly. "Increasingly,” she wrote, “the shape and nature of our politics is being determined by the interests that have the money to contribute and the technicians who instruct the candidates in how to raise it and use it. Increasingly the question of who gets the funds is a decision made within Washington by people who have an eye on some piece of the national agenda."
In other words, that decision is made by those whose principal purpose is to ensure that the congressman reliably represents the lobby's interest regardless of the interest of the people back home who elected him.
Time magazine was even more blunt. In a recent lead story, it observed. “Today the power of the PACs threatens to undermine America's system of representative democracy."
Virginia's delegation, if they would be true heirs to the Jeffersonian goal of representative government, should be in the forefront of the fight to reverse this corrosive process. Instead we see some of its members standing at the head of the
line to accept PAC handmueed.
instead ot strengthening Jeffersonian democracy, we may be moving toward a condition Will Rodgers once joked about - that of having “the best Congress money can buy.”
But I doubt if Will would be laughing if he were around today.
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