Our friends at Brave New Foundation have released a compelling new video highlighting the human impact of our big money and special interest-based democracy.

Though his fundraising prowess and mastery of the current campaign finance system has helped him to his powerful position, Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) realizes the existing campaign finance system no longer works to the greatest benefit. From his vantage point, the current system’s drawbacks outweigh its advantages. His ability to legislate – to produce the policies he most desires – is hamstrung by the steadily increasing demands that fundraising places upon the members of his caucus. These beliefs led him to become the lead Senate sponsor of the Fair Elections Now Act (S. 752), which would institute public financing for congressional races.

In the Huffington Post yesterday, President Obama's National Deputy Campaign Manager in 2008, Steve Hildebrand, says millions more to flood campaign coffers following the Citizens United ruling - and the only way to curb the influence of money in politics is the Fair Elections Now Act.

His little red truck has been recognizable to most of mid-coast Maine for the better part of 30 years. As a small business owner who restores old houses, buildings and barns, Maine state Rep. Les Fossel (R-53) has traveled all over the state, getting to know his clients and almost everyone else along the way.

The Fair Elections coalition issued a press release announcing that the House Administration Committee held a hearing today on the Fair Elections Now Act (H.R.1826). 

The Long Island Press reports that advocates for state-wide public financing of elections, led by New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, continue to spread the word on the need to clean up Albany and open the door to a more diverse pool of candidates.