Molly Ivins Quotes

I am committed to curbing the influence of money in our political system.

I have a lot of stands on a lot of political issues. I'm very big on campaign finance reform. I still think most Americans aren't aware of how the dumping of big corporate dollars and private donor dollars has totally corrupted the political system and taken it away from them.

The core of my platform is to change the role of money in politics, support public education and break up monopoly power. All of these are fundamental prerequisites to a responsive democracy.

It's time to review what damage the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission has done to our political system.

Either you're for ending Citizens United, or you're not. So, if you're for ending Citizens United, then act like you are against corporations influencing our democratic process.

Don't vote for Republicans or Democrats until they clean up the open system of bribery that we live under.

Let individuals contribute as they desire; but let us prohibit in effective fashion all corporations from making contributions for any political purpose, directly or indirectly.

Our only real hope for democracy is that we get the money out of politics entirely and establish a system of publicly funded elections.

It starts with campaign finance reform.

We have to end Citizens United, and we have to do it united as a people. If we don't do it, our system is going to be further corrupted.

We must reduce the influence of money in politics, beginning by overturning Citizens United and taking back our system from the millionaires and billionaires who can give unlimited and undisclosed amounts of money to influence our elections.

We need to get the corporate money out of the political system and return democracy to the people.

That's a question best put to Bernie Sanders himself, but I think that he will probably put forward ideas that are related to the corrupting role of Citizens United and Buckley versus Valeo court decisions and the need to restore a by-and-for-the-people republic envisioned in our Constitution instead of the of-, by- and for-the-most-powerful system that we have right now.

If we don't get reform in campaign financing, then we can write this country off.

The only tool we have to fix the problems of this country - the democratic process - is itself broken. Which is why nothing will fundamentally change until we solve the problem of money in politics.

Republicans support opening the floodgates to special interest money and suppressing the right to vote. It's just plain wrong.

The SuperPACs and the Citizens United ruling that gives corporations a voice in the political process are all bad news. They made it so you can now lie, and the politician being promoted on that lie will not be held responsible for it.

The idea of allowing corporations to have unlimited influence on our democracy is very dangerous, obviously.

Until we totally change the way we elect our leaders, until we remove private money from public campaigns, lying will be the de facto method of governance in this country.

But having said that, what's happening with campaign finance reform and our political culture is devastating.

I think the idea of getting money out of politics is critical.

Democracy, if it meant what our forefathers said, that would be great, but unfortunately it's been corrupted by this funding and funding of campaigns. There's a much better way to do it. There could be a small amount of money given by every taxpayer to be dedicated to candidates.

Soft money will find its way and seep into the political system and corrode it, unless we plug every hole.

Five years ago, the Supreme Court, by a 5-4 decision in the Citizens United case told the richest people in America, "You already control the economy of the country. We are now going to let you control the political system as well".

It’s the people verses the special interests and I’m going to fight this out till the end.