The United States has been engaged in a century-old conflict birthed by the threat of oligarchic rule and the plight of the working class, which to this day continues to teeter between poverty and middle-class status. This 100-year-old conflict started with Theodore Roosevelt’s presidential campaign of 1904, when Roosevelt came under fire by the democratic party after accepting corporate contributions to fund his campaign. In light of this opposition, President Roosevelt called for a comprehensive solution to campaign financing:

"The need for collecting large campaign funds would vanish if congress provided an appropriation for the proper and legitimate expenses of each of the great national parties, an appropriation ample enough to meet the necessity for thorough organization and machinery, which requires a large expenditure of money (Thompson, "The Price of Public Money")."

In spite of congress having responded to Roosevelt’s challenge by introducing and enacting the Tillman Act of 1907, plus the subsequent Acts that followed (the Taft-Hartley Labor Act of 1947 and the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) of 1971), the 2010 Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of Citizens United essentially reversed the efforts made for over a hundred years that helped ensure the preservation of our democracy in earnest attempt to prevent corruption from ever occurring within our government. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, along with the removal of the Glass-Steagall Act, created a ubiquitous political climate polluted with pervasive corruption and rotten politicians.

We have precedent during the Great Depression that if you put more money back into the pockets of the working middle class and endow them with more liberties, rights, value, and power, you will stimulate a depressed economy, regain the trust of the American people, rebuild a crumbling infrastructure and re-engage people in the political process. Instead, we are confronted with an archaic system designed to create social divides in order to distract people from unifying and organizing in order to maintain power and possession over property and people’s bodies; all in the name of [crony] Capitalism.

Just as the government had the authority to pass policy that deregulated campaign finance in the past, it has a fundamental responsibility to its constituents to reform and regulate our current corrupt campaign finance system. As the DNC leaks begins to unveil the ugly truth behind the DNC's smokescreen of a system rigged by the rich and powerful, it is becoming harder to ignore the visceral corruption that has permeated our democracy. Furthermore, according to a study done by Princeton, research has shown that public opinion has had no effect/impact on policies passed in Congress from 1981-2002.

Clearly the median citizen or “median voter”...does not do well when put up against economic elites and organized interest groups…[b]y contrast, economic elites are estimated to have a quite substantial, highly significant, independent impact on policy (Gilens and Page, 9).

This graph shows direct connections of economic growth for the economic elite from policies passed like Citizens United:

The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence...not only do ordinary citizens not have uniquely substantial power over policy decisions, they have little or no independent influence on policy at all...our results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination.

This study also puts to rest any claim that unlimited spending by corporations towards political contributions has no effect on policies written and passed by the elected officials corporations donate (or more accurately, bribe) to. Money in politics has corrupted our democracy and has been replaced by an oligarchy run by the “economic-elite.” This study is a clear indication that having given corporations an identity - citizenship, if you will - and by extension allowing cash given by these corporations the power and protection of the First Amendment right, has created a false understanding of speech and citizenship. In essence, corporations are now viewed as people and cash as speech, creating an unnatural and unsafe dependency on corporate donations. Members of congress can now receive huge amounts of money without these monies being considered gifts. These “gifts” are now a bribe for loyalty and a transaction that gives these corporations more power than the middle, working-class American citizen. This obviously gives a significant disadvantage to the working class citizen, given not everyone owns their own corporation and has millions of dollars to just casually give to a politician in exchange for their loyalty. Loyalty is no longer gained or earned in America, it’s now bought. To add further insult to injury, it now seems politicians have grown a sense of entitlement, feeling as if they’re naturally entitled to more and worth more than their constituents; people that elected them into office in the first place.

We have also seen insurgent groups on both sides of the political spectrum rise and disrupt the system by supporting presidential candidates that are considered "outsiders", such as Trump and Sanders, for the simple reason that neither candidate received campaign donations from super-PACS during the primaries. This proves that unlimited, unregulated money spent on political campaigns will not only push people away, but that it leads to distrust in members of congress that do receive money from big corporations. This is no coincidence. Thanks to technology and the birth to the internet, people have become much more informed about what's going on in the world. This is especially true with the Generation X and the millennial generations, who obtain the majority of their information online. What's both laughable and infuriating, however, is that mainstream media commentators and pundits claim millennials and poor people are just entitled, lazy and don’t know what it means to earn their keep; and instead, expect hand-outs and ultimately are the cause of the country’s problems. History, however, suggests otherwise: it's corporations and the economic elites that are constantly given handouts and feel entitled to these handouts; the economic elite, the politicians they buy, and the mainstream media networks they're in bed with are responsible for the country's problems, and are responsible for the creation of Trump and his extreme right-winged supporters. It almost seems to bother these elites that millennials are smart and more informed, and by extension don’t just sit there, quietly and obediently taking orders, grateful for the scraps we are allowed to have. Millennials challenge the system. This resistance from the old-world order of patronizing american politics is just another form of social control and another way to project the level of utter incompetence and lack of accountability by our elected officials and instead blame someone younger and more vulnerable than them: typical bully behavior. We still live in a monarchy, just in the guise of democracy.

People with money and power are above the law, and the middle working class is constantly burdened by these oligarchs that go unchallenged and unchecked. What will be the consequence of not reforming our campaign finance system? Will things get so bad that the corruption that currently exists in our government will eventually lead to a revolt? Some say that we've already witnessed a corporate coup d’etat; will Trump elected as president be the final straw that breaks the camel's back? Money in politics has come at the highest price: people’s lives. It is against the very central philosophy that drove our founding fathers to come together and form a covenant that would allow people the right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”; the core of our constitution.

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"