Political Interest groups

Why is my image of interest groups not very favorable?




I think my image of "certain" interest groups is not favorable; however I don't believe that opinion holds true for all interest groups. More times than not we see interest groups furthering political corruption. During the 2008 election, the pharmaceutical industry gave $135 million to Democrats while insurance giants gave $95 million. Those types of large contributions were used to buy up part of Obama's administrations future decisions, so to speak. Many other interest groups such as to automotive industry and the single largest donor, the US Chamber of Commerce also contributed large amounts of money to the Democratic party to buy their persuasion.



I went to the OpenSecrets.org website to take a further look into where the campaign candidates received their funding from. Obama received a large portion of his funding from individual contributors totalling $656,357,572 while John McCain received 199,275,171. I also looked into other types of interest groups that made contributions during the election namingly abortion pro-life group, which contributed heavily to the Republican party. While Abortion Pro Choice sent their monies to the Democratic party.



As a remember from the campaign speeches, it seems to me that interest groups that heavily contributed to a particular party had their view point choice as a focus during the campaign. By this ability to " buy a viewpoint", I think that interest group when involved in the politcal arena get intangled in corruption and cannot be view independently with this negative activity. It's unfair and it needs to become separate from politcs, but can it be? I don't think it can. But I do think that there are positive interest groups.



Two positive groups that come to mind are: the Southern Poverty Law center and BAMPAC- Black America's Politcal action Committe. The Southern Poverty Law Center was founded in 1971 and is a small civil right law firm. the Southern Poverty Law Center has worked diligently against hate groups such as white supremacists, skinheads, neo-nazis and other radical racist groups in an effort to protect miniorities. SPLC claims that supremacy groups rose by 54% in 2008 with the fear of increased immigrants and the successful campaign lead by Barack Obama.



The Black America's Political Action Committee created in 1994 has grown as one of America's leading Political Action Committees. It provides much needed financial and strategic assistance to candidates running for political office on all levels of government. BAMPAC is a non partisan federal PAC whose primary mission is to mobilize support for African American candidates and candidates generally who advocate a common sense approach in resolving the important issues facing America in the 21st century. This concludes the explanation of two positive interest groups.



Interest groups are defined as is an organized collection of people who seek to influence political decisions.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interest_group.



Interest groups help to bridge the gap between citizens and government, help raise public awareness on various issues, provide political officials with detailed information to help them make informed decisions and help insure that officials carry out their responsibilities. Interest groups can help convey a group of society's viewpoint and can also present this information to the government, congress and even the President. Interest groups also can serve as analyzers of issues, people that take a closer look at how the issue at hand is being treated.



The two types of interest groups are public and private interest groups. These areas can be broken down into subcategories into the following:

Special Interest Groups ( SIGs), Business Interest Groups, Labor Interest Groups, Agricultural Interest Groups, Consumer Interest Groups, Senior Citizen Interest Groups, Environmental Interest Groups, Professional Interest Groups, Single- Issue Interest Groups & Government Interest Groups. The interest groups that participate in American politcs are PACS or political action committees. These are independent groups, organized around a single issue or set of issues, that contribute money to political campaigns for U.S. Congress or the presidency. PACs are limited in the amounts they can contribute directly to candidates in federal elections. There are no restrictions, however, on the amounts PACs can spend independently to advocate a point of view or to urge the election of candidates to office. PACs today number in the thousands.



Interest groups are different from political parties in that they try ti influence the outcome of elections but do nto compete for office as a political party would. The also have a high level of organization. They are financed through contributions or memberships. Organizers of interest groups might use a multitude of varying communcation modes such as newsletters, emailing, conferences and postal mailings.



The most representative political party school of though is the Party's Still Strong School. I think that the Democratic party , for example, has become stronger than ever. I agree with Valley in that today's parties are service oriented. Obama's plan for our coutry is to put more money into service oriented projects to boost our economy just to name a few of the ways the party's are still going strong.