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Most Americans are clueless about just how much government makes their lives bearable. When they think of government, they often think about high-profile programs like the Affordable Care Act -- as opposed, say, to how water comes out when they turn the faucet on. In fact, waterworks may be the single best example of a public good that people take totally for granted. 

When the McCutcheon ruling came down I was sitting in a room with several young African American men and women East Harlem talking about their struggles with employment in a world they said was stacked against them. They constantly talked about race, class, and power—but ultimately believed they couldn’t do much about it. All too often in fact, they shrugged off the notion that they any agency to change the system, with one guy noting, “we’ve just gotten the short end of the stick.”

If you're looking to buy a home in nearly any metro area on either coast of America, you know that the real estate boom never actually ended. Sure, prices fell a bit here and there, but the cost of buying a place is still way higher than it was before the boom -- and, for many people, prohibitively high. 

The Supreme Court on Wednesday continued its crusade to knock down all barriers to the distorting power of money on American elections. In the court’s most significant campaign-finance ruling since Citizens United in 2010, five justices voted to eliminate sensible and long-established contribution limits to federal political campaigns.

On Wednesday, April 2, the United States Supreme Court ruled that any cap on the overall amount a person can spend to influence an election is unconstitutional. Following on the heels of the court's previous decision in Citizens United, the McCutcheon ruling will allow unlimited spending to influence our nation's political process. [...]

The last two weeks have further intensified the pernicious effect of the dominance of the donor class on the interests of most Americans.

Yesterday, by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court struck the aggregate limits on the amount a wealthy individual can give directly to favored candidates, parties, and committees that were challenged in McCutcheon v. FEC. This decision marks a stunning reversal of Buckley v. Valeo, the seminal campaign finance case that provided the analytical framework for our current jurisprudence.