From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/03/al-gore-us-democracy-hacked
Former VP tells Andrew Marr Show the internet provides a means to rekindle democracy and purge it of corporate influence
Matthew Weaver
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 3 February 2013
US democracy has been “hacked” by big business and needs to be reclaimed using the power of the internet to hold politicians to account, according to former US vice-president Al Gore.
Offering a blunt assessment of the extent to which private companies influence decision-making in the US, he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: “American politics has fallen into a state of disrepair,” in an interview to mark the publication of his new book, The Future.
Gore added: “It can be fixed, but we need to recognise that our democracy has been hacked … It has been taken over … and is being operated for purposes other than those for which it was intended.”
In the interview, Gore alluded to a 2010 US supreme court decision that banned restrictions on political donations by corporations in the name of free speech.
He agreed that US politics hasd become more divisive, saying: “Certainly the level of partisanship and vitriol has been growing. And I think it is directly connected to the influence of big money – anonymous contributors, corporations pretending to be people and pursuing their business plans in the guise of politics and encouraging many politicians to say things and do things that would not have been seen in the best interests of the public in years past.”
Gore said his own political ambitions had switched from trying to gain elected office to influencing events from the outside.
He said: “I think you can change [politics] from the outside as well. I think a grassroots movement to demand that politics be opened up, and the role of money be diminished, is really more needed now than anything else.”
Continue reading at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/03/al-gore-us-democracy-hacked
