Thinking Critically About Global Issues, Outline Example

Introduction

• While Super PACs are supposed to be committee driven, they are typically used by political organizations to provide monetary support to different political agendas, which     serves as a legal but not ethical form of gaining power in the United States
• Super PACs allow their committees to collect limitless funds to support political and social ideologies
• This practice is responsible for providing the rich with a disproportionate amount of power in politics
• Super PACs allow members of the general public to donate money greater than the legal limit to political candidates
• Super PACs have little legal oversight
• While Super PAC funds cannot be directly contributed to politicians, the money can be used to influence legislation in the form of lobbying and other activities
• The PowerPoint presentation will discuss the negative consequences of Super PACs and demonstrate why their use must be modified as a consequence of how they are used unethically in modern politic

This practice is responsible for providing the rich with a disproportionate amount of power in politics

• Super PACs have the power to raise limitless amounts of funds from various unions, associations, corporations, and the general public, and then donate unlimited sums of money to openly campaign for or against any political candidate (PACS, n.d.)
• This is considered to be unethical because donation limits are set to ensure that wealth is not a primary determining factor of election results
• Based on FEC rules the committee is to report funds on a monthly or quarterly basis
• This allows the different committees to change between the two reporting requirements, often disguising the total amount of money earned by the group

Super PACs allow members of the general public to donate money greater than the legal limit to political candidates

• The modern use of Super PACs have resulted in more than $350 million dollars have been collected and donated to political figures
• This helps alter the results of elections in addition to supporting biased legislation
• Separate Segregated Funds (SSFs) are constructed by organizations, trade associations, or corporations and are typically created to promote their ability to conduct their trade
• Large contributions are made on the behalf of these organizations to promote and secure future business, which indicates that money is being used to achieve personal means

Super PACs have little legal oversight

• Super PACs are not overseen by regulation and can collect funds from any company or the general public without legal oversight
• This enables the ability of money to control politics

While Super PAC funds cannot be directly contributed to politicians, the money can be used to influence legislation in the form of lobbying and other activities

• Since Super PACs are able to generate political results, the country will continue to see super PACs supporting agendas and working to affluence big corporations to support their personal cause
• Most of the money raised to influence the election and events after the election involves influencing the legislature to pass additional laws (Andy, 2012)

The Ethics of Super PACs

• Most ethical models define moral actions are those that benefit the greatest number of people
• Since Super PACs are contributed to by a small number of people and the general public often does not share the views of these contributors, Super PACs can be considered to be a violation of utilitarian ethics
• Super PACs are in place to provide political power to a small group of individuals on the basis of monetary means; the poor are unable to exert this political influence in the same manner and Super PACs are therefore not representative of the interests of the whole population
• It would be reasonable to fight this power struggle by no longer allowing Super PACs in favor of increased use of PACs
• PACs have more limits that would make their actions more attainable for all members of the public
• Unlike Super PACs, PACs are well-regulated and the government would therefore be able to identify and disband practices that it finds to contradict the interest of the general public (Pillow, 2013)