The biggest problem facing this country is not gay marriage, illegal immigration or terrorism. It it is the existence of political action committees.

In case you did not know, a PAC is an organization that raises and spends money to elect or to defeat candidates. They can come in the form of labor groups, specific ideologies, individual for-profit corporations and even industry associations. The funds PACs raise to be donated to individual candidates or political parties must legally come from outside contributions; but recently, after the Supreme Court case Citizens United vs. FEC, corporations have been given the power to spend unlimited funds from their general coffers on advertisements in favor or opposition of any one candidate.

Let’s look at some specifics:

In 2008, Barack Obama raised almost $779 million. The biggest contributions by far came from PACs. Here are just a few: Goldman Sachs donated $1 million; Google donated $815,000; Time Warner (the corporate conglomeration that owns media outlets such as CNN, Time Magazine, HBO and many others) donated $625,000; General Electric (the corporate conglomeration that owns half of NBC Universal and dabbles in everything from appliances to oil and gas) donated $530,000.

The biggest contributions, in 2008, to Republican State Rep. Dave Deyoe’s campaign also were PACs. Here again are just a few: Lincolnway Energy PAC donated $1,000; Iowa Farm Bureau Federation PAC donated $1,000; and Monsanto Citizenship Fund donated more than $250.

Even city elections are not immune from PACs, albeit on a much smaller scale. One of the biggest controversies in Ames politics is land development: The fight seems to be between those who believe in basic smart growth principles and limiting sprawl, and those who are more business-friendly (which include the land developers, the Realtors and home builders). The candidate espousing more business-friendly ideas tends to get money from the two PACs that I have found to be in play — the Iowa Realtors PAC and the Iowa Homebuilders PAC.

Moreover, by doing a simple search of local real estate agency websites, one will find that many city council candidates in Ames, at least in the last few elections, who support business-friendly policies get the majority of their money either from the two aforementioned PACs or individual donations from land developers and/or real estate agents.

Ultimately, the amount of PAC money raised by each candidate — for city, state and national elections — tends to be less than that raised from individuals. Nevertheless, it is often a large percentage of the winning candidate’s total contributions. Therein lies the problem: It should all come from individual donations.

Now, every PAC is going to say, “Well, we donated to that candidate because they advocated for our cause, not to bribe them.” Even if this were always true (which it isn’t, since many PACs end up giving to both Democrats and Republicans vying for the same seat), whenever a politician, while contemplating a vote or decision that affects one of their corporate donors, has to choose between a corporation and the public interest, our democracy is thwarted. Whenever the decision of a politician is influenced even the tiniest bit, whenever a politician thinks to him or herself, “If I do not vote or act in favor of corporate donor X, then they might donate, or donate more, to my opponent next time,” then our democracy is thwarted. And unfortunately, this is not the only troubling aspect.

There is also a problem concerning the suppression of ideas: How can all viewpoints be sufficiently heard if corporations prop up only two candidates for each election?

Elections need to be pure. We need to minimize the generally excessive amount of money in our elections; we need to lessen the degree of corporate influence in our government. We need to criminalize PACs. After all, what possible good can result from Goldman Sachs donating $1 million to Barack Obama, or Lincolnway Energy donating $1,000 to Dave Deyoe?