My Essential Question

 Examine and explain how large contributions by corporations and wealthy individuals to politicians influence laws, political decisions, campaigns, and my rights as a citizen, and evaluate the level of power large contributors hold compared to average citizens like me in recent and past decades? Report whether my research changed my views and plans, and predict the effect it could have on my political campaign if I run for office.

I first learned about Political Action Committees first semester of my junior year in AP Government, since that first lesson I have been interested in the role money has in government. I have never really taken the time to thoroughly research the subject, most of what I know has been from class or from looking stuff up after watching The Colbert Report. However this project gives me an excuse to finally find out more about how money shapes our society especially in recent years and just how deep of a hole we're in. What makes me most excited is the potential of what I could do with the knowledge from this research. Hopefully I will be able to find out things that aren't publicly known and I will be able to inform about and if I'm super lucky discover some corruption or surprising lack of corruption in Politics. Many people are oblivious to how much political contributions are influencing our country and the amount of power these contributors have and finding answers to my question, will hopefully enlighten enough people to encourage them to make a change. Another reason I'm excited is because I'm a very curious person and the amount of investigation opportunities researching this project will offer will make me feel like a secret agent/journalist, which were two careers I used to be interested in, plus ease my mind. I thought a lot about how to word my question so that it would show most of what I wanted to discover through my project. I believe that I created a question that meets my needs as best as I could do without it getting too lengthy or confusing. My main goal is to find out who is controlling our country (people or money?) and I'm confident my question will satisfy that goal. Rubric