Money and US elections

From The Saturday Evening Post:

In 2008 Barack Obama, a longtime proponent of campaign-finance reform, did so well at raising funds that he broke a pledge and renounced public financing, so that there would be no limit on his fundraising. He spent a record $745 million winning the presidency. Then in 2010 came the Supreme Court’s notorious Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision. That ruled that there could be no limit on “independent expenditures,” for they amounted to “political speech” protected by the First Amendment. As a result of that, the super PAC was born. The amount of outside money spent on presidential elections went up 164 percent between 2004 and 2008 and another 135 percent by 2012.