Citizens United Decision Profoundly Affects Political Landscape

The Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling has indeed opened the floodgates for special interest money to be showered onto the political landscape. This analysis by the Center For Responsive Politics quantifies the statistical increase of political message funding now prevalent in our country on the part of unions and corporations who previously were restrained from such outlandish spending.
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/05/citizens-united-decision-profoundly-affects-political-landscape.html

Top findings of the Center's study include:

• The percentage of spending coming from groups that do not disclose their donors has risen from 1 percent to 47 percent since the 2006 midterm elections
• 501c non-profit spending increased from zero percent of total spending by outside groups in 2006 to 42 percent in 2010.
• Outside interest groups spent more on election season political advertising than party committees for the first time in at least two decades, besting party committees by about $105 million.
• The amount of independent expenditure and electioneering communication spending by outside groups has quadrupled since 2006.
• Seventy-two percent of political advertising spending by outside groups in 2010 came from sources that were prohibited from spending money in 2006