Everyone I know is sick of election season. They hate it with an unholy passion whether you’re “red”, “blue”, or “other”. We all want it changed, and it would be fantastic if the billions upon billions of dollars blown on campaigns instead went to worker salaries, or investment in the company, or stayed in the individual’s piggy bank. Same with the revolving door of lobbyists and Federal employees. We all win if this is scaled back to say… each Congressional candidate gets the same block of time on tv/radio/Internet banner ads (they’re all done together so there’s exact fairness) and is paid for by an election fund. And very SMALL election fund.
Suddenly… we all become equal again. One voice one vote. Koch Brothers & Sheldon Adelson plow money into politics like they’ll die if they don’t win. What if the Koch Brothers spent that money to clean up their dirty petroleum industry, made the United States a cleaner, healthier place to live? The government of the United States is supposed to be “by the people for the people”. Right now it is “by the corporation and/or lobby group for the corporation”, because the middle class and poor exceedingly get docked over by our government. The greatest part of this is there would no longer be these ridiculous “fund-raising” campaigns. Our elected officials spend way more time fund raising and running for office than they do getting anything done WHILE in office. It’s pathetic. If they worked in a factory their pathetic output would get them fired faster than snot out of a sneeze.
So who’s against this? And can we, the people, over-rule the morons in office to force this to happen?
Oh I am firmly in favor of having all elections publicly funded, with no private money allowed. Hell having the entire pool of election money being funded from the federal budget would save us money in a lot of obvious, and not so obvious, ways.
But as pointed out the Koch brothers and others of their ilk would never allow that. They will always buy enough votes to ensure that never happens. Welcome to the oligarchy.
Revokable terms would be best IMO, along with timesheets and other strict accounting that shows hours worked (fundraising does not count)
So they not only need to get the vote, they must ‘keep the job’ right now we have weak or missing mechanisms to flat out fire politicians and no clear way to measure efficiency or time management. We can’t be expected to manage their performance without tools.
This will also never ever happen, but whatever, it’d be nice.
That is also in part because actual real journalism has been cut out in favor of glossy news entertainment. Most people don’t know where to get good information to be an informed voter, since the papers and news programs aren’t doing their damn jobs.
But reduce the amount of private money out there and the voices of those who do actually inform ourselves can get louder, as there is less noise for our signal to break through.
I never claimed getting private money out would solve all problems, just the one, and that one being how beholden politicians are to money. Getting a better breed of voters to the polls is another issue entirely.
Yes x1000. I suspect in your American system it is too late to turn back the clock on this, it would take a pretty seismic (revolutionary even) shift to give your Democracy back. What with the War on Terror et all, there is simply too much money at stake to let Democracy takes it’s true course. The positive side of this is that it has given the rest of the world a good insight into how a Democracy gets derailed to serve the richest, so others do have a heads up on what to look out for.
For the good people of the Plutocratic USA, probably the best method is to play the game well, get into positions of actual power, then make the legal changes that will be need to topple the Elite. Something like that. Certainly tens of thousands of ‘coloured’ people queuing to use electronic voting machines that often won’t work/have glitches etc, is not going to be enough, not now.
Term limits empower the governor and the state bureaucracy. And it would be even worse at the Federal level. The president is powerful enough as it is.
[quote="
“Jpinard’”]
Right now it is “by the corporation and/or lobby group for the corporation”, because the middle class and poor exceedingly get docked over by our government.
[/quote]
Corporations are influential because of the money, yes, but it’s also a function of their policy shops. They retain experts whose sole purpose is to advise Congress. That’s invaluable for legislators, they rarely have the inhouse expertise they need to understand the issue of the day. Even if you imposed a blanket ban on corporate contributions (assuming it passed constiutional muster) corporations would still retain incredible influence in Washington.
because the middle class and poor exceedingly get docked over by our government.
This is an admittedly common complaint. Money isn’t going to the poor or middle class because corporate lobbying is getting in the way.
I think that’s off point though. Most conservatives genuinely disapprove of these sorts of money transfers. It has little to do with lobbying and quite a lot to do with ideology.
That’s debatable. We talk like we take care of veterans, but when it comes to actually treating them like we have historically, we tend to balk at giving them benefits beyond ass kissing and lip service.
“Thanks for your service, no you can’t have the same benefits we gave people back in the 70’s that would cost money. But you’re a hero. Enjoy your PTSD. By the way could you fight in two wars at once and get redeployed non-stop until you break? Cause we aren’t going to institute a draft or anything, then people might complain about all these wars we’re getting in.”
True, but in terms of getting the checks out and not cutting things openly, that’s pretty much one of the most sacred cows out there.
That said, at least on the AF side there’s some movement towards reducing pensions, but the AF is the pickiest of the branches when it comes to people.
Seemed like an appropriate thread title to resurrect for this story.
The dark money method of campaigning has become so ingrained in the system that it’s just business as usual for everyone. I’d give serious consideration to any candidate, from President down to local dog catcher, who was serious about putting in some real exposure laws and regulations.
Yes, the House passed this, but they knew it would never pass the Senate. I’d be unsurprised to find that, if 2020 puts Democrats in control of both houses and the White House, that they pass either nothing or a very watered-down version that leaves the dark money in place.
Staffed by very smart, effective folks. Their leader and I led the effort to pass the first state level full public financing of elections law at the ballot box in Maine in 1997. It is called Clean Elections and it spawned other successful initiatives in MA [thought the Speaker refused to fund it] and in AZ at at the municipal level.
It was an idea before its time, and folks laughed at me when I was talking about doing this in the 90s, but then we went out and collected over 65,000 petition signatures in one day and folks took notice. Then we passed it by initiative and folks really took notice. We had to fight off legal challenges in the federal district court and won on appeal. Mainers have been fighting efforts to undermine and repeal the law legislatively for 19 years. They just don’t have any quit in 'em.
It is not a silver bullet but it is an important step in reigning in the influence of big, self-interested money in politics.
The rise of the internet and small dollar fundraising has now really changed the game.
Frederick Douglass got it right, "If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation … want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
