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This Corruption in Washington is Smothering America's Future
How do you regulate banks effectively, if the Senate is owned by Wall Street?
This week, a disaster hit the United States, and the after-shocks will be shaking and breaking global politics for years. It did not grab the same press attention as the fall of liberal Kennedy-licking Massachusetts to a pick-up truck Republican, or President Obama's first State of the Union address, or the possible break-up of Brangelina and their United Nations of adopted infants. But it took the single biggest problem dragging American politics towards brutality and dysfunction - and made it much, much worse. Yet it also showed the only path that Obama can now take to salvage his Presidency.
For more than a century, the US has slowly put some limits - too few, too feeble - on how much corporations can bribe, bully or intimidate politicians. On Tuesday, they were burned away in one whoosh. The Supreme Court ruled that corporations can suddenly run political adverts during an election campaign - and there is absolutely no limit on how many, or how much they can spend. So if you anger the investment bankers by supporting legislation to break up the too-big-to-fail banks, you will smack into a wall of 24/7 ads exposing your every flaw. If you displease oil companies by supporting legislation to deal with global warming, you will now be hit by a tsunami of advertising saying you are opposed to jobs and the American Way. If you rile the defence contractors by opposing the gargantuan war budget, you will face a smear-campaign calling you Soft on Terror.
Representative Alan Grayson says: "It basically institutionalises and legalises bribery on the largest scale imaginable. Corporations will now be able to reward the politicians that play ball with them - and beat to death the politicians that don't... You won't even hear any more about the Senator from Kansas. It'll be the Senator from General Electric or the Senator from Microsoft."
To understand the impact this will have, you need to grasp how smaller sums of corporate money have already hijacked American democracy. Let's look at a case that is simple and immediate and every American can see in front of them: healthcare. The United States is the only major industrialised democracy that doesn't guarantee healthcare for all its citizens. The result is that, according to a detailed study by Harvard University, some 45,000 Americans die needlessly every year. That's equivalent to 15 9/11s every year, or two Haitian earthquakes every decade.
This isn't because the American people like it this way. Gallup has found in polls for a decade now that two-thirds believe the government should guarantee care for every American: they are as good and decent and concerned for each other as any European. No: it is because private insurance companies make a fortune today out of a system that doesn't cover the profit-less poor, and can turn away the sickest people as "uninsurable". So they pay for politicians to keep the system broken. They fund the election campaigns of politicians on both sides of the aisle and employ an army of lobbyists, and for their part those politicians veto any system that doesn't serve their paymasters.
Look for example at Joe Lieberman, the former Democratic candidate for Vice-President. He has taken $448,066 in campaign contributions
from private healthcare companies while his wife raked in $2m as one of their chief lobbyists, and he has blocked any attempt in the Senate to break the stranglehold of the health insurance companies and broaden coverage.
The US political system now operates within a corporate cage. If you want to run for office, you have to take corporate cash - and so you have to serve corporate interests. Corporations are often blatant in their corruption: it's not unusual for them to give to both competing candidates in a Senate race, to ensure all sides are indebted to them. It has reached the point that lobbyists now often write the country's laws. Not metaphorically; literally. The former Republican congressman Walter Jones spoke out in disgust in 2006 when he found that drug company lobbyists were actually authoring the words of the Medicare prescription bill, and puppet-politicians were simply nodding it through.
But what happens if politicians are serving the short-term profit-hunger of corporations, and not the public interest? You only have to look at the shuttered shops outside your window for the answer. The banks were rapidly deregulated from the Eighties through the Noughties because their lobbyists paid politicians on all sides, and demanded their payback in rolled-back rules and tossed-away laws. As Senator Dick Durbin says simply: "The banks own the Senate," so they had to obey.
It is this corruption that has prevented Barack Obama from achieving anything substantial in his first year in office. How do you re-regulate the banks, if the Senate is owned by Wall Street? How do you launch a rapid transition away from oil and coal to wind and solar, if the fossil fuel industry owns Congress? How do you break with a grab-the-oil foreign policy if Big Oil provides the invitation that gets you into the party of American politics?
His attempt at healthcare reform is dying because he thought he could only get through the Senate a system that the giant healthcare corporations and drug companies pre-approved. So he promised to keep the ban on bringing cheap drugs down from Canada, he pledged not to bargain over prices, and he dumped the idea of having a public option that would make sure ordinary Americans could actually afford it. The result was a Quasimodo healthcare proposal so feeble and misshapen that even the people of Massachusetts turned away in disgust.
Yet the corporations that caused this crisis are now being given yet more power. Bizarrely, the Supreme Court has decided that corporations are "persons", so they have the "right" to speak during elections. But corporations are not people. Should they have the right to bear arms, or to vote? It would make as much sense. They are a legal fiction, invented by the state - and they can be fairly regulated to stop them devouring their creator. This is the same Supreme Court that ruled that the detainees at Guantanomo Bay are not "persons" under the constitution deserving basic protections. A court that says a living breathing human is less of a "persons" than Lockheed Martin has gone badly awry.
Obama now faces two paths - the Clinton road, or the FDR highway. After he lost his healthcare battle, Clinton decided to serve the corporate interests totally. He is the one who carried out the biggest roll-back of banking laws, and saw the largest explosion of inequality since the 1920s. Some of Obama's advisers are now nudging him down that path: the appalling anti-Keynesian pledge for a spending freeze on social programmes for the next three years to pay down the deficit is one of their triumphs.
But there is another way. Franklin Roosevelt began his Presidency trying to appease corporate interests - but he faced huge uproar and disgust at home when it became clear this left ordinary Americans stranded. He switched course. He turned his anger on "the malefactors of great wealth" and bragged: "I welcome the hatred... of the economic royalists." He put in place tough regulations that prevented economic disaster and spiralling inequality for three generations.
There were rare flashes of what Franklin Delano Obama would look like in his reaction to the Supreme Court decision. He said: "It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies, and other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americas." But he has spent far more time coddling those interests than taking them on. The great pressure of strikes and protests put on FDR hasn't yet arisen from a public dissipated into hopelessness by an appalling media that convinces them they are powerless and should wait passively for a Messiah.
Very little positive change can happen in the US until they clear out the temple of American democracy. In the State of the Union, Obama spent one minute on this problem, and proposed restrictions on lobbyists - but that's only the tiniest of baby steps. He evaded the bigger issue. If Americans want a democratic system, they have to pay for it - and that means fair state funding for political candidates. Candidates are essential for the system to work: you may as well begrudge paying for the polling booths, or the lever you pull. At the same time, the Supreme Court needs to be confronted: when the court tried to stymie the new deal, FDR tried to pack it with justices on the side of the people. Obama needs to be pressured by Americans to be as radical in democratising the Land of the Fee (CRCT).
None of the crises facing us all - from the global banking system to global warming - can be dealt with if a tiny number of super-rich corporations have a veto over every inch of progress. If Obama funks this challenge, he may as well put the US government
on e-Bay - and sell it to the highest bidder. How would we spot the difference?
- Posted in
103 Comments so far
Show AllI don't know if things are actually getting worse or if I am just following things more so I notice it more, or if it is some combination of the two. But it has gotten so bad that I can't watch most DC politicians or the president. I can't even watch the Sunday morning bobble head news shows anymore. I am just disgusted with them all. There all just a rich self-important, lying ruling class that seem to think they are entitled to all kinds of enrichments while they tell the average person to basically screw off.
It's great to have a site like CD where you can talk to real people and get a view from our perspective, not the perspective of the self entitled ruling elite.
Sunday morning news programs, like all corporate news, have been useless for a long time - I'm glad you've realized that. Try watching 'Democracy Now' on web or linktv for video news.
I watch Democracy Now every day, and get most of my news from the web. I basically watched the MSM news shows to see what was being fed to the masses, but I just cant watch them any more because I just cant take any more of the BS they spew.
"It is this corruption that has prevented Barack Obama from achieving anything substantial in his first year"
Not quite. BO is a part of the corruption; he's not "being prevented," but rather he's one of those that are doing the preventing. Why is it so hard for so many people to see this--to me it just seems obvious...
Indeed... One has to base their observations on facts. The facts indicate an egomaniac managed to co-op public desire for change into support for his candidacy through carefully chosen, well delivered speeches and a very strategic campaign; leading to the betrayal of that public and their return to disinterest and apathy.
Remember when Obama said 'I never campaigned for a public option?' That was clearly an out and out lie, and calls into question everything he campaigned on.
During the state of the union (paraphrasing): 'I didn't take on health care because it made for good politics' (audience laughter) - what a joke. He took on health care precisely for politics; without it, he could not have been elected.
He is a neo-liberal corporatist. It's clearly going to get worse from here; unless BO decides to completely changes his politics, but those are very, very long odds.
nick, "BO is a part of the corruption" - exactly.
"As Senator Dick Durbin says simply: 'The banks own the Senate,'" he could have simply continued "and the House of Representatives, and the White House, and the Supreme court"
I question the author's assertion that "after Bill Clinton lost on health care reform he started serving the corporations".
In reality, prior to his health care reform push, Clinton zealously promoted and passed NAFTA without even pretending to want to throw a few worker safety or environmental crumbs into the bill.
That's the sentence that caught my eye too. Hari continues to think BO is different. BO is a part of a system that has corrupted totally.
Eisenhower cued us to the fact that the U.S. is a military-industrial complex. If corporations represent the industrial side, the "military" includes the whole federal bureaucracy including the intelligence agencies. Our "military" has been calculating the compatibility of both foreign and domestic leaders with U.S. interests since the cold war began and it has not stopped with the fall of the USSR. Our U.S. military-industrial complex ceaselessly calculates who will work best with its plans and contingency plans for the years following an election abroad or at home. Then, our MIC does what it can to assure the election of the most favorable candidate. I have participated in these activities at home, during the first Jimmy Carter campaign. Carter was fixed into the presidency for the sake of the plans of the system. I helped set up Kissinger's rehearsal of President Ford to imply "Poland is free" in his debate with Carter because the system needed Carter to be president in order to finish off the Vietnam War and Watergate debacles of the Nixon-Ford administration. Obama has been rigged into the presidency by elements of the system, partly by influencing the states of Michigan and Florida to be lost to Hillary Clinton account those states' primary campaign "initiatives".
The MIC needs Obama as president now in order to absorb system damages developed by it during the Clinton and Bush presidencies. Money, not even corporate money, buys the presidency, although it certainly reduces the contestants to a small super-rich handful. The MIC does whatever it must do to get the president it feels can manage the different publics and interest groups, but an essentially MIC program is implemented administration after administration.
The U.S. presidential election process is rigged using a very circumscribed pool of contestants, set up events, revelations and orchestrated news coverage. Big money and media advertising campaigns are figured into the process by secret intelligence operations of which I have been a critical part.
Good observations but I would define the MIC more narrowly.
It includes what has been called the national security state: Pentagon, CIA, NSA and the alphabet soup of "intelligence" agencies.
Obama, with his control of the bully pulpit has the ability to begin the dismantling of this hideous cancer eating at the heart of America. But it would cost him his life. JFK, RFK, MLK understood this. They were willing to pay the price. Is he?
JFK, RFK and MLK were killed by the MIC. We are not going to change anything by waiting for another leader to stand up and be murdered. We, the people, need to take things into our own hands. So far SCOTUS has not given the corporations, persons that they are, the right to vote. So far that is our only tool left to make changes.
Face it. Our current Congress is corrupt to the bone. Nearly every single one of those elected officials is in the pay of the corporations. In the pay of the corporations and WORKING FOR THEM....not for you.
Any Congress person who did not support universal health care WITHOUT THE FOR PROFIT INSURANCE COMPANIES, and who voted for the bankster bailout and for the surge in Afghanistan MUST BE SENT INTO RETIREMENT. That person does not deserve your vote. You must not allow the billions the corporations spend to soak your brain into rancid mush. They can spend all they want---but you don't have to heed what they say---just the opposite! If you saw something on a TV advertisement it is false. Advice on TV is bad advice. Turn off that damn box and talk to your neighbors. Don't vote for either of the two corporate parties. Forget the Ds and the Rs they both want to F you. Vote 'minor' party or independent. Let's kick the corrupt out of our government! Now!!
"JFK, RFK and MLK were killed by the MIC." I suspect, but certainly cannot prove, that Senator Paul Wellstone should be included in this list. He was a true populist, and one whose star would certainly have risen by now given our current political climate.
Anyone who tries to revolt will be put in the fema camps. Why do you think they were built under Clinton? This transfer of wealth and corruptness of congress has long been planned. Our police WILL fight against us. Look at their history all the way back to the 90's and the WTO protest. Facism HAS come to America. We have been too dumbed down to realize it. A few of us here realize it.
wantrealdemocracy: I want real democracy too, and you're right on to say that it will come when citizens become aware that all the money that corporations own and that SCOTUS allows them as "persons" to spend on buying elections doesn't work if we the voters don't put our own votes for sale. You're totally right that voters have to (and there is every reason to believe they will) vote for a member of Congress, local county commissioner or President because of the money that a politician DOESNT have in the way of corporate campaign contributions. For this it takes two things: (1) candidates who run against the money by making opponents' corporate funding an issue in their campaigns; and (2) voters who recognize the corrosive effect of corporate control on our collective life and will vote against an incumbent or challenger who is the apparent tool of those corporate interests. It CAN be done, it MUST be done and it WILL be done, because otherwise there is nothing ahead of us but a corporate fascism. This time round it won't require mass marches on Washington to bring Barack Delano Obama into existence (or to vote him out of office)it will take a mass movement nothing more dramatic or violence-threatening than each person reclaiming his or her democratic citizenship in the polling booth.
I agree that only the people united can change the corruption in Washington D.C. I have stated for many years to support third party candidates. The Repugs and the Dem o rats are with very few exceptions nothing more than attorneys that represent big $$$$$! MLK,JFK,RFK,Wellstone were probably assassinated by the CIA, but getting another honest leader assassinated will not solve anything. A movement by millions of fed up Americans that is for the people;by the people; and of the people it seems to me, is what is needed to get our country back from the Military,Industrial,Wall Street,Congressional Complex.
But what did Ike do to rein in John Foster Dulles (Sec of State) and Alan Dulles (CIA) - of his administration - two of the top elite operatives in this country who were instrumental in helping the MIC gain a stranglehold over this country? Notice he - like others - didnt actually DO anything about the situation while in office.
Here is a sample from Wiki:
In 1953, Dulles became the first civilian Director of Central Intelligence, which had been formed as part of the National Security Act of 1947; earlier directors had been military officers. The Agency's covert operations were an important part of the Eisenhower administration's new Cold War national security policy known as the "New Look". Under Dulles's direction, the CIA created MK-Ultra, a top secret mind control research project which was managed by Sidney Gottlieb. Dulles also personally oversaw Operation Mockingbird, a program which influenced American media companies as part of the "New Look".
"But what did Ike do to rein in John Foster Dulles (Sec of State) and Alan Dulles (CIA) - of his administration - two of the top elite operatives in this country who were instrumental in helping the MIC gain a stranglehold over this country? Notice he - like others - didn't actually DO anything about the situation while in office." -- Kitaj
The point you raise is very important! Although he warned us, Eisenhower did nothing to rein in the MIC. At least, though, he did warn us! It's sort of like kicking the can down the street, instead of picking it up and throwing it in the trash, hoping the next guy will take care of it.
"The great pressure of strikes and protests put on FDR hasn't yet arisen from a public dissipated into hopelessness by an appalling media that convinces them they are powerless and should wait passively for a Messiah."
The elite have used this kind of terrorizing and pacifying text for a long time. Media takes over from the Bible in offering the masses a lucrative (for the elite) alternative to common sense.
So-called "left-wing" media is just as messiah-anticipating. Maybe more.
The SCOTUS decision has stunted any hope for real reform being forced up our craven politicians from below by the people and their actual wishes. it has stunted any hope for reining in the corruption of large corporations and trade groups. It has stunted any hope for a true democracy in the United States.
Unite and throw out the rascals. Unite and send a new amendment denying faux citizenship to corporations. Unite and make this truly a free, open, and democratic county instead of a oligarchy with a pet duolopy cozy with the MIC.
Unite and be true citizens.
Gary
PS BTW I am suggesting the name "The People" ("The People Party") for a new unity party to bring together the dozen or so "third-parties" that better represent the actual positions of the American people than the present duopoly. Imagine campaigning for "The People."
"So two cheers for democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. Two cheers are quite enough: there is no occasion to give three. Only Love the Beloved Republic deserves that."
-- E(dward) M(organ) Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy,'What I Believe'.
gdgoodman
Unite and throw out the rascals
Ah-Ha! On this we agree.
It will take more than a single decision by SCOTUS to stop the tide thats started, watch Rubio win in Florida, watch incumbents go down by the bucketful.
Unite and throw the rascals out is what a lot of people would like to do! From my perspective, only a strong coalition of conservatives and progressives that appeals to millions of people across party lines would have the power to do this, but there is enough anger that it could be done as long as the people's party would demand as its platform, honesty and integrity above all else and be all inclusive. But to play the devil's advocate: If a third party, of the people,by the people, and for the people ever attained any real power it would be demonized by the whore media. I can just see the headline on Foxy News: PEOPLE'S PARTY HAS ALLEDGED TIES TO AL-QAEDA!
Yep, Keep "the people". ... it is cool.
People unite you've nothing to lose but your Baby Boomin shoes.
Yeah, but hey, the Superbowl is coming up. Burger King had double cheeseburgers for one dollar. No shortage of dollar stores. Walmart is rolling back prices. And not just for me, but for everyone.
Your Nation's next Big Election, and most in between either a Republican or Democrat will win, and there you have it. It's be all the same speeches & same issues just like the same Burger King commercials, car commercials, Tv shows, movies, books, magazines, & radio.
Rush will still be Rush on the radio. The Native tribes will still be on the Reservations. People in the ghetto's & barrio's will still be in the ghetto's & barrio's. The homeless will probably still be homeless Everyone will still be going to the doctor, & dentist.
Baseball season roll around. So it will all be the same mundane boring world.
Days of the Tribes are long gone. This is how things are now.
As the years go by, more and more people will not be able to afford to see doctors and dentists. Business as usual can only go on for so long in this age of Peak Oil - actually Peak Everything - and climate change before we go over a cliff. Possibly 100 years from now, tribes will be back after industrial civilization is gone and humanity is reduced to about a billion people. One possible scenario for the future.
Kitaj:
Real Doctors work for home cooked meals: In the coming world of maybe only a billion people; many Doctors
Will do this. Many will be dead because they didn't.- just one scenario. Which one will it be? I doubt that I will live to see.
And I hope my Children will. Life will find a way. A new Boss Species may arise.
But I bet it doesn't look like Ronald McDonald: soon to be elected Chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee.
Obama now faces two paths - the Clinton road, or the FDR highway.
-------------
Obama is shrewd.
He'll give us the smash-mouth rhetoric of FDR combined with the backstage triangulation of Clinton.
Looks like a clear pattern to me" A Nephew of mine once called this kind of dealing "A Master Cross". We could see a new angle emerging in "politrics" reminds me of a line from a poem, "one has not observed life carefully if he has not seen the hand that kills quietly". Mr. Obama is quite the counter-puncher. My patience however, is wearing thin with this "half a loaf" business.
Frankly, if anyone really beklieves there will be much difference in the amount of corporate money to Washington, the amount of money being spent to push legislation one way or the other, you simply haven't been paying attention.
If Congress simply passed a law that required immediate disclosure and from original sources, it would do more than anything to quash corporate power.
You do not need a sledge hammer when a fly swatter will do.
Corruption is the biggest single problem in the world today. In the US there is as much or more corruption than elsewhere but it is 'legal' corruption, legislated by the very corrupt politicians who benefit.
Free speech ought to be seen as communication by individuals who can speak, write, etc. In fact, the 'speech' by a corporation reflects only the views of its power elite and builds in the misleading view that all of its elements agree. Thus, if a major player who also owns major insurance industry shares (such as Warren Buffett) opposes single payer, which would greatly benefit GM, speaks against single payer it builds in a conflict of interest with his management responsibility (hopefully eventually resulting in lawsuits).
OOOOOOOO! OOOOO! OOOOO! I know the answer to this one!
Get rid of the Senate. There is absolutely no reson for it to exist, (with the exception of killing any legislation for the people that might make it through the corrupted House.) Next impeach those five right wing appointed Supreme Court Judges for treason to the people of the USA. That would surely be a good start towards fixing this mess we're in. And maybe even give us a chance at regulating this corrupt political class of corporate thieves.
"It is this corruption that has prevented Barack Obama from achieving anything substantial in his first year in office. How do you re-regulate the banks, if the Senate is owned by Wall Street?"
Apparently, Johann Hari you missed the part that Mr. Obama received more money from Wall Street than any other candidate. He is a bought and paid for shill.
This is Mr. Obama's proscription of help for the home owner.
http://gregfielding.housingstorm.com/2010/01/27/why-obama-wants-high-home-prices/?source=patrick.net
"That’s why we’re working to lift the value of a family’s single largest investment – their home. The steps we took last year to shore up the housing market have allowed millions of Americans to take out new loans and save an average of $1,500 on mortgage payments." From his State of the Union address, Jan. 27,2010.
This is what got us into the economic problems of the housing bubble. But, he wants to do it again.
Mr. Obama is completely irresponsible.
Why the constant reiteration of how daring and visionary FDR was, when the problem at hand is Obama?
Stop these useless comparisons. Obama never was and never will be "an FDR". Roosevelt may have had no legs, but he had balls. Obama has legas, but, you know...let's face it.
"Why the constant reiteration of how daring and visionary FDR was, when the problem at hand is Obama?" -- gladtobeincanada
I agree! In fact, I just finished writing a very detailed letter to one of my friends in the Midwest who is still waiting/hoping for Obama to turn into FDR. And, she was also completely immersed in the Republican response to Obama's speech. I reminded her that the Republicans still only have 41 votes in the senate. As the months have passed, I can't begin to tell you how many similar letters I have sent outlining this very same issue. No matter how many times I have the conversation, it seems that I have to reiterate, again and again, the very same facts.
I also reminded my very good friend that Michelle Obama is NOT, and will NOT turn into Eleanor Roosevelt, who embodied a deep humanity, bringing the stories, and the people's concerns, home to FDR.
She did do a commercial for red cross in haiti - although I've heard many charities don't end up going to the poor where needed in haiti - red cross is mostly likely one of the offenders here, and red cross is the biggest and one of the most bloated charities anywhere - there are many better ones, imo, especially for haiti.
What ever happened to the 'organic garden' - did they put in new soil after it was found the landfill soil was supposed to by safe, but was actually not only not organic, but absolutely toxic?
Hi Kay! I also wrote dozens of detailed letters in tiny handwriting and red ink to my very very good friend in the Northeast, reminding her about what she is mistaken about. Its funny, now she is blocking my phone calls, and not just the 3 a.m. ones! But that's ok because I know I am doing my job!
Lex: Just when I think some of my friends have turned the corner, Obama gives another speech, and away they go again! However, at least, by now, most of my friends are replying to my e-mails. There was a time, soon after the election, when I received no replies at all -- i.e., when I addressed Obama's choice of economic advisers, the lack of progressives integrated into his cabinet, etc.
Remember, folks, the ACLU supported this court decision. It is a liberal decision because it supports "freedom" -- or what passes for freedom anyway. If an individual's opinions are shaped by media, and media is a product of corporations, then individual persons are corporations and corporations are individual persons. No one can distinguish between them by any meaningful criteria.
See the other as Narcissus sees him and enjoy the freedom of Narcissus -- or remain an other on the outside, unable to enjoy the pleasures and freedoms of Narcissus because of seeing that the only other he sees is his own reflection.
There are some splits at the aclu about that - but glen greenwald somewhat supports it also. Regardless, the money needs to be taken out of politics..
Odd as it might sound we're probably better off leaving this thoroughly corrupt system in place. At least this gargantuan, petrified monolith of a political apparatus does manages to lumber one ear-splitting step at a time on occasion. Any attempts to seriously reform it and we might be looking at a catastrophe in this country the likes of which would make the French Revolution seem like a poetry reading. Sometimes 1/10 a pie is better than no pie at all. Smacks of defeatism, I know, but there are no reasonable alternatives.
You are clinging to crumbs that will mold and disintegrate. Whatever your fears about what could happen, they will happen anyway. The US Gov't has been looted to the point of bankruptcy.
It is better to deal with trouble straight on and take the initiative, rather that cower in fear. What's coming will definitely make The French Revolution (and Mad Max) look like a poetry reading but ignoring it won't make it go away. Think: "Peace In Our Time"--Neville Chamberlain
Nothing will EVER change until we implement a system of PUBLICLY funded elections. Anything less is just more corruption.
A system that should be set up that gives every serious candidate a certain amount of money, set for each race. No gifts, no free jet trips, no assistance at all. No private money, PERIOD. Not yours, mine, ANY corporation's, the candidate's, NONE. Any private money found in any candidate's fund would result in jail time for BOTH parties involved. NO exceptions.
Free and equal air time for each candidate is to be allotted as a part of the requirement for broadcasting on EITHER cable or over the air. Consider it their cost of the game.
Any candidate who spends too much too quickly and disappears before the election is someone you don't want in office anyway. And if they don't spend enough and don't get their message out, then they are also someone you don't want in office. Their conduct during the election would be a true example of how they would run the office.
It's really easy, and doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. And it would be FAR cheaper than we do it now, as well as being free of corruption if policed properly. Plus, I wouldn't mind watching several politicians or wannabe politicians go to jail. It might even restore some belief in the system and the gov't.
-"doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. And it would be FAR cheaper than we do it now, as well as being free of corruption if policed properly"
This comes up against the same problem as universal health care in the US doesn't it? You have to convince people that a fair election is a right, a necessity. Just as with the healthcare debate, you must win the argument that medical care is a right, a prerequisite for a healthy society, against those that think that it is reserved for those who can afford it.
Maybe more emphesis on what the consequences will be of having a diseased and deceived demographic.
Here's my question. How does one decide who is a "serious" candidate? While I like the idea of publicly financed elections, the idea that a state or local gov't will have to allocate scarce resources makes me nervous.
I heard good things about the Arizona plan, heard John McCain say he mostly liked it but there were some problems, and haven't heard much since. Any updates out there?
You do realize people have been using public financing all over the world for years, right? Just like single payer. It is not rocket science.
Often "scarce" resources are allocated according to how many votes a party, or candidate got in the election. Money is allocated on the basis of public support.
Initially at least, in the US, the Dems and Repubs would get the lion's share of the money of course, but at least it would cut out much of the corruption. In time, parties like the Greens, having consistently won a share of the vote, would be able to at least begin to compete in the election-ad market.
It's not hard.
Proportional allocating of seats in congress would go some way to facilitating third party and special interest political representation.
How about having voting on a Saturday so all have the opportunity to vote without having to beg the boss for time off.
Compulsory voting will help stop the imbalance of influence by special interest groups.
Stop secret voting in congress, this would facilitate, but regretfully not ensure, conscience voting.
Less power to party whips, this would give more power to back benchers.
As said above, only public financing of election campaigns.
Of course it's naive to think that public financing of elections and other anti-corruption and fairness measures would stop influence but it's a start.
The systems used all over the world were implemented before the corporate fascist state was so powerful. I'd rather see this coupled with an Instant Runoff Voting system, then the public support would more easily be measured. In Arizona I thought they had to have so many signatures and $5 from each signer. Overall, I guess I see this system as so dysfunctional that simplicity is anathema.
To switch to publically financed elections would take an act of Congress and what politician in his or her greedy little minds would agree to pass such a bill? Would it be possible to have a people's referendum at the state level for such move and if successful a move to the federal level? Just asking.........
It could be done by an article V convention but congress had ignored this petition about 50 times. The problem is lawlessness and the denial of people's rights such as the right to call for a convention.
Forget the idea of a Constitutional Convention unless your looking to turn over the remainder of our country to the coporations! When you hold such a convention nothing is protected and can be changed by a very small amount of people gaming the system. If you want to change the Constitution stick with the amendment process. It is safer for what is left of our Constitution.
"Franklin Delano Obama" If there is one thing the state of the union showed - it's that BO will never be FDR; no more than he will be MLK. BO is showing himself to be another self-serving, egomaniacal politician.