Like most of you Ive given a lot of thought to possible solutions to our broken democracy. Unequal justice is just one of the many manifestations of the broken political system that we have and obviously theres no easy solution. Im sure most people would consider what Ive come up with as an unrealistic Polyanna concept, but I hope youll read it and think about it anyway. If you find it has merit I hope youll re-post it wherever you feel its appropriate. This idea is one of 100% publicly funded campaigns with no private funding allowed. Yes, I know it must sound incredibly naïve to propose such a far reaching and seemingly improbable idea. Im not naïve enough to believe that either the Democratic or Republican parties would be just thrilled to adopt such an idea in the party platform. In fact I believe that at best it would have to be shoved down their throats while they were kicking and screaming. BUT I do believe that with 80+% of Americans unhappy about Citizens United there is a huge audience on both sides of the political aisle who would be interested enough to listen. With enough debate, it could be that a majority of Americans could even get behind such an idea. Doubtless a LOT of money would be spent by wealthy and corporate interests to oppose such an idea, but that doesnt necessarily mean that opposition would prevail. I actually have some very conservative friends who are already enthusiastic about this. The details are below, but I am only giving them as an example of how such a thing could be implemented practically speaking. Id love to hear about alternatives which could be even better. But MOSTLY I would love to hear ideas about how we could possibly give this idea legs such that Americans can begin talking about it well in advance of the next election. That would be necessary because without this concept as a lynchpin of a party platform DURING an election there would be no way that politicians would follow through on promises of reform. At best anything passed would be watered down and toothless as all previous attempts have been. Both the problem of the proverbial eternal campaign and also corruption in politics are mainly fed by the need to obtain contributions from donors. The concept of term limits has in the past year or more become quite a popular one with many Americans, but I dont really see that this would accomplish much positive. It might even make the situation of competition for campaign funds worse, and make lobbying even more lucrative. If we made campaign finance 100% publicly funded with no private funding allowed it could accomplish all that people might want to accomplish with term limits and a lot more. It could: 1) Essentially remove or severely cripple the influence of lobbyists and special interests. The Koch billions would become not much more than irrelevant. 2) Probably make the lobbying industry much less lucrative, putting a doorstop in the revolving door between Congress and lobbyists. 3) Allow legislators to focus on legislation rather than campaigning. 4) It would tend to save the public money. Taxes will have to pay for it, of course, but there is no such thing as a free lunch. The money in campaigns now comes from consumers in the costs of goods and services passed on by those companies who fund the campaigns. That isnt even to mention the cost of corruption, which we can pretty confidently say is likely measured in trillions, not even just billions. 5) It would tend to level the playing field and allow those who are best qualified to seek office instead of only those who have enough money and power to seek office 6) It could open the door to more political parties and thus temper the gridlock between the two major parties which currently exists. The way this could work in actual implementation might go something like this: Each State would decide what would qualify as a political party. For example, if in North Carolina (population approximately 10 million) the legislature said that a political party had to have 10% of the population registered in their party to be qualified for campaign funding, then they would have to have approximately one million people. Ideally the state would be responsible for some portion of campaign funds, so the state woulnt have a particular interest in setting the bar too low. The Federal government could set the maximum, for that matter, so the bar would not be too high. Each candidate for each Federal position for each qualified political party would receive the same amount of campaign funds. Lets just say, for example, $1.5 million for House candidates and $5 million for Senate candidates. That would be perhaps three times (assuming one more party becomes qualified in most states after the laws go into effect) the number of members of the House (435 members) times $1.5 million or a little less than $2 billion. There are approximately 122 million taxpayers paying Federal taxes in the US. That would amount to about $16 per taxpayer to fund that. In Senate election years (two out of three election years) there would be another 3 times 50 (half) the members of the Senate times $5 million, or a total of $0.75 billion ... effectively $6 per taxpayer. Compared to what each consumer in America pays for goods and services costs which fund the dirty money spent in lobbying and on campaigns I warrant that is chump change. Some consumer advocacy organizations have estimated the cost of this last campaign to be no less than $4 billion in 2014. This would make term limits essentially an irrelevant concern. In effect it would mean that having experienced legislators in office would likely be more beneficial than less. It could very well solve almost ALL of the serious problems of corruption in government and result in more qualified candidates with more platforms to choose from. It doesnt appear to me to have a down side. Im fairly sure that most politicians in power today would not see things similarly. Im even more sure that the Republican party would oppose such an idea with all their might, and if so imagine what would happen if the Democratic party came to feel that adopting such a concept into its platform would be a good idea, despite internal opposition. I would have to predict an absolute paradigm shift in politics, resulting in overwhelming voter support of Democrats ... but only if there is already overwhelming public support of this idea. Even if eventually this could be accomplished there would have to be passed an amendment to the Constitution to redefine free speech as to NOT include monetary contributions, specifically because of the horribly misguided Supreme Court decision in the case of Citizens United v FEC. Nearly impossible, I know EXCEPT with overwhelming public support. This is, however, a concept with which I believe both conservatives and liberals COULD agree and get enthusiastically behind. So, your comments are certainly welcome, but please keep them as positive as you can. I honestly dont believe that anything shy of this kind of radical change would at this point have anything but marginal if not meaningless results, ultimately, so Im personally not interested in half measures although if you want to propose half measures then have at it. Would there be better ways in which this could be implemented? How can such a thing become fodder for national debate? How to give legs to it? Your thoughts would be appreciated.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Dec 2014 19:24:51 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015