The Politician's New Clothes
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The Politician's New Clothes
Exactly!Lone Star wrote: How is it any different when wealthy individuals fund campaigns? That's a rhetorical question. No difference.
All big money should be taken out of politics.
Here's one possible solution:
The dissenting opinion on the Citizens United decision-The Fair Elections Now Act (H.R. 269) was reintroduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), along with 52 original co-sponsors on January 15, 2013. The bill would allow federal candidates to choose to run for office without relying on large contributions, big money bundlers, or donations from lobbyists, and would be freed from the constant fundraising in order to focus on what people in their communities want.
http://www.publicampaign.org/fair-elections-now-act
The Court minority (Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor) argued:
1. the First Amendment protects only individual speech.
2. government may prevent corruption, and campaign spending can be corrupt when it buys influence over legislators. Therefore government may impose spending limits on corporations and unions.
3. government may prevent the appearance of corruption, which undermines public confidence in democracy. Limits on corporate and union political spending are an expression of that authority.
4. the public has the right to hear all available information, and when corporations spend money individuals can’t match, messages from corporations drown out messages from others, and that information fails to reach the public.
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/who-are-citizens-united/
". . . corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their 'personhood' often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of “We the People” by whom and for whom our Constitution was established."
~Supreme Court Justice Stevens
The benefits corporations receive by buying off politicians:“I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be,” she said. “I think members of the legislature, people who have to run for office, know the connection between money and influence on what laws get passed.”
~Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg
For every $1 spent on lobbying, these 50 companies collectively received $130 in tax breaks
and more than $4,000 in federal loans, loan guarantees and bailouts.
http://www.oxfamamerica.org/static/medi ... 2.2016.pdf
UFF DA!
The Politician's New Clothes
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Last edited by Lone Star on March 6, 2019, 10:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
AMERICA: One of the Greatest Stories Ever Told.
The Politician's New Clothes
I still like the idea I read in a sci-fi book. All political jobs paid well, and anyone was allowed to put up their name for any job and get it. If there were a lot of people for the same job, they got it in the order they applied. As soon as they took the job they put on an exploding collar tuned to receive signals from the public. Each person was allowed to register one complaint against them. when the # of complaints reached 51% the collar exploded.