Sorry for the length. Everyone wants to get money out of government, but its a long and complex problem that requires a number of solutions. There is no one magic bullet. Lets lay out some of the issues. Lobbyists- They are less powerful than they sued to be due to the emergence of corporate people the last few years. However, they are still quite powerful and still responsible for billions. Corporations- They essentially have free reign right now. That free reign translates to tens of billions of dollars. Gerrymandering- One of the two great underlying problems because it sets the architecture for the system. Very few national offices are really ever in danger of changing hands. It creates a stable foundation for corruption, moneyed interests and partisan hacksmanship. Voters- The other great underlying problem. Actually, in my opinion, this is the WORST problem because its the only one that almost never gets acknowledged (except when the candidate you wanted loses). Voters by and large allow themselves to be easily swayed, uninformed, and highly partisan. If the gerrymandering is the foundation, voter misconduct is the support beams that hold the building up. Ye,s it IS misconduct. The voters have a job too and we arent doing it well enough. We never take blame for our bad calls. We blame the people who get into office and remain in office. So what do we do? Well, first we admit something. We cannot COMPLETELY fix this. Actually..we probably need to admit that about everything in the running of our country, but lets start small. Money in government cannot be completely removed. Only mostly. How we go about that is by taking multiple smaller steps that add up. Such as the following. #1- Term and/or age limits. They need to be brought in in order to limit the growth of national power in a single or group of Congresspeople. This will also ultimately create turnover in the committees and general leadership. #2- Limiting Campaign Spending by Candidates This speaks for itself. Blanket advertizing is a problem. A big problem. If we can limit their money, we can limit the bombing of ads. #3-Limiting Campaign Spending by Non-Candidates Remember Swift Boat? Remember how it was largely bull? This is also a problem. There is a fine line on this one, because you start rubbing up against territory of free speech. At the same time, when you limit campaign spending, you cannot leave untouched the unrestrained spending of corporations, private pacs etc. You need to find a way to keep them form drowning out the candidates themselves. #4-Redistricting is handled by a private firm. To reduce gerrymandering, youll have to do this. It CANNOT be in Congress hands. Were probably going to need a Constitutional Amendment on this one. And well probably have to go old school, state by state because Congress themselves will never pass this. #5- Campaign Donations There are a LOT of things that can and probably should be done. -Lower limits on donations by individuals, households, and especially companies. -A cap on how much in donations a candidate can receive, total (determined by the office in question). -Also, all campaign donation laws that apply to a campaign should also apply to any pac, super pac or company that produces any political advertising of their own. #6- Lobbying -All lobbyist donations, gifts and expenditures on an office should be public. All private donations, gifts and expenditures promptly become felonies. -All lobbies and lobbyists must be registered. #7- Massive Congressional Changes Some of these will be controversial, but so be it. -Cut pay for both houses. Not to stupid levels.Make the House pay the average salary of the district they represent. The Senate is the same, plus 10%. -More Representatives. As it stands now, 435 reps each represent around 500,000 people. Even then its not always the same. Smaller populated states are more highly represented and hold a much higher level of power than they should. A number should be picked, a cap on what each Representative can represent. This may be more expensive up front, but in the long run it dilutes the pool enough to spread the dirty money and thin its power a bit. -Change laws to disallow addendum to bills that arent feasibly connected. -Require Congresspeople to spend a percentage of their time in an office in their district when Congress is not in session. That office needs to be available for public meetings, hearings, etc. -Remove the power for committee chairs to single handedly stop bills from coming to the general floor. #8- Voter education A stronger push for educating voters while they are in high school needs to be made. The basic civics class is obviously not working. We need more and we need voters to really grasp the importance of their role. The lazy uninformed voter needs to go. As tough as some other measures will be, this will be by far the toughest. Its hard to improve things when the vast majority dont even realize theyre doing it wrong. If we can get like any 4 of these points done, we can see a drastic improvement in the problem of money in our government, and a huge improvement in partisan crap and other
Posted on: Thu, 17 Oct 2013 08:29:03 +0000
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