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Real Campaign Finance Reform |
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Barrack Obama’s decision to leave the, and I am quoting him here, “broken” campaign finance system got me to thinking about ways we can fix this system of legalized bribery we call campaign finance
We already have a lot of legislation charitably called Campaign Finance Reform designed to regulate the flow of money to political campaigns and not a lick of it makes a difference. Stuff like the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 and the like don’t do all of what they need to do. Also they often raise serious constitutional questions about free speech.
While I like the so called Clean Money, Clean Elections approach it really doesn’t do the job unless everyone follows it, and you know as well as I do we have a better chance of hand tossing a man to planet Mercury than getting our mess of politicians to play fair.
The reasons for this reluctance are simple, as I’ve said on my blog:
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- Taking corporate money lets politicians avoid thinking about or understanding issuesÂ
- It also insulates them from dealing with ordinary people.
Now I see the point that money is speech to a degree. After all, it does give you the ability to get your message across. But more importantly money is power, the ability to buy what you want. This is a basic Prosper rule of money, everyone expects something for their buck (Euro, Yen, Yaun, whatever).
If you give money to a beggar your expect to see him or her be happier or at least suffer less - thats your return and what you are buying. Buy a sandwich you expect a sandwich. Buy (I mean contribute money to) important people, expect them to do what you want.
Now why it’s legal and moral for you to indirectly buy - through “campaign contributions”- a member of the executive or legislative branch while I can’t do the same with the judicial branch is beyond me. Really, it should not be legal to “pay off“ any of these groups. It’s all toxic to the Republic.
Unfortunately the courts seem to think ”peaceable redress of grievances” means “accepting indirect payoffs” and there is not much we can do about that.
So long as any private money is in use, people can buy influence, and it means our Constitutional Republic is converted to a Plutocracy. For a recent example see the FISA sellout. Its a simple formula, TelCo “contributions†= FISA immunity. Simple elementary school math.
So what do we do? Well the answer is somewhat counter intuitive
Drop the limits of funding from any source. As long as it’s reported, you can take money from any American concern in any amount you like
At the opening of the campaign offer federal funds to five candidates for each seat, from 5 different parties. Once the primaries are done, do the same for the general election. Any party that ops in many not opt out under penalty of jail time. (Yes jail, fines don’t work. 3-5 years should deter.)
Here is where it gets tricky. We give the those who opted in either a fixed sum or 110% of what the highest opted out party raises, if any party chooses not to participate. Yes, I said 110%. That’s more than what is raised. This trick sidesteps the messy Constitutional issues of free speech while harnessing the power of the tragedy of the commons and a little game theory to to make it a no win situation to fundraise. Now candidates have no incentive to fundraise and we have 5 choices per seat without any Constitutional concerns.
I figure once we remove the money we remove much of the taint, and as an added bonus, with all the competition, politicians will have to compete on the quality of ideas.
And thats a big part of what’s lacking folks, good ideas.
Adam Benjamin Prosper was born in Colorado and now lives in Southern California. He is a blue collar guy, freelancer writer and occasional trouble maker. A. B. believes in honor, freedom, truth, justice, the environment and all that jazz. Most importantly, he believes in us the American People and our limitless capacity to make America great if we try. He blogs at http://www.abprosper.com
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