Posted on 12/08/2011 1:13:16 PM PST by Semper
To: Presidential campaigns
How will your Candidate deal with the serious problem of our broken political system, corrupted by special interest money, contaminated by a breathtaking lack of ethics and perpetuated by the manipulation of a misinformed or ignorant electorate?
Your Candidate's good ideas and solutions will not manifest or endure until that situation is corrected. Our critical challenges will not be solved within a broken political system.
Here are just a few suggestions:
* All campaign financing should be completely transparent. Our current president received millions from undisclosed small donor contributors. A small donor contributing many times becomes a large donor and could be an illegal donor. Also, just how much taxpayer money is being spent on this president's re-election campaign and should that be allowed - for any office holder? Is that fair? (the president's most recent concern)
* All elected officials should be subject to the laws passed for the general population. There are many examples of abuse insider trading being the most recent. Fair?
* Only those who can vote for a candidate should be allowed to contribute to that candidate's election/re-election campaign (corporations, unions, political parties, etc. can not vote, therefore they could not contribute, contaminate or corrupt). The emphasis should be on the individual citizen's appropriate participation.
* Each citizen's vote should be weighted according to the amount of taxes paid over the past voting period (2 years). Those paying no taxes get one vote; those paying taxes get one vote per (x) amount paid. Your voice equals your contribution. Fair.
When the above critical issue is addressed, when the Candidate offers a solution to the most important problem we face, I will consider donating more than just an observation and suggestion.
Sincerely,
Signature, Captain U.S. Marine Corps, Retired
>> Only those who can vote for a candidate should be allowed to contribute to that candidate’s election/re-election campaign (corporations, unions, political parties, etc. can not vote, therefore they could not contribute, contaminate or corrupt).
I disagree with this one for the same reason as the Supreme Court:
Laws passed by politicians certainly AFFECT corporations and other groups. Given that, why should they NOT have the free speech right to influence campaigns?
Instead, I would say that you cannot vote in an election if you have been on government aid for more than 1/2 of the preceding year.
However, a corporation and union are made up of individuals. Perhaps companies or unions could promote a particular candidate to their employees/stockholders (companies) or members (unions), but their influence should not exceed those individuals directly affected by the company or union.
Maybe a good point but organizations are made up of people with differing political views and therefore some will have their effort and or investment used to support a candidate not of their choice. Not fair.
My point is that the needed change will most likely not happen with the current defective political system.
Good suggestion.
I would also add the suggestion that after serving in elected office, you could not lobby the institution in which you served.
After further consideration, “government aid” needs more explanation. Does that mean that a disabled person getting aid could not vote? Doesn’t seem fair.
>> organizations are made up of people with differing political views and therefore some will have their effort and or investment used to support a candidate not of their choice. Not fair.
I disagree with your “Not Fair” characterization. I see three distinct cases.
1) Organizations you support voluntarily. (NRA, Sierra Club, etc) Presumably you belong because you *agree* with the group’s voice, including how it spends money to influence politics. If you ever stop agreeing with what the organization does with your money, you can always stop your dues and/or quit. Therefore, FAIR.
2) Businesses, especially Corporations. Where employees are concerned, these are NOT democracies! The corporation spends *lots* of money advancing its cause in various ways. It chooses vendors, employees, business strategies, etc. in accordance with its own principles (right or wrong). If the corporation spends money on a political campaign in a way that bothers an employee, tough cookies. The employee can, if they choose, react just as they would if the corporation hired someone they didn’t like: they can quit their job. Shareholders are a different matter; shareholders DO constitute a democracy of sorts, and THEIR remedy is to vote out management. Therefore, FAIR
3) Organizations that the GOVERNMENT requires you to belong to via coercion. The best example is a trade union in a closed shop state. It is NOT FAIR to force employees to belong to a union and pay it dues, and see that union support politics with which the employee disagrees. But SURPRISE! Federal law requires such unions to break down dues they spend betewen political and non-political purposes and REFUND dues to members who object to the political use. However, the law is not evenly enforced. Therefore, FAIR (by design) but POTENTIALLY UNFAIR (in practice).
>> organizations are made up of people with differing political views and therefore some will have their effort and or investment used to support a candidate not of their choice. Not fair.
I disagree with your “Not Fair” characterization. I see three distinct cases.
1) Organizations you support voluntarily. (NRA, Sierra Club, etc) Presumably you belong because you *agree* with the group’s voice, including how it spends money to influence politics. If you ever stop agreeing with what the organization does with your money, you can always stop your dues and/or quit. Therefore, FAIR.
2) Businesses, especially Corporations. Where employees are concerned, these are NOT democracies! The corporation spends *lots* of money advancing its cause in various ways. It chooses vendors, employees, business strategies, etc. in accordance with its own principles (right or wrong). If the corporation spends money on a political campaign in a way that bothers an employee, tough cookies. The employee can, if they choose, react just as they would if the corporation hired someone they didn’t like: they can quit their job. Shareholders are a different matter; shareholders DO constitute a democracy of sorts, and THEIR remedy is to vote out management. Therefore, FAIR
3) Organizations that the GOVERNMENT requires you to belong to via coercion. The best example is a trade union in a closed shop state. It is NOT FAIR to force employees to belong to a union and pay it dues, and see that union support politics with which the employee disagrees. But SURPRISE! Federal law requires such unions to break down dues they spend betewen political and non-political purposes and REFUND dues to members who object to the political use. However, the law is not evenly enforced. Therefore, FAIR (by design) but POTENTIALLY UNFAIR (in practice).
>> their influence should not exceed those individuals directly affected by the company or union.
Why not? And in any event, how would you measure it?
For example, my company each year makes an effort to give to the United Way. So we have a meeting, and they give us the nice pamphlets from United Way explaining what they do. But my company doesn't run commercials outside of the company prompting United Way. That is the limit I was thinking about.
To be honest, my thought is more idealistic than realistic, and I haven't thought about all of the unintended consequences yet.
First two points I completely agree with; the second two points I cannot agree with.
I receive a pension as a result of career Marine Corps service which included 3 trips to Vietnam. I would think that should qualify me to vote under the proposal of this thread. (Also served in Afghanistan as a civilian contractor.)
My government pension was earned and I paid for my social security. I pay taxes on both of those as well as on my earned income and investment income. Last year I paid over 17K in taxes. How you can think that I don't deserve to vote is hard to understand. There are plenty of taxpayers receiving some income from social security or government pensions who are far from "on the dole" and they would not tolerate losing the right to vote. In fact no one now able to vote would tolerate losing that right.
What is not right is that someone who pays no taxes gets the same voting influence as those who pay significant amounts of tax. It would be much more fair if someone paying little or no tax got one vote and those paying more tax got something like 1 vote per $1000 of tax paid.
The suggestions are not the point. The point is that our political system is broken. We need to get the national players focused on that and we need to demand to know what our leaders and potential leaders are going to do to fix this critical problem. My suggestions are just a small contribution to the process.
Prohibiting organizations from contributing money to influence political campaigns does not take away free speech as much as its contributions dilute the influence of individual voters. It is supposed to be a government of, for, and by the people not the organizations and their special interest money.
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