Needed: Real Campaign Finance Reform
Stephen Colbert, on The Colbert Report, recently interviewed David Sirota, author of Hostile Takeover, the story about "How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government."We used to live in a country where government was supposed to protect people from the excesses of the free market. Today, however, both our government and our elected officials are For Sale!
More and more decisions are made based on who is contributing campaign money to lawmakers. Money that goes into the political process has expectations. That's how energy bills get written by energy companies and Medicare bills get written by pharmaceutical companies.
Real reform needs to start with publicly-financed elections. The problem, today, is that the people who are directly paying for our elections are getting a government that they own. Think about all of the money that goes into the political process that gets returned to contributors in the form of tens of billions of dollars of no-bid government contracts.
If we had publicly-financed elections, we'd actually save money. Of course, another option might be an outright ban on all TV political advertising. That would eliminate the need for huge campaign contributions. It would also get rid of those awful 30-second attack ads on television.
The bottom line is that the masses are asses electorate prefers a government for sale over publicly-financed elections.
posted by ITscout at 2:31 AM
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1 Comments:
True. Sad, but true.
I have often wondered how things would have been if Al Gore had been elected. At the time I was personally glad George Bush won, with a little help. The "little help" bothered me a great deal but I shrugged it off. I felt Al Gore was acting a little like Richard Nixon did in his first run for President. That put me off Al. Plus the fact that Republicans dominated Congress and would for the forseeable future. That's going against a stacked deck.
I recall an electorate that rejected Richard Nixon for the Presidency, then Senator from California, then Governor of California and then elected him President. William Buckley was ecstatic. Gore Vidal made the quote,IIRC, that "Any time a country rejects a man for public office three times and then elects him to its highest office it deserves whatever it gets!".
Now I am rambling so I will make my point and close.
If Al Gore should "run if nominated" and "serve if elected" I will vote for him unless a clearly better choice emerges. With the Democrats in disarray I don't see that happening. It will take a miracle. This will give us a comparison of sorts. My dream team would be Elizabeth Dole as President and Hilary Clinton as Vice-President. Never happen. The Karl Rove assassins already did Elizabeth in. Some of the masses are thinking.
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