Let me start this with an assumption that I am operating under so that you can have a frame of reference. I believe that the current system of election is too dependant on big money, guaranteeing that average people don't get heard as clearly as corporations and the wealthy. I think that Americans spend far too much money electing officials. Corporations take money from shareholders' pockets in order to buy their government officials. Tony Sanchez spent $60 million to LOSE the gubernatorial race and it has been estimated that Bush will spend over $200 million before next November. I believe that publicly funded elections along with reasonable regulation of issue ads would help to take money out of the electoral system and would help to restore confidence in our system of government. The government could negotiate with the major media outlets to get a discount rate for ALL of the political ads each season bought in bulk. Newspapers could run regionalized interviews for each candidate and we could get a bid from radio conglomerates for all of the radio ads. I just think that we could elect our officials for a lot less money.
You're starting to have more tricks than a bucktooth w****. Yeah, I have no idea where that came from.
ROFLMAO! Give me time, I'll pull that same trick out again! DD will throw a fit, but somebody has to be the voice of reason.
Keep fighting the good fight. I think the main problem with publicly funded campaigns would be who gets the funds. How hard would it be for a third-party candidate to qualify for funds? Also, it seems impossible that you could do it for every federal election. That's close to 1,000 candidates, not counting third-party candidates.
Personally, I think that at least the top four candidates should get media time, not funding. I want to take funding OUT of politics. I think we could do it for a darn sight less than what it is done for now. Even if we had 4 or 5 candidates in each race, by buying all the media time and placement in bulk we could give each candidate significant exposure for a reasonable price.
You have all sorts of constitutional problems here. How do you restrict a person's rights to free speech? If I want to spend $100,000 on a commercial promoting myself, how can you restrict that?
Political candidates already get the lowest rates a particular media outlet offers. They are required to get those rates by law. That's not to say they couldn't be lower, though I don't know that taking money from media outlets (who do employ a lot of people and all) is necessarily the way to go (since I'm betting you'd have to have the force of law to get a much better deal than they have now. But who knows. Maybe we can fund the whole thing with all the mar1juana taxes we'll be collecting in the future).
Who determines the top 4 candidates? The top two may be easy, but then it could get fuzzy. Not only that, but what right does the top candidate have over any other candidate (e.g. #6) to get more "benefits"?
On paper, the idea of publicly funded elections sounds great, leveling the playing field and so forth. But do you really want your tax dollars going to pay for elections? How many candidates are going to receive money from the government? I don't want this turning into a way for kooks like the Green Party and the American Nazis to receive federal funding. And who is going to determine who the top four candidates are who are to receive the money? All of these questions have to be answered before this can be a rational proposal. Finally, I have to say that I don't think that money is as all-corrupting as everyone seems to think it is. In our system, money constitutes free speech (cited by the Supremes when they struck down some of the campaign finance reform legislation following Watergate) and forcing candidates to fund their campaigns in the public sector would arguably deprive of them of their full First Amendment rights.
As long as candidates are reliant upon quid pro quo "donations," democracy suffers. Candidates are beholden to the might dollar, not the constituency. It's as simple as that. Public funding effectively removes lobbyists and special interest groups from the process. The candidates answer to us, not those who lined their pockets.
I am not trying to restrict free speech, I am trying to make sure that all candidates get EQUAL time to speak and be heard. I don't think you should need a commercial over and above what the other guy gets to win. You should win on your merits, not on a deluge of ads that will probably just be mudslinging ads anyway. If all candidates had a limited number of ads to use in a campaign season, maybe they would think twice about using them to sling mud.
We wouldn't be TAKING money from the media outlets, just negotiating the best price for ALL ads up front. mar1juana taxes should pay for prescriptions for the elderly. Some idiot who decides to use unnecessary drugs should help pay for some necessary ones.
Abso-freaking-lutely. The cost to fund elections publicly is a drop in the bucket compared to the TENS OF BILLIONS our government spends in quid pro quo "contracts" to big donors. The current system effectively makes elected officials whores to lobbyists and special interest groups that got them elected. What better way to spend tax dollars than securing that democracy is carried out for the people instead of moneyed interests?
Obviously, we would have to work that out. Maybe we could have a primary system where up to 10 candidates (Dem, Rep, Lib, Green, plus 6 other independants) vie for the 4 funded spots.
Again, I don't think we should give them money, just media time. I think it should be the top 4 or 5 candidates. Just because you don't agree with the Green platform (I don't either) doesn't mean that their candidate has any less right to be heard than the Dem or GOP candidate. I would love for the nazi party to be heard to help solidify in everyones mids the idiocy of their position. Once again, no money, just media time and placement. You are either very young or very naive. Money corrupts. Power corrupts. When you get money and power in the same place, it is even more corrupting. You are right about the Supreme Court decision (based on my limited knowledge of law) which is why it might take as much as a constitutional amendment to implement such a system.
Potentially we would. The broadcast business is not like many other businesses. They cannot create more of their product to meet increased demand. They sell time, and that time is limited. When they have to sell at a price lower than they can get for the time on the open market (as is the case now), money is being taken away from them. I know you're talking about bulk buying and volume discounts, but I'm not sure that would result in rates lower than what political candidates get now since the law requires stations to give lower rates to candidates than to other businesses. But it's an interesting idea.
Andymoon, I'm really not trying to poop on your parade, because I can definitely understand your position. I'm not naive but I just see the glass as half-full rather than half-empty. One way we could get rid of this cycle of this quid pro quo campaign contributions is to instigate a national consumption tax, which would get rid of one way of patronage in specially engineered tax breaks designed to help out big donors. The reason why I see things differently is that I believe this money spent by corporations is in a way, protection money to try to keep the Imperial Federal Government from interfering with their business. To me, the government is just a big Mafia, which protects those who pay tribute and acquires the property of those eventually who do not. And the media time is not free, I hate to say. The government would have to compensate those broadcast networks with a large influx of cash and I doubt they'd get away with forcing them to carry political adverts at the lowest possible rates. The media companies would never, ever go for losing billions in advertising revenues just to help get the money out of politics. Lastly, I don't like to whine about something without suggesting a solution. I say that instead of all these limitations on donations, axe them. Allow any entity or individual to give as much as they want to a candidate or a party. Here's the catch: make disclosure of every single cent the only requirement and have it posted to a website that would show 1. who gave the money 2. how much money they gave 3. the candidate's voting record (if any). That way the public can draw their own conclusions.
I am right there with you on replacing our tax code with a consumption tax (see the "Scrap the tax code" thread). Unfortunately, that is not the only way that corporations buy favors. There are pork barrel projects, government contracts, regulatory issues, and hundreds of other ways that corps use their influence because they can buy their way in front of the politicians. And all of this money could instead go to the shareholders. I never said the networks should GIVE time to candidates, just that we could negotiate the best price by buying in bulk and distributing that time equally to level the playing field. If big money did not virtually guarantee election, the system would be improved dramatically. First, I didn't think I whined, and I DID propose a skeleton of a solution. Second, leaving money as a MAJOR factor in elections will ensure that the current system will continue. Reporting will not change that, we have strict reporting requirements now, although I would support a web site where this information could be accessed by the public. Again, I want to take money entirely out of the equation.
I'm still waiting for you to prove that "Enron, WorldCom, GE, GM and Ford made a tax PROFIT last year. I'm not talking $600 here -- they made tens of BILLIONS. ", as you claimed in the thread entitled, "Scrap the tax code". Unless you prove this, your opinion regarding financial matters is discounted severely. Please prove this, GreenVegan. I want *you* to prove this, without outside assistance from anyone else.
T_J, I could be wrong, but I think this is what he's referring to: http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,6384797^15322^^nbv^15306,00.html I'm not making any editorial about what he said or what the article said, just posting it FYI.
