The time for real campaign funding reform is nigh

[Stinky The Clown]

Just look around. Delay and Noe and Blunt and Abramoff are the obvious egregious cases. Bush, Cheney, big bizniss, and the oil companies is another. So is Joe Biden and the credit card companies.

The list of abuses and the shit it has caused is bipartisan. Mostly repug, to be sure, but bipartisan nonetheless.

And can Wally O'Dell's now famous "I am committed to deliver Ohio .... " utterance not an illegal campaign contribution, in kind if not in cash?

It is time for **all** campaigns to be publicly funded. Totally and completely publicly funded. Take a nickel in private donations and go to jail. Period.

Funding to the parties is another issue that needs to be controlled.

But perhaps the biggest out of control part of campaign finance is special interest groups. Here I am going to suggest a positively dictatorial, non-liberal, non-permissive stance. Limit free speech. Yes. Censorship. Gag orders. There is no way to control these groups and there's no way to demonstrate the work of these groups is not coordinated with a campaign. Can anyone honestly say that the Scumboaters didn't coordinate with at least some part of the RNC or the bush campaign? Can anyone say that Mike Moore or Moveon didn't coordinate, at least to some degree, with the DNC and Kerry campaigns? I think the former is a certainty while the latter is conjecture based on supposition, but the case remains.

Lastly, at all times, we need rules that requires the broadcast of opinion to be clearly labeled as such. Rush can say any damned thing he wants. But he cannot call it news - or even pretend it is news. It isn't. It is opinion and spin. Persuasive to many, but spin and opinion nonetheless.

How to pay for this?

Taxes.

Campaign spending limits.

Yes, I know much of this goes beyond free speech to limit it.

I admit that. But I'd like to hear a better way to guarantee fair and honest elections based on the ***issues*** instead of haircuts or acceptability to sit on the next bar stool.

This is our country, for god's sake. This is, figuratively and literally, life and death serious.

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. I say

it works for me!

http://www.geocities.com/greenpartyvoter/electionreform.htm

[flpoljunkie]

2. Yes, damn time! Government of, by and for the people. Networks need to

donate air time to candidates because we citizens have given them the air waves for free--zip, nada, zilch.

When this is done, the politicians will have to "dance with the ones that brung 'em"--namely us.

As it is now, politicians are bought off for pennies on the dollar by big corporations, whose investment in them reaps major returns--if only the stock market gave such returns.

[Totally Committed]

3. They'll find a loophole.

They always do.

Keeping a Republican away from special interest or corporate money is like trying to keep the tide from coming in. (That goes for the Corporate whores in our Party too. At least there are not as many.)

TC

[Stinky The Clown]

4. Yanno, TC, I have always felt that we need some damned strict

laws of conduct for elected officials. Hell, I'd even go so far as to say the have to be monitored by some special watchdog auditors with the code of silence of the Secret Service but with a duty to report wrongdoing. These bozos work for you and me. Not for some big donor and surely not for themselves.

Public service should not be a quid pro quo for a lifetime of suckling at the government or corporate teat.

Do it right, and term limits may well be unnecessary. It may also discourage the rich and privileged from serving and allow the little guy to serve.

[mikeiddy]

5. Only breathers should be allowed to donate

No corps need apply, no pacs either. Limit the amount to say, a grand or two, and the playing field suddenly becomes much more level. And all without infringing on free speech.

[Laelth]

6. I agree completely.

But the SCOTUS has ruled that money is speech and that campaign contributions are protected speech (though they can be limited in some ways). Until we change the balance on the SCOTUS rather radically, we can never elimiante campaign contributions.

-Laelth

[flpoljunkie]

7. If "money is speech", then far too many of us are without a voice.

[Laelth]

8. That's for sure.

But we need about 12 years of straight Democratic control of the Presidency before we will be able to get the SCOTUS to agree with us.

-Laelth