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Every time I heard desperate pleas for money from politicians I wonder, what do you need my money for? To buy back public airwaves from the people we licensed them to? To pay even higher priced consultants to slice and dice the polls? I thought I voted with my vote, not my dollars. What about those that dont have dollars? Seems to me they have much less of a vote in this democracy. Hell, if you have enough money you can just fund your own campaign, al. la. Ross Perot. Not exactly equal opportunity. == Its morally wrong for politicians to accept money from people. Period. == I feel it is morally wrong for elected officials to accept money that isnt their salary. When an elected official accepts money from someone, any human is going to feel obliged to treat this person differently than the person that has contributed nothing. Its common courtesy. But this is in conflict with their responsibility to represent all of their electorate equally, not based on how much money they have. In fact, since everyone else does it, all elected officials are effectively required to to accept gifts to compete. I know the current reality of our election campaign system is mired in a much different arrangement, but still my naive, absent of reality opinion is that _money_ should not be a factor in our elections, and its the responsibility of the government weve created to ensure that happens. Elections are the one thing we can all agree is the responsibility of our self-government, the one thing that makes the rest of our democracy work. But the reality in the US today is that even though we all have a vote, those with money can use that money to make their vote much more valuable that those without any money. The McCain/Feingold reforms[1] may make this even worse, as now campaigns need these extra vote with your dollars votes even more. We need to fix that. == How do we fix it? == I would start by making it illegal for elected officials or those running for elected office to accept gifts or money from any private, corporate, religious or non-profit entity. All election campaigns should be 100% publicly funded. Arguments about the cost of that are silly. If we can all agree that elections are a primary responsibility of government, then we can agree that this responsibility can require commensurate funds. Second, instead of charging station owners for a license to broadcast on our airwaves, then them charging us back to them for the right to conduct the peoples business on those airwaves, lets just not give it to them in the first place. The license comes with the burden of broadcasting election commercials. Decrease the license fee if you need to. Im fine with our government bearing the financial brunt of that burden, whatever it may be. The 2004 Presidential and Senatorial campaigns spent about $4 billion dollars[2]. Considering we pay about $300 billion[3] per year to service our nation debt (incurred almost solely by Regan/Bush I/Bush II[4]), I wouldnt have any issues if the cost to do this ran into the $10-20 billion/year range. It should be one of our governments main roles to equalize the situation, to remove money from the equation as much as possible. Third, I would pay these elected officials a lot more. If senators made $5 million a year, they would have a harder time being swayed by the $250,000 yatch some lobbyist could give their nephew. If were going to do this we should make their salaries on the same level as corporate leaders of similar stature. Perhaps we should even tie their salaries to the average of corporate leaders salaries; it could serve as incentive to make sure businesses prosper. But we should pay them enough that other peoples money wont sway them. Again, paying our elected officials is one of the few things we can all agree our government should be responsible for, the comparatively miniscule about of money required to pay them well shouldnt be a factor. == But if you dont give money ...? == A question Im not sure about, how to you qualify to have your campaign funded? I think it should be as open and available to anyone that wants to run as possible. But it shouldnt be _too_ easy either. Being a public official requires _work_, so _work_ should be required to become one. I just would like that _work_ to be something other than raising money. Being good at getting people to part with their money doesnt necessarily mean theyll be a good elected representative. Currently we show support by giving money. If you cant give _money_ to candidates to express support, how do we ensure that the people running, and spending public money on those campaigns, arent running a boondoggle and actually have or could get some support among the electorate? (Even if a big chunk the money we spent on publicly funded election campaigns was wasted on boondoggles, wed still have a better system that we have today, imo. The machinery of democracy is a better place than most to throw some cash around.) Perhaps a solution would be to provide the option of altering the distribution of campaign contributions derived your own taxes? If you didnt alter it, as most people would do, your tax contributions allotted for campaigns would be split evenly among all the campaigns. If you really cared about a campaign, you could direct some of your already allocated tax dollars specifically to that campaign. Also, what about the rich using their own money to outspend competitors? Do we ban people from spending their own money on their campaigns as well? |
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