Campaign Finance Reform

I don't think that the precarious state we find ourselves in America today can be specifically blamed on any individual or group. I think what it really boils down to is the way we run our political system. I wrote about net neutrality in the previous post, and the truly frightening thing to me is that if some powerful corporations (like Microsoft, which stands to lose money to internet providers without net neutrality) did not support net neutrality, then the public would have no chance at all against companies like AT&T and other major network providers. These corporations seem to run our country, our government, and the rest of the world, without much restraint. So plenty of people ask the obvious question - why doesn't anybody in politics stand up to them? Is it because we just happened to elect politicians who are collectively spineless?

Consider what it is that you need to win an election. Money. A lot of money. You need a shitload of money to buy political advertisements, TV ads, pay your staff, and coordinate logistics for your campaign. If your opponent has a lot more money than you - s/he will win the election regardless of the issues, because s/he will have resources to shape public opinion in his/her favor, which is easily accomplished in the information age of our 21st century. And corporations are the ones that will provide you with the money to win, and they will certainly need something in return for all that money they have spent. So every time politicians run a campaign, they have to make those backroom deals in order to win. Now I don't think that people go into politics with desire to be corrupt puppets of big business. But what choice do they have - either lose the election, or compromise to special interests like big business (and yes, big business is the special interest much more than leftwing environmentalists or feminists). After a while they compromise and compromise in order to win so much, they eventually forget why they got into politics in the first place.

I wonder if there is actually anybody out there who trusts politicians anymore. Politician is a dirty word, more like a curse. Politicians are assumed to be corrupt and despicable liars by the public. But these are the very same people that govern us, that we are supposed to look up to; people that decide on the rules the rest of us abide by. This is not a healthy situation by any means. And I am not saying that just to put down USA - most of the countries in the world are much more corrupt than us; what I am saying is that we could be doing so much better than this, since according to our President we are supposed to be setting an example for the rest of the world.

What we really need is some way to take big money out of politics. I really don't think we will be able to change a damn thing unless we do that first. All these wars, laws, and privacy and labor rights - they will change, they will come and go; but until we have a government that represents and listens to its people, as opposed to corporations, it is all pretty much meaningless.

And it is not such unattainable goal either. The American public is fed up with corruption and will support any effort to make the government more ethical. McCain campaign finance law was the primary reason for the rise of Howard Dean, because that law limited private donation to $2000 per person, as well as banning soft money donations, which allowed Howard Dean to out raise all of his democratic political opponents by capitalizing on the avalanche of $10-$20 donations from numerous people who were anti Iraq war. And of course there are loopholes - right now corporations take advantage of the fact that most people can't afford to spend $2000 on politics, so they collect tons of $2000 checks from their top managers, and then present that bundle of checks to a politician saying - this is to you from our corporation. But it is much harder for them to do that now, because of the McCain law. That law was never supposed to exist at all in the first place, since conservatives assumed it would be overturned in the Supreme Court, and that is why they bowed to public pressure and let it get passed through Congress.

So I think we are on the right path here, we just need to keep going in the right direction, plugging those loopholes. There are plenty of ways to accomplish campaign finance reform - we can make all donation anonymous, which means that politicians will not be able to check on where their money is coming from, and for the first time in their lives will actually be able to focus on governing and legislating as opposed to to being on the phone begging people for campaign donation. We can also make sure that all candidates get equal exposure and equal amount of commercials on TV, since television is the primary and most powerful source of information for our citizens right now.

And this would not automatically mean victory for liberals either. What conservatives have to realize is that corporations play them for fools, and use their issues in order to further their own private economic agenda. When Newt Ginritch conservatives took over congress in the 90s, it was primarily because Americans were so opposed to Clinton's idea of having gays openly in the military (which was a part of his major campaign promise). So I think liberals will stand to lose on many social issues if we were to have an open and honest discussion. Americans do not want gay marriage, as was shown through passage of anti gay marriage ballots during the 2004 presidential campaign in many states. Most Americans identify themselves as religious christians and regard America as a christian nation. We might even lose on the abortion issue as well. But if we take the money out of politics we certainly stand to win on many economic issues. We could make corporations share their enormous profits that they get from pillaging the world with the rest of us: give our fellow Americans health insurance, job, health and environmental security.

That is why I do not particularly blame our democratic party for the failure to offer an alternative way to the current situation. First we have to change the system in order to make that possible. And if there is a third party that comes to power in light of the current events - the first thing they have to do is make sure they they will implement a campaign finance change which will allow them to compete on the issues - not on how much money they can get from special interests. That is why I am very interested to find out if there is a strong support/activism for some kind of finance reform. I am fairly interested in politics - I watch TV news, read newspapers, browse internet - yet I haven't really seen that much discussion regarding this issue, and that is troubling to me. If there is a strong campaign finance reform movement somewhere I would certainly appreciate if somebody could point me in the right direction, because I want to be a part of that movement.