Forum Post: A Buffett Approach to Ending Corporate Control of Our Government
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 29, 2011, 12:53 a.m. EST by puff6962
(4052)
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It's really rather simple.
First, you ban all corporate donations to political campaigns. Corporations are not citizens of this country and should not be treated as such.
Second, you make access to politicians by corporations commensurate with that given to an average constituent. More specifically, you ban all personal access of lobbyists and require that any contact between lobbyists and politicians be written, recorded, and entered into the Congressional record.
The plan is simple, workable, and sound. Even those misguided Libertarians amongst us can support it.
Those are good changes. As someone else noted, lobbying isn't only done by corporations. There are even some good lobbyists, depending on your perspective on the issues.
Some changes I would like to see are things that would make the lobbying more transparent to the public. For instance, most bills presented to congress aren't written by congress, they are written by lobbyists, who then hand over the bills to sponsors and take them to the floor. Lobbyists don't just say, "here's some money, write this bill", they do all of it and just pass the bill along to a member of congress who sponsors the bill. For that, it should be a requirement for each bill to have declared authors and contributors, which means the author couldn't be falsified or left out.
Most bills presented to congress are so long that members of congress don't even read them. They are filled with unrelated verbiage, which becomes law, even though it is part of a bill that it has nothing to do with. It should be a requirement for bills to only contain mandates related to the purpose of the bill. It should also be a requirement for the sponsor of a bill to read it aloud on the floor of congress or committee. That should keep bills from becoming bloated with unrelated and hidden purposes, after all, what congress person would want to read a 5000 page bill out loud?
Just some thoughts. I don't really expect congress to have to read bills aloud on the floor, but I do at least expect them to know what they are voting for or against.
I forgot to mention each declared author and contributor should have to list all of their affiliations.
The corporate lobby pours in 11 times the money and manpower than all other lobbies COMBINED.
Bills are so complicated because lobbyist insert poison pills and qualifiers in the legislation. Ask any member of Congress why it is such a pain in the ass to get a bill through a committee.....it's because the staffers have to keep running out of the meeting to see if the lobbyist is ok with it.
Horseshit....turn off the access and you will turn off the money. Turn off the money and you will turn off the hold of corporations on your representative.
What you are asking for won't happen, that's like asking congress to take a pay cut or to require themselves to use the healthcare they provide to the people. They aren't doing it because they like corporations and care what they think, they are doing it for money to stay in office and endorsements. I guarantee someone gets assinated if they do what you are asking.
Require the bills to contain only relevant material and make the authors public. That would cut out the pills and pork, while making it obvious who really wrote the bill.
This may be the single most important change that can arise from the current fiscal crisis and the OWS movement.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -Thomas Jefferson
I find it odd that people only focus on corporations. Unions have lobbyists as well, yet they are unmentioned here. The politicians accept funding from corporations, yet they receive no blame here.
If there is power available, people will try to acquire it. What needs to be done is a massive reduction in the federal government. If politicians have less power over business and people in the United States, then you will see less lobbying and less corruption.
Blah, Blah, Blah, small government, Blah, Blah, Blah, more freedom, Blah, Blah, Blah, tax and spend, Blah, Blah, Blah.
This is a good start but not nearly enough. The problems we have are huge and global in scope. Things like strikes and protesting are like shooting spit balls at a tank. We have to get serious and think much bigger and out of the box. Let me show you >>>
Read “Common Sense 3.1” at ( www.revolution2.osixs.org ) FIGHT THE CAUSE - NOT THE SYMPTOM
Otherwise be prepared for disappointment and no significant change.
I don't trust Buffet because he benefits a lot from being an insider and is heavily involved with the banksters like BofA, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Buffett is a very complex, yet simple, man. I truly believe that he feels a tremendous sense of responsibility in returning his wisdom and wealth back to a system that has been so incredibly good to him.
I think you just summed up the movement, but how do you keep future legislators from changing th law? That's the problem. There are obvious things we need to do, but we need to have a way of keeping the laws in place. A "Mexican Hat Dance" has been done on our social contract, The Constitution, so how do we implement these ideas?
Walk into your congressman's office every day for the next two years. Bake muffins for the staff and ask to speak to the congressman. You can drop notice of your repeated visits to your local television station, who will love a Mr./Mrs. Blank goes to Washington story. Persistence and public sentiment win revolutions.
This is a really good idea; the only thing I would add to it is cooldown periods in between working for the government and working in any large corporation, particularly if you played a role in regulating that corporation. As far as a balance budget amendment goes, the answer is NO. We should work toward eventually balancing our budget, but right now "balancing the budget" has become a codeword for crippling and/or eliminating the social safety net without doing anything about the defense budget or the country's revenue stream.
Let's set clear deficit reduction targets with an understanding that increasing revenue through taxes and reviewing (probably cutting heavily into) the defense budget must be part of the solution. Our government takes in way too little in income and corporate taxes, especially at the top end of the spectrum, so I say a return to pre-Reagan corporate and income tax rates is in order. For those of you who fear enforcement would be difficult, give the IRS enough manpower to do frequent audits and the power to garnish back corporate taxes from compensation of CEOs and board members. Punish outsourcing with punitive corporate taxation and tariffs on goods made abroad, and then see what happens.
Those are all good points, and solutions will likely be much easier, if the basic framework of how corporations interact with our government are radically altered.
Exactly, and that's why campaign finance and lobbying reform need to come first.
What about all the laws already in place to benefit large corporations?
When we have a government of the people by the people, then corporations will be relegated to the accessory role that they occupied in the period of 1932-1980. Corporate leaders used to be citizens first and politicians had some notion of the public welfare. The change happened when corporations became citizens and the primary source of funding of most national campaigns.
I'm not offering up some utopian fantasy, but a workable change to how we view corporations in our social and economic system.
Corporations would still be free to perform their function, they just can't buy a government.
In fact, corporate spending on public relations would likely explode.....think of all of the television adds for clean coal.....because that would be their most effective route of influencing elections. It is, however, a lot more difficult to buy an electorate than it is to buy a candidate.
i agree with this completely and should be the main focus of this movement. do you not agree that it is high time that this movement come up with a "central effort" say ... GET MONEY OUT OF POLITICS? one of the main criticisms of the occupy movement is that it is made up of a bunch of different interests with no clear central agenda, and from what i have seen is that there is some truth in this assertion. while i am all for an "organic" growth approach to this thing, it would be nice is there were efforts being made to narrow down the list to the most important of complaints or rather, go back up the trail to find out what is most responsible for the current mess that we are all having to endure.
corporations already don't donate to political campaigns. they do donate to action committees, but the candidates do not control those.
why would this act change anything? you act as if these are shady mafia deals in back rooms. i don't discount that some are - but many are done with good intentions and many are already known to us. it was quite clear before obamacare passed that big pharma/insurance companies were helping to write and were going to reap big rewards - you didn't need to see that conversation recorded to know that. what about student loans - a scam system where the lender is essentially bailed out perpetually, and gives out infinite amounts of dollars to drive the cost of education (and associated mountains of debt) up year after year? this same system has been in place well over a decade. it does not appear to be a lack of transparency on these issues that has kept either in place.
that this plan wouldn't do nearly as much as one might initially think should be enough that even those misguided progressives can understand it!
If they are "good deals," then let them be done under the public's eye. Corporations can contribute to PAC's and also directly to campaigns.
PAC's are a whole nuther jelly donut. PAC's are slush funds with a fancy name. They are always indirectly controlled by a Party or a candidate. They need to go away. If you like a candidate, donate directly to him. The size of your donation should be limited, and is, so that billionaires can't buy candidates. Yet, with PAC's, they're not. Just go away Mr. PAC.
the 100% federal guarantee of student loans is in the public eye for anyone who cares to open and look at it. you say sunshine on these meetings will fix the problem. but this problem has been out in the open forever. it has not been fixed. i'm all for sunshine - but maybe it will not do nearly as much as you would like?
you are saying the problem is billionaires buying candidates for special favors. but no matter what you do - they are always going to find a way to find out how. that is why i advocate the libertarian solution, taking the power away to grant these favors. then billionaires would stop buying candidates - because they wouldn't be able to get anything from them.
A group of surgeons and I wanted to build a hospital. We had to get certain language changed in rules relating to specialty hospitals. We met with congressmen and a Senator and......you can not imagine how up front staffers were about how their campaigns needed a "war chest" and how much our dollars would be appreciated.....during the meeting. We never actually got to describe the issue to the representatives. It was very clear to me that I was ignorant of how influenced our political process was by dollars.
If what happened to us is representative of what goes on with lobbyists, then I think that the entire framework must be radically altered.
You can find your little pet issue that hasn't changed despite being in the public eye.....but I will tell you bluntly that the issue of student loan repayments has not been addressed ONLY because there is too much money and power on the other side of this issue. Your example is not the exception to my thesis....your example proves my thesis.
sounds like you should have recorded that yourself. like i said i'm all for more transparency. but i do not hear you wanting to take away the power to grant special favors. and as long as that exists - corporations will be buying them through some fashion.
i don't see how my example proves your thesis, if the crux of it relies on transparency fixing the problem. and it's not just the sallie mae side that wins out as you imply - it is the government too. they actually make more money if a student defaults. the only recent reform in this agency is in the debt collector in the case of default (who adds a fee, and takes a collection cut) - this was a subsidiary of sallie mae, but is now done by the government. all that really means is the fees that used to go to sallie mae now go to the government. the transparency you desire has been there for decades. the special favor has been there for decades. transparency is not removing this favor.
Yes!
I feel like I read somewhere that corporations already work around this by getting employees to donate on their behalf. Could be mistaken.
That's fine. Unions do the same thing. It is, however, given the limits on personal giving, hard for a corporation to donate millions of dollars in this fashion.
i like it. perfectly simple. another thing that he said recently was that to insure a balance budget each and every year, we pass legislation making running for another term off limits to all active congressmen if a balance budget is not passed.
He has also proposed a method of insuring free and fair trade:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2003/11/10/352872/index.htm
i appreciated when he came out public about there being something definitely wrong about a secretary of his paying a higher percentage in taxes than he did.
I hold shares in his company and have gone to Omaha each year for the past 12 years. I try to read whatever he has penned because, the more you read, the more you realize that this is a mind that doesn't come along very often. How he has led such an unconventional life, yet remained so well grounded, is simply astonishing.
Roman generals, awarded a triumph, were allowed to parade through the city in a full gala. It was tradition, however, for a slave to be assigned to the general whose task it was to continuously whisper, "you're only human." I don't know who has been performing this function for Buffett over the years, but we owe them a debt of gratitude as well.
yes, i agree. wasn't it interesting when he came out publicly about the inequality of our tax system and immediately all the major media stations were running pieces on how he was a crazy old man who should not be taken seriously?
Anyone who speaks about income inequality will be attacked viciously by the Right. That is the one conversation that they cannot allow.
yes, hey i was just reading the prolonged debate that you had with another user in the "I AM 1%" thread. i really enjoyed it. although that i am not an economist by any stretch of the word, i am finding these forums interesting and informative. by the way, what do you think of the christian right attacking the occupy movement when they really didn't move on attacking the fed. gov. when it moved to bail out all the banks? i see this as total hypocrisy and further affirms my feeling that the left and the right are nothing more than tools that are used to bring ppl into the argument, neither of them fulfilling what they claim to be about.
Look at my new forum post...."Christ has been replaced...."
What if they merely forget to record? The difficulty remains the same - separating corporate legislation from the elected polity that oversee it. And I don't believe there is a perfect solution.
The question is whether there is a better solution. Small steps grasshopper.
The you sanction them the same way you sanction other ethical violations.
You can't sanction what does not exist.
No personal contact is allowed between congressmen and lobbyists.....only written. That, I think, is pretty straight forward.
You're suggesting then a 24 hour guard on every congressman? And a guard to watch the guard, on and on, ad infinitum?
Yes.
Election time again... as we sit and type thousands of back room deals are being formulated at all levels of government. Good luck with keeping them in check - all eyes are already upon them, and yet we can neither see nor perceive... Perhaps you are more clairvoyant than I, what do you see?
It's really very simple to enforce....just like members of Congress probably avoid visiting drag queen events...a member of Congress cannot have personal interactions with registered lobbyists.
Codifying the rule will eventually allow it to permeate the culture of congress. It should be a taboo....just like....
You are totally ignoring the human element...
No, I'm trying to limit it.
Good luck with that. I don't believe we can remove money from politics, only force it underground. And that's why I prefer a simple system of disclosure available to the public.
Well, duhhh....
Does that mean you agree?
The 37000 lobbyists are the attorneys others have warned about... government should not be for sale on such a scale.
I agree, but it is. Read about the K Street project. Republicans have actually merged lobbyists into an arm of their party. Lobbyists write bills, check votes, and supply money to those who are waivering.
Ok, I'll read it.