Forum Post: Campaign Finance Reform
Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 8, 2011, 5:40 p.m. EST by Justathought
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Rally around campaign finance reform. It is the real issue.
Bump to the top of the page!!! ;-)
This is a very important subject that I really hope will be considered by the OWS folks as they move forward.
BTW thank you Justathought for bringing it up...
The tea party politicians elected in 2010 are financed by the Koch brothers and have bills written for them by ABEL. Look at the record of what the tea party rupublicans have accomplished in the House and in state legislatures across the country in the past 2 years:
Actions speak louder than words
Vote them all out in 2012. Clean the corporate slaves out of government and let's elect politicians that represent the people, not big business. They are part of the problem not part of the solution.
I agree w/you totally. The TBaggers have been a nightmare for this country.
But could we possibly stick to the subject of campaign finance reform in this thread? Better campaign financing laws would help rid of us of the TBaggers
My husband started a petition for just that yesterday. Please sign. http://signon.org/sign/publicly-funded-federal?source=c.url&r_by=1251142
I signed it and my thanks to your husband for the work involved. One minor thing though, why not set it up just way it's being done here in Maine...
It's a bit difficult to explain, but in a nutshell, It is a revolving fund of money that people campaigning for office are given to run their campaign.... Everyone is given the same amount of money and are prohibited from collecting ANY other funds outside of the program. The candidate is not forced to participate... they are allowed under the law to run a traditional campaign if they wish... However, say 2 candidates are running and one opts for a traditional campaign while his opponent accepts public funding... in a case such as that, if the traditionally funded campaign receives more money then his publicly funded opponent, that is when something called "Matching funds" kick in, allowing the publicly funded guy to have the same amount of money to work with as his traditionally funded opponent.
As I said, it's a bit hard to explain, but works beautifully....
At any rate my thanks to you and your husband for the petition. Just please consider looking into an already working model.
Publicly funded elections would take the money out of the process, giving power back to the 99%. Coroporations are NOT people they are legal entities without souls.A corporation's only exist to make profit for it's shareholders. The constitutional right of free speech is not for sale. Lies are not free speech. Someone always pays the price.
Right. It's important to remember that corporations are incapable of "political" speech by virtue of their fiduciary obligations. Their "speech" is by necessity commercial in nature, and there cannot possibly be an exception.
The Citizens United Case was a huge blow to our democracy. However it is an issue seperate from Publicly Funded Campaigns.
Public Funded Campaigns will continue to go on unaffected by the CU ruling here in Maine and if passed on the Federal level, the ruling would not affect it as well.
the only thing that matters right now is CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM, unless you get the big money out of politics, no change whatsoever will occur, this should be the focus of the protests, we need to have honest politicians that work for the public before any thing else can get done, campaign finance reform (ending corporate personhood, kicking the lobbyists out of the Washington) is the perfect starting point. It really is a no brainer that this should be the one thing we can all agree on. Because unless we do this, all those other demands that people have will never be addressed, not in a millions years.
I agree with you. Unfortunately, this has been made problematic by Citizens United, which will require a constitutional amendment (or new Supreme Court) to undo. Notwithstanding that, there is still much that can be done to reform how campaigns are financed.
Yes I agree. What would be a HUGE help would be to have Publicly Financed Campaigns. We;ve had them here in Maine on the state level for over a decade now and it has almost completely removed lobbyist power and influence.
We need it on the Federal level too!!!