Forum Post: Fix Congress First
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 3, 2011, 9:40 p.m. EST by JeremyAlexander
(3)
from Atlanta, GA
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
All of these problems start with money in politics. The political process has been corrupted and is not capable of dealing with any of the issues that has been raised, let alone all of them at once. They are only symptoms. Congress is paralyzed and protesting will not change this. As long as fundraising is more important than legislating, there will be no progress.
The current system thrives when there is conflict, whether it comes from Tea Parties or Occupy Wall Street. This system also values inaction and the status quo above all else. Conflict without resolution. The only solution is to change the system. This is a goal that 99% of America truly can get behind. Tea Parties and OWS. Please consider it when finalizing your demands.
Corporate Free Speech There needs to be better corporate representation. Money is speech. Every individual, even individual stockholders, "ownership," has a right to free speech. Free speech means no one can force or prevent an individual's speech. Ownership has the right to direct the corporation's speech and political contributions. Majority control of contributions may violate an individual's free speech. Corporate management can speech for the corporation, but ownership needs to authorize that speech. No speech or money spent on political contributions may be made without ownership authorization and such contributions must be taken from the individual's dividends. No dividends means there is no allowance for contributions. Corporate management must poll the ownership to determine the amount and placement of all individual stockholder directed contributions. The assignment of all corporate contributions must be made public so that ownership can verify the correct placement of their contributions. Management can not make contributions on the behalf of nonresponsive ownership and thus can only make contributions for which they have been directly authorized.
Money is speech. Corporations are people, because people get the money. Free speech means people are not forced to pay for someone else's speech. Corporations may not force to pay or deny dividends, to a person who does not approve of money spent on speech. Corporations may only spend money on speech that is taken, by approval, from the people who get the money. Every person who gets money, from the corporation, must approve the money spent on speech, in order to protect the right to free speech. Since the money spent on speech is identifiable with a person then that money is subject to caps associated with that person and must be reported. Also, tax consequences flow, to each person, for tax exempt contributions. If the corporation feels that the cost of polling and reporting the money spent on speech is prohibitive, then the corporation is prohibited from spending on speech. Corporations spend money on product ads and any political placement in a product ad must have unanimous consent of ownership.
Ban corporate lobbying and reform campaign finance.
The problem with focusing on lobbying is that poor people have lobbyists too. And unions and women and environmentalists and so on. Lobbying makes too much sense to issue blanket bans. Elected officials only have so much time to meet with constituents, so it makes sense for groups of like-minded people to appoint someone to represent them. The problem is when some lobbyists have much more power than others. And that power comes from the money they contribute.
Undoing Citizens United would be pointless. The system was broken long before then. Lots of thought has been put into meaningful campaign finance reform and the people at Fix Congress First have ideas worth looking at. The Supreme Court has shown that anything short of a Constitutional Amendment won't be enough. For a better explanation, please take a look here: http://fixcongressfirst.org/blog/2010/why-im-calling-for-a-constitutional-amendment/
A diagnosis of the problem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTpd9Nf-uSo