Forum Post: Take The Special Interest Money Out Of Politics
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 14, 2011, 3:21 p.m. EST by WilliamPilgrim
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A simple solution; only registered voters can contribute to campaigns. Registered voters can only contribute to campaigns for their own state officials and the presidential election. All campaign contributions at every level of government should be attached to a current registered voter’s registration number at the time they are collected. All contributions will be displayed online and considered to be public information. Anyone should be able to look up any elected official and determine who contributed to that election. Additionally, anyone should be able to see their own contributions and ensure that they have been applied correctly.
As it is now, I believe this would be unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruled in the 19th century that corporations have the rights of people, including the right to free speech. And since money = speech, they can give as much "speech" as they want. So if you want this to happen, the first step needs to be amending the US Constitution to clarify that a corporation is not a person.
For there to be rights there must also be duties: "The legally enforceable duties of citizenship vary depending on one's country, and may include such items as:
Citizenship has never been conferred on a corporate entity. A corporation can not serve in the military, or give a son or daughter to war. A corporation can not be jailed or executed for committing the same capital offenses that would send a citizen to the executioner. Many corporations don’t pay taxes. In short, the corporation is not a citizen, and therefore should not be granted the voice of a citizen. If the corporation’s unfair financial advantage can influence our representatives to enact legislation that is detrimental to we the people, there is no democracy, and there is no republic. The fact that the Supreme Court has given a right to Corporations without the duties imposed on the rest of the citizens seems to fall short of proof that corporations should have an equal voice in the process.
A variation is to say that candidates can only accept donations from registered voters in their district. This gets around Citizens United by restricting the candidates, not the corporations. A candidate, like many other jobs, can and should have restrictions on their actions. Just as corporate entities are restricted from paying bribes in foreign countries.
With enough ground swell(don't like grass roots anymore), we can head in that direction. The supreme court ruling is indeed the biggest hang up for this issue.
New facebook page focused solely on the issue. No parties, no right vs. left or democrat vs. republican.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Get-Money-Out-of-Politics/170454236375392
http://www.getmoneyout.com/
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