Forum Post: We don't need "Wealth Redistribution," what we really need is "Political Influence Redistribution"
Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 23, 2011, 9:18 p.m. EST by LSN45
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I have no problem with people making lots and lots of money - as long as they don't subvert our democracy and disenfranchise the American voter in the process. The influence needs to go back to who the founding fathers intended - the people (some "wealth redistribution" will happen automatically as the rich and powerful are no longer able to twist the laws in their favor).
For the sake our our children and future generations of Americans, we need to take back our democracy from the rich and powerful who are using their vast sums of money to "speak" as if they represent millions of Americans. They are twisting our laws and manipulating our policies in their favor at the expense of the average American. The $50 or $100 a normal American may give to a political campaign becomes meaningless when corporations or other special interests are handing our millions to buy political access to the decision making process. Here's my 2 cents on what we need to do:
For decades now the corporations and special interests have had our "representatives" bought and paid for (both on the right and the left). Don't get distracted by the symptoms - we need to address the root cause. Concentrating our efforts on getting the money out of our politics is the best way we can create an environment in which further reforms can be realized. Until we end the current system of legalized bribery (campaign donations) and paid lobbying our politicians will continue to be the LAP DOGS of the corporations and special interests. What we need first and foremost is real, loop-hole free CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM!!!! If the corruption is not dealt with first, the chance of any other meaningful reforms becoming a reality is almost zero - the special interests will just use their money to buy votes and put forward bills that create loop-holes or otherwise twist the law in their favor. If we want our children to live in a country where there vote matters, we need to get the money out of our politics, otherwise they will increasingly become the 21st century version of the "landless peasant." Spread the word - End the LEGALIZED BRIBERY!!! CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM needs to be THE main goal of the protests!!!
I agree. Wealth itself is not the problem, in my opinion. If you invent the light bulb or the iPod, a lot of money is going to come your way with little or no evil in the process. The biggest problem is that wealth/money is now treated as speech, which means that we are no longer anywhere near equal. The rich have more "speech", more influence on policy and votes. That's the biggest problem. And of course the Scalias and Thomases will emphasize that we're "born" or "created" equal, that therefore inequality is fine as life goes on. But we know better; real democracy requires real equality; the more equality, the more authentic the democracy.
The second big problem is distributing/redistributing wealth. Even if we got the influence of money entirely out of politics and even if all wealth were made by morally noble means, we still would want to redistribute so that wealth did not concentrate too much in a small circle of people, and so that everyone could have a good standard of living in terms of their basic needs of food, clothing, shelter/climate control, health care and health enhancement.
We need no campaign finance, period. Instead, as the internet, cable TV, radio, and broadcast TV spaces are public goods given/rented by the people to various private interests, these media should be made available to essentially all political candidates with more than a handful of supporters. We also would benefit from a multi party voting system. Even a parliament would be superior to our two party Congress, but ideally we would go further. Voters would rank candidates from first choice through last acceptable choice, and the vote would go through people's second third and fourth choices until someone had a majority/super majority of the votes. This is more or less the system Lani Guinier suggested, and one of the reasons conservatives blocked Clinton from putting her in the Justice Dept. back in the 90's.
Who's funding the Conservative Movement?
KOCH FOUNDATIONS: David H. Koch Charitable Foundation Charles G. Koch Foundation Claude R. Lambe Foundation SCAIFE FOUNDATIONS: Sarah Scaife Foundation The Carthage Foundation Allegheny Foundation BIG OIL: Exxon Mobil WAL-MART: Wal-Mart
I agree. I am sick of only having the right to choose one of two or three bought-and-paid-for politicians. Neither do I appreciate those same politicians using the system that was put in place to secure the freedom of the American people, to screw us over. A few years ago during the health care reform discussions, I made a similar observation. The politicians kept talking about healthcare reform when what was really happening was health insurance reform. I honestly belive that many of the financial and social issues that make up such a large part of the disenchantment that every day people feel is caused by this double-speak type of manipulation. We are told that they are making efforts to improve the areas we scream about, when instead, they are simply manipulating us to achieve their own gain.
You hit it on the head. Our politicians have allowed the "health insurance" industry to turn America into an ATM.
How about this, the President has a 2 term limit right. How about Congress having a term limit, 10 years and can not run for congress for the rest of your life. What corporation will want to buy a broken puppet.
That is the kind of thinking we need. Term limits are sensible and need to happen. That said, in my opinion if we had to choose one goal it would be to get the money out and end the corruption. Once the legalized bribery is out, reforms such as term limits would happen almost immediately because our laws will actually reflect what the American people want rather than what the corporations and special interests want.
I really like the idea of publicly funded campaign I see people talking about. A trust fund of some sort with some kind of smart criteria to keep the system from being abused. Currently the campaign process itself is making people rich, with billions being spent each year to secure offices. In order to get any traction it would require a HUGE populist movement and much of it would have to be achieved by mainly by petitions (many are suggesting a constitutional amendment) because it would have to be able to withstand the anti-marketing blitz that is bound to be thrown at it by the establishment folks.
Whatever we do, we need to change the "currency" of our politics so the race is not won by the person with the most money, but rather the person with the best ideas for the effective operation of our government that secures the rights of the people.
How do you propose we do that? Curious to see your solution to the problem, what system you would enact.
when Nader was kept out of the debates in 2000 he was the 3rd leading candidate, way behind Bush & Gore, but WAY ahead of any 4th or 5th. still he was not allowed to debate because the debate was a "private-sector" deal. it would not be hard to write legislation that required TV networks to open up debates as well as provide advertising and campaign time to a whole range of candidates. as the above post notes, the private TV networks are using OUR PUBLIC airwaves/ infrastructure.
we can also legislate about campaign donations and conflicts of interest between our elected officials and industries they are supposed to regulate. though "Citizens United" makes this more difficult and maybe even Constitutional... so... WOLFPAC.com is attempting to address that.
if none of this works... Rebellion my fellow Americans... Rebellion.
We would need a Constitutional Amendment to over turn "Citizens United"
Your absolutely right - I've seen the draft of the Amendment. I'm still learning about and solidifying the specifics, but whatever we do we need to fix the election process so our "representatives" actually represent us. Spread the word - their are a lot of people that agree with this but don't know it is something that OWS is pushing for.
I find our elected officials incompetent to govern. They need some incentive that will mean something to them instead of putting funds at risk that will cause harm to those persons and institutions who can least afford such loss. I suggest that these officials’ pay and/or benefits be cut if and/or when they fail to do their job. As it is, party “a” threatens to harm parties “”d” through “z” if parties “b” and “c” can’t come to an agreement. It makes no sense whatsoever to threaten Congress with cuts that will not have any impact on them directly. Our Constitution establishes the type of government we are to have. We do not need to establish any “sub” groups within these institutions. They are all responsible collectively to govern and if/when they fail to do so they are all liable collectively. The “carrot and stick” method only works when the carrot or stick is guaranteed to the same one. These officials have received their carrot upon being elected as they shall receive full pay and full benefits for the rest of their life even if they only serve one term. I say put all options “on the table” including their lifetime pay and benefits. I’m of the position that such a “stick” would cause these officials to get their head out of the clouds and their feet on the ground.
I like your line of thinking. A while ago I heard about a push to pass a law that would require congress to have to live with the same kind of healthcare as the rest of the country. They should also require the children of politicians to serve in the military, so they think twice before committing American troops to battle.
I have no problem with people making lots and lots of money - as long as they don't subvert our democracy and disenfranchise the American voter in the process.
I'm not really in favour of wealth redistribution such as I've seen proposed around here, I don't think you should get anything more than the most basic needs (ie not let you starve to death) without earning it by producing things of value for society, but I do sort of ... not really like people who make absurd amounts of money. There is no way, one man contributed billions of dollars of value to society, more than an entire small town full of hardworking people. He just played a little game with slips of paper and electronic files that allowed him to skim value from other people's work. He may never have produced anything of value in his entire life; his initial investments could just be made simply by virtue of other little slips of paper, an inheiritance for instance. There's something parasitical about it.
That being said. On a pragmatic level I accept capitalism and its parasitic tendencies, just as I accept some level of crime on the streets and corruption in government. But, it should be managed and kept under control, to keep society safe. It should be mitigated, and I don't have to like it to accept it.
good point. I think we can all live with a degree of bad behavior from our fellow primates. the problem is institutional corruption. Let's not ask for a utopia... an American style democracy will do!
to underline the idea of this post: CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM. get the legalized bribery out of our democracy.
Well I'm Canadian, so for me, a restoration of parliamentary democracy ... but essentially same dif ... the situation is much the same outside the US, all the Western democracies have been co-opted to greater or lesser degrees.
And yeah, no utopia or radical experiments, exactly, for me a rollback will do just fine. When it gets to the point that a conservative looks something like Eisenhower rather than Reagan or Bush, I'll be plenty happy.
Bravo! You are spot on when you say that the rich have overthrown our political representatives. But would allow me to expand on that fact a little? How did the rich become rich in the first place? In my opinion, they did it first, by paying their workers less than the fair value of the commodities they produced for the enterprise; second, by usurping the natural resources that belong to all of us, and third, by disavowing any responsibility for the environmental damage caused in the extraction and production of those commodities. When you look at things from a slightly broader perspective, it becomes apparent, at least to me anyway, that the causes of our current catastrophe are a lot deeper than mere political reform can repair. Since Nixon created the EPA, that agency has struggled (more or less) to regulate the worst activities of polluters. Sure they were undermined in many cases by political lackeys, but corporations have always and will always find a way to circumvent the law. No, my friend, we need to boot the rich out of the temple entirely, and replace them with the likes of us working people, informed, responsible to our communities, and scared to death that this is our last chance to get things right. Thanks for reading.
I agree - just think what it would be like to have real statesmen and women in office, people who want to actually serve the best interests of the country rather than just lining their own pockets. As I have seen expressed elsewhere, it is doubtful that Abraham Lincoln and the like would even make the primaries in today's environment. We need to make the "currency" of our election process good ideas rather than actual cash.
Please. Keep working on that democracy thing. I will continue to work for campaign finance reform so that our REPUBLIC will be stronger.
Dalton - I'm aware we live in a Republic, I realize it is not a direct democracy. For your benefit I should have said "democratic process." You will see my same message in several places (I copy and paste to posts addressing the same topic). Spread the word! Getting the money out of politics is the "fulcrum issue" which will increase the chances of other reforms becoming a reality.
You are the first person to acknowledge that we live in a republic. I have been down voted hundreds of times on that statement.
Debt is what is used to control people. Once in debt, there is no way out. Justifiable Debt Restructure would give main street aka the 99% a way to defend themselves from the rich elite who are already fat on their existing wealth.
So, I agree with you, I don't want wealth redistribution, I want main street to keep what they still have before it gets redistributed to the billionaires.
Hey fuck face, money doesn't buy votes. Oh wait, it does, at least that's how democrats run their campaigns. Vote for me, and I will give you more.
Republicans, on the other hand, cannot buy votes. Sure, corporations can fund campaigns, and lobby for policies. But they cannot buy votes. Yet, the 99% still sees the value in economy, and in America. Republicans win on value. Democrats win on bribe. Plain and simple.