Everybody is sick of corruption, but most are ignorant to the bigger picture (1 Viewer)

[TheHonestTruth]

Corruption in politics is beyond rampant, and votes are legally for sale under the current system. We need to publically finance elections.

Discuss.

 

[reaganburch]

The official 'Coffee Talk' thread....

Like a big stick of buttah....

 

[TheHonestTruth]

The official 'Coffee Talk' thread....

Like a big stick of buttah....

har har, i didn't say "talk amongst yourselves" though :2razz:



No opinions of your own here?

I find that most people I talk to about this are on board with this movement. The decline of our democracy is no laughing matter, and while it wont fix all corruption, publically financed elections is a giant step. The problem is that we are basically fighting the corrupted status quo establishment of money and power, this movement is gonna need alot of momentum before the mainstream media will start acknowledging its importance and obvious merit. But the ball is already rolling.

 

[Patrickt]

"Corruption in politics is beyond rampant, and votes are legally for sale under the current system. We need to publically finance elections."

A. You didn't establish that the problem you pose exists. I'm sure you and your friends agree that it does but that doesn't make it fact.

B. Public financing of elections will not solve any of the current problems and would, in my opinion, add to it. Of course, how bad it would be it depends on what you would restrict when you finance the elections from taxes.

 

[TheHonestTruth]

"Corruption in politics is beyond rampant, and votes are legally for sale under the current system. We need to publically finance elections."

A. You didn't establish that the problem you pose exists. I'm sure you and your friends agree that it does but that doesn't make it fact.

B. Public financing of elections will not solve any of the current problems and would, in my opinion, add to it. Of course, how bad it would be it depends on what you would restrict when you finance the elections from taxes.

Maybe because you are in mexico you have an outsiders perspective. But...



A. Really? Have you turned on the news lately? 2006 has been awash in public corruption here in the U.S.

Ney, Reid, Jack Abramhoff and Tom Delay, Duke Cunningham, William Jefferson...these are just guys who got caught within the past year. The real widespread corruption is in any bill you see that harms average Americans, or represents an interest to the public which is not of value in return for the expenditure.

Example :the medicare bill of 2003 is a great example, now widely considered a handout to big pharma, it doesn't even allow our government to negotiate prices on drugs anymore, big pharma can set whatever it wants and medicare just has to pay it.

B. Yes, it would solve many of the current problems. Politicians no longer have to worry about that same giant influence that their "donors" have on their decisions. The problem is that the big money donors contribute dollar amounts not easily matched, and so politicians become puppets for the BIG money interests all too often. Casino, travel, and hospitality lobbies just got them to ban internet gambling here. All that free market rhetoric goes right out the window when a wealthier interest can buy legislation to squash the competition.

Tell me, what problems would public financing add? What problems that are more pressing than the major conflict of interest we have today with profit making interests investing in candidates and which then expect a return on those investments? They aren't there to waste cash my friend, those are investments with specific goals in mind.

 

[FallingPianos]

Corruption in politics is beyond rampant, and votes are legally for sale under the current system. We need to publically finance elections.

Discuss.

who decides which candidates get funding and which dont?

 

[TheHonestTruth]

who decides which candidates get funding and which dont?

The people.

You have to qualify for the ballot by getting a large number of citizens to sign petitions for your candidacy, multiple tens of thousands of signatures along with a couple thousand 5 dollar donations from citizen supporters.

 

[Patrickt]

TheHonestTruth: It's true. I have committed the unpardonable sin of living outside the U.S. and still having an opinion. I suspect my perspective goes back a lot further than yours, too. I can actually remember President Truman and the vicuna coat. I probably keep up better than most people voting in the U.S. by reading the news on the internet. And, I received my absentee ballot in the mail today.

I don't think corruption is better or worse than it was fifty years ago. What has changed significantly is the amount of power residing in Washington. As more and more power accrues in Washington the more people want to influence it. Corporations by access, unions by access, and lots of other people buy access.

So, in your utopia, people could not give money to candidates. Fine. How would you stop them from employing a politicians wife or children in a plum job? How would you stop them from doing a Ruckleshaus and giving the politician a plum job when he leaves office for favors already done? How would you stop special interest groups from "volunteering" their members to campaign for politicians?

The additional problems? How about a growing number of untenable candidates feeding at the public trough and I'm assuming to be fair we'd have to give Ralph Nader the same as we'd give John Kerry?

I realize that for some, there is no problem that can't be dealt with by public financing. It's the panacea. In fact, it's part of the problem.

 

[TheHonestTruth]

Patrickt:

Your sin was claiming we dont have corruption that is glaring and overtly damaging. Maybe it is because you get all your news from your selected internet source, Im not sure.

So, in your utopia, people could not give money to candidates. Fine. How would you stop them from employing a politicians wife or children in a plum job? How would you stop them from doing a Ruckleshaus and giving the politician a plum job when he leaves office for favors already done? How would you stop special interest groups from "volunteering" their members to campaign for politicians?

All those things should be more tightly regulated as well, if you go into public life it shouldn't be to get favors from wealthy interests. I dont care if you whine about its unfairness to those congressman's family members, they should find a job on their own merit like most people have to do. Its not unfair to them when you are balancing the greater democratic interests of this nation. Start handing out fines and penalities if companies want to employ family members of congressman after the law says they cannot, lets see how many handout jobs they keep giving then. And not all them can be stopped of course, and as I've already said publically financing elections wont solve all corruption, but it would still be a major step toward bringing true democracy back to this nation. The forefathers would be rolling to see how undemocratic the system of today has become. They aren't working for the taxpayers, they are working for wealthy interests who bankroll them.

The additional problems? How about a growing number of untenable candidates feeding at the public trough and I'm assuming to be fair we'd have to give Ralph Nader the same as we'd give John Kerry?

I realize that for some, there is no problem that can't be dealt with by public financing. It's the panacea. In fact, it's part of the problem.

Nader is untenable? LMAO, how is that?

You seem to deluded into thinking any new tax makes the idea along a spendocrat line of thinking. Well thats where your assumption couldnt be more wrong. I'd cut alot more taxes than you ever would my friend, maybe to an extreme some might say. Im a libertarian on most issues, but not here. I see the savings it would bring us. I see that we'd be saving our democracy money when you look at the miniscule expenditure public financing of elections would cost in comparison to the gross levels of pork, corporate welfare, and waste produced by the system today. Today we allow a direct conflict of interest with for profit entities running government by bankrolling candidates, its a culture of corruption that begins on the campaign trail.

I don't think corruption is better or worse than it was fifty years ago.

Then you are living in a complete delusional fanatasy world of yester year. You dont think corruption is bad? You dont think its worse than ever? You dont think our government and the media are broken?

Then please explain the 2.6 trillion dollars missing that nobody knows about, and nobody in government seems to care about. Defense spending is the easiest way to defraud the taxpayers it seems, right now its greatest source of waste. Remember the $600 dollar toilet seats at the pentagon, there is no justification for that level of gross corruption.

Here is the big one: We had 2.6 trillion dollars missing from the department of defense budget in July 2001. This is information you can find at the govt's own website.


http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/2001/s20010716-secdef2.html

I checked it for myself and found it. If you want to see the quote for yourself its about 3/4 of the way through the transcript, or copy and paste it into word look at page 34 in the word document and you'll and find Rumsfeld saying this:

" SEC. RUMSFELD: Mr. Congressman, thank you very much. Your question is, of course, right at the heart of an enormously important issue for the Department of Defense. We have a panel in the Quadrennial Defense Review on this subject. We have met with it twice in the last two weeks. We're obviously going to have to meet with it again. It is a big, broad, complicated subject.

As you know, the Department of Defense really is not in charge of its civilian workforce, in a certain sense. It's the OPM, or Office of Personnel management, I guess. There are all kinds of long- standing rules and regulations about what you can do and what you can't do. I know Dr. Zakheim's been trying to hire CPAs because the financial systems of the department are so snarled up that we can't account for some $2.6 trillion in transactions that exist, if that's believable. And yet we're told that we can't hire CPAs to help untangle it in many respects."





They cant even hire accountants to investigate 2.6 trillion dollars just vanishing into thin air? :shock:


TRILLION with a T!! ( a billion is 1,000 million.... a trillion is 1,000 billion). Its clearly insider graft mixed with crappy accounting, but why haven't we heard a word about it from the people we are paying to serve us.


There is a serious problem in our country when stuff like this gets swept under the rug. Would you agree? The corporate media hasn't whispered a word about it. The government wont take accountability until they are forced to do it. Thats why the media is supposed to act as a watchdog. The culture of corruption via the legal bribe system has created a lapdog media.

 

[RightinNYC]

One problem...if you decide to publicly finance elections, you're implying that there would be no outside funding allowed. So you're telling me that I'm not allowed to go out and spend money to campaign for a person I support? I'm not allowed to go out and advocate for an issue I believe in which certain candidates happen to support?

You'll see the exact same thing happen as we saw with McCain/Feingold. It wont actually reduce the money in politics or make things better, it will just redirect that money to outside groups that will then be even more vicious.

 

[TheHonestTruth]

One problem...if you decide to publicly finance elections, you're implying that there would be no outside funding allowed. So you're telling me that I'm not allowed to go out and spend money to campaign for a person I support? I'm not allowed to go out and advocate for an issue I believe in which certain candidates happen to support?

You'll see the exact same thing happen as we saw with McCain/Feingold. It wont actually reduce the money in politics or make things better, it will just redirect that money to outside groups that will then be even more vicious.

It will take the vast majority of private money out of the campaign to office, and it seems the common politician these days is most concerned about re-election than anything else, so thats why the dollars that fund re-elections are the main issue to correct.

Ideally we should create a system that bans almost all private contributions, but as of now we'd probably have to settle for an opt-in system. At least with opt-in clean elections, that would create an openness the people could see. Some of the candidates could and would run clean, and they will campaign on that fact, and the people will know. The people who run with dirty money will eventually find themselves out of office. For example since its inception in Arizona a few years ago, now 70% of the Arizona state legislators were elected clean.

You can advocate for an issue any way you'd like other than de facto bribery of politicians. The problem isn't the individual citizen who isn't a paid lobbyist, it is the individual lobbyists who are overpaid simply so they can use their collective money to influence congress for the issue they were hired for, which is usually a profit motive. But the private money just needs to go to simplify the situation. Thus you can raise awarness on an issue through your own means, and then you and your group can create a ballot initiative drive for the people to vote upon your issue in the next election. Create a letter writing campaign to your congressman. But no legal bribes.

 

[RightinNYC]

It will take the vast majority of private money out of the campaign to office, and it seems the common politician these days is most concerned about re-election than anything else, so thats why the dollars that fund re-elections are the main issue to correct.

This is absolutely unsupported by the facts. The McCain/Feingold reform did absolutely nothing to reduce the amount of money spent, it just shifted it around.

Futhermore, the SC has ruled that political speech is free speech.

Ideally we should create a system that bans almost all private contributions

Unconstitutional.

You can advocate for an issue any way you'd like other than de facto bribery of politicians. The problem isn't the individual citizen who isn't a paid lobbyist, it is the individual lobbyists who are overpaid simply so they can use their collective money to influence congress for the issue they were hired for, which is usually a profit motive. But the private money just needs to go to simplify the situation. Thus you can raise awarness on an issue through your own means, and then you and your group can create a ballot initiative drive for the people to vote upon your issue in the next election. Create a letter writing campaign to your congressman. But no legal bribes.

You underestimate the ingenuity of the American enterprising spirit.

 

[TheHonestTruth]

This is absolutely unsupported by the facts. The McCain/Feingold reform did absolutely nothing to reduce the amount of money spent, it just shifted it around.

Futhermore, the SC has ruled that political speech is free speech.



Unconstitutional.


You underestimate the ingenuity of the American enterprising spirit.

Wrong. You'd have to be delusional to look at our political culture and say that politicians dont hold their jobs first and foremost over all other considerations.

And my statements are supported by THE facts. Clean elections already in place in states who have them as an option, require that candidates who run clean to take the overwhelming majority of the money from the taxpayers, not from the private contributors.

I know that the SC ruled that way in the 70's long before we had the takeoff in private campaign expenditures in the 80's and onward to the ever increasing record levels beyond inflationary consideration to offset them, that we've got today. Thats why an opt-in system is the only option under today's policy decisions. Until they rule differently an opt-in system is the only choice, but that would still shine light on the whole situation and voters could vote out the dirty money candidates.

And what are you talking about McCain Feingold for? That's not what Im advocating. If you are informed, then you know that legislation was a hoax. It cut the allowable soft money in half, but then it allowed doubling the amount of hard money into a campaign. The effect on democracy was the same. The only real reform in campaign finance wont come by closing old loopholes and opening new ones, it will come by taking the private money out of campaigns by replacing it with public money. Today, they dont work for the taxpayers, they answer first to the private interests that bankroll their campaigns.

 

[TheHonestTruth]

As long as we accept the outdated decision from the 1976 Court's notion that "money equals speech," a true democratic republic is nearly impossible because wealthy interests will still be able to legally give bribe money. Status quo minded thinkers, along with wealthy interests who wish to seek the protection of the legal bribes, will continue to try to defend the outdated court decision that was made during a time period before we had seen the rise of the major corporate dollar in american political campaigns.

That said, we can start to reverse the corrupting impact of legal bribery by supporting federal clean election legislation which allows candidates to voluntarily choose to run clean. Such a bill, H.R. 3099, the Clean Money, Clean Elections Act has been introduced in the house (where low level politicians are generally less bought out) and it is still in committee.

But I'll be surprised if the deep culture of corruption thats developed will be challenged by the majority in the high levels of government even if H.R. 3099 does go to a vote. They've become too far addicted to the close relationship with for profit interests, and since the highest offices cost the most to run for, the most powerful politicians are on the tightest strings. It just keeps getting worse every election cycle as candidates are spending more and more to advertise.

It is blantantly undemocratic if we continue to allow a few wealthy interests to write their own laws, and buy them into legislation. Its not anti-democratic to limit a for-profit entity from having FAR more political access than the vast majority of voters, that is the essence of democracy. When the influence on government is heavily restricted by the few, that is not democracy. These powerful lobbying entities should petition government the way our founding fathers envisioned, without using massive amounts of cash. And lets not pretend like these power players in the economy dont already have plenty of other ways to influence government legislation in their favor. We just need to do the most basic thing to level the playing field of democracy and take the big money out of the political campaigns that has already gone so far in corrupting our democracy.

 

[Billo_Really]

If there is corruption in government, it is because there is corruption in our lives. The government is a reflection of the people. If we want better government, we have to be a better society.

 

[TheHonestTruth]

If there is corruption in government, it is because there is corruption in our lives. The government is a reflection of the people. If we want better government, we have to be a better society.

Government is corrupt, but I would agree the people which make it so corrupt are a reflection of our society as a whole.

However a statement so broad as "be a better society" doesn't leave us with much of an actionable plan to fix anything. As a public, what we can do is demand our government take the plutocratic legal bribe system out of government by taking private money out of campaigns. We can all be better watchdogs for democracy, we can demand laws and strict enforcement by law for any conflicts of interest that are benefiting power while ruining our system of governance.