In response to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, holding that corporate funding of independent political broadcasts in candidate elections cannot be limited under the First Amendment, Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Representative Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) introduced the Disclose Act.
Well, reaction in Congress seems to have broken down along party lines, and the Pubs in the Senate have filibustered it. Schumer says he’ll bring it up again after recess; but no way will it be passed in time to affect elections this fall.
So: Should the Disclose Act be passed? Other than the loopholes for the NRA, etc., what objections are there?
And why are the Pubs against it and the Dems for it, since, as I understand it, both parties get lots of corporate contributions and support?
It APPEARS that the bill favors Union donations, and only goes after corporate donations. Corporations are whores, and will switch sides in a heartbeat. The Unions are pretty pure Democrat, so the GOP sees the limitations as primarily hurting them. There are lots of Union exceptions, so the GOP will fight this.
I personally think every single penny paid into any political campaign whatsoever, hard or soft money, needs to be completely transparent, including disclosures in independent ad expenditures detailing who funded the ad.
Actually, I personally think we need to publicly fund all campaigns and prohibit political contributions, period, but that’s never going to happen, so I have to settle.
A noble idea, but the devil’s always in the details. How do you decide who’s eligible for public funding? Can I declare I’m running for President in 2012 and expect the Federal Election Commission to put me on commercials? Or, on the other side, how do you stop private contributions? If, for instance, a newspaper prints an editorial endorsing one candidate, or criticizing the other, is that a contribution?
The Republicans would be against oxygen if it was a bill that was up for a vote. On top of that I expect that the Republicans have a lot more really embarrassing donations.
You have a point. I’m actually beginning to think we could do just as well by drawing random names out of a hat, really. And then declaring that the 535-or-so Congressmembers will be fully supported financially by the federal government for the length of their tenure in office plus 5 years but that any exchange of money between one of them and a private citizen, corporation, PAC or organization in that time is grounds for execution on charges of treason.
I understand France has full public funding for elections – so, just look at how they handle the details, at least as a starting point. No need to re-invent the wheel.
That’s called sortition. It was used a lot in the ancient Athenian democracy. Not a good idea, in the modern world, IMO – government nowadays is a very complicated business, and like any such best left to experts. We need professional career politicians and professional career civil servants; every modern democracy does. Not that there isn’t room for part-time “citizen legislators,” so long as their role is marginal and corrective.
Democracy by random selection of legislators does actually have a lot to recommend it, in a theoretical sense at least. It manages to completely avoid all of the paradoxes of voting (which are unavoidable in conventional voting schemes when there are more than two candidates), and gives fair and proportional representation to all people and all viewpoints. There will be random fluctuation, of course, but for a body composed of several hundred individuals, it won’t be too extreme. I might tweak it, though, by randomly selecting voters, and having each one choosing one representative (which might, of course, be themself), rather than randomly selecting the representatives directly: I certainly know a few folks who I’d trust to do a better job in office than I would.
Of course, as BrainGlutton points out, there is the issue with training for the job. But this could be addressed by some sort of mentoring program: Instead of choosing the representatives a few months before their term starts, you could have them be elected for a full term later, and spend the current term under the wing of a current office-holder (who was selected two years previous).
And even at that, government isn’t all that complicated as it’s made out to be. You often hear stories, for instance, of a politician dying or being incapacitated and replaced by his wife, or of someone who rose to prominence merely by virtue of being related to a politician running for or even winning high office. As someone said around here, after one such incident: “If you died tomorrow, would your spouse be able to take over your job?”.
I’m thinking that would be a path to Bonapartist presidential dictatorship. A Congress chosen by lot would not be a Congress, it would be a focus group; it would not be qualified to do anything but vote up-or-down on proposals from the executive – which still would be composed for the most part of career civil servants, whether the POTUS were elected or chosen by sortition. So, Congress would most of the time merely rubber-stamp bills that, frankly, would bewilder most of its members.
The Freepers’ response to the Disclose Act is most entertaining. (In the sense that it was entertaining for the gentry in Regency London to visit the Bedlam madhouse and watch the inmates like zoo animals.)
I’m thinking that a lot of nominal Democrats, your Dead Dog Blue Ball Democrats would be perfectly happy to let it quietly die. Maybe most of their constituents may not care if they get funding from CitiGroup or Exxon, but a lot will. So they are pleased to be able to vote in favor of something “transparent” if they are assured that the Pubbies will set their hair on fire and daub themselves with shit rather than let it pass.
Yes, although, once you allow randomness, lots of voting systems avoid those paradoxes, presumably some of them also avoiding the pitfalls of pure unchecked random selection as well (in particular, the instabilities presented by the serious possibility of selection of a candidate who almost every voter absolutely hates). Still, it is quite mathematically pretty, in a way few other voting systems are…
Well first we can do away with the funny notion that anyone has a chance in politics. Only the 2 major parties have it. To get public funding, one has to be a nominee of those parties. Smaller but established parties like Libertarian or Green will get less money but are allowed to make up for it with donations