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Pay to Play the U.S. Way
Thu Anon Coward writes "There's an article on CNN.com that finally shows proof that corporations actually demand access to politicians for contributing $$$. And that political parties promise access based on how much the corporations "donate". Microsoft donated money on the condition that they be seated next to "Sen. (Paul) Coverdell or leadership, Commerce Committee or Judiciary Committee," according to a GOP memo. The memo added Microsoft did not want to sit with Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a major critic." How can we fight this? Write letters to the companies saying we won't buy their products because of their undue influence? You think the politicians will actually listen if we write them instead?" The campaign finance debate is probably the most important political issue in the U.S. right now. You should pay attention, even if you hate politics.
Overthrowing the gov would be the fastest way for change. They don't listen. Maybe we can bribe them with donations to CHANGE ?
I can only come to one conclusion: The ballot is definitely stronger than the bullet, but in today's United States of America, the Dollar is stronger than the ballot.
We all know how well threatening and writing letters to Microsoft works. Microsoft doesn't care much about the individual consumer, what they care about is the corporation using Microsoft products. And I don't know about you, but I can't go write letters on the behalf of my company threatening to stop using Microsoft products.
This is why there are laws against forming monopolies. However we've passed that threshold. Microsoft isn't "becoming" a monopoly that we can stop, Microsoft is and has been a monopoly that those laws were suppose to prevent in the first place. Now it's going to take a lot longer to rid them of the monopoly than it would have been to prevent it from forming about 8 years ago.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
Not a damn thing, since so few of us even vote. The few who bothered to vote in november elected the buddies of legalized bribery by a landslide. Mitch McConell,(R, KY) legalized bribery's best friend in Washington won by a nearly 70 to 30 margin. We have an oligarchy, not a democracy, because people stay home.
How ya like dat?
It is a well known fact that America is controlled by corporations, such as Microsoft. Unfortunately we cannot do much about this, for it is the corporations that have made America what it is. If it wasn't for global corporations such as Microsoft, McDonnalds, Disney, ect... America wouldn't be the richest and most powerful country on the planet. Really, if you don't like it, there are more socialist countries such as Canada who have a living standard almost as high as USA's that you can move to.
Stanley Feinbaum, professional journalist and master debater! God bless the USA!
Personally I find it hilarious that America can still claim to be a democracy, the "Land Of The Free". Only the richest people can get political influence. Surely there should be a cap on how much politicians can spend, and how much can be donated to them? I know its not perfect over here in the UK but its better. American hypocrisy continues...
By the way this isn't a flamebait, just political opinion
Everything sucks except musicandstuff
Corporations have MORE rights than individual citizens.
If only corporations were considered fake persons in all respects. Then, when a corporation broke criminal laws, it could be disincorporated (sentenced to death), as opposed to acting as a shield to keep the people who orchestrated these crimes from being justly punished.
Karma: Excellent^(-t/Tau), Tau=Wittiness/Trollishness
Just as there is seperation between church and state, there should be seperation of business and state.
Even our President has interests in oil companies at home and abroad. I'm not saying Bush is doing anything wrong, but the potential for abuse is huge.
Politians are supposed to be public servants, yet we have Senators like Kerry (who is BTW running for President in 2004) who have upwards of 600 million in the bank and god only knows how much much in stocks in these companies. They care more about big business than they do us. That's not servicing the public, thats ripping the public off.
All politians are guilty of it too. You can't point at the Dems or the Republicans for this. Both are doing it.
Busines, big or small, needs to stay the hell out of politics and work on their business model for a change. Stop trying to pass legislation when your business model starts to fail (RIAA MPAA). Stop passing laws that benefit businesses to the detriment of the people. Just flat out stop the fucking insanity!!
Politicians wonder why people don't trust them. This is exactly why.
I'm not saying "pay for access" is right, but on the other hand, who should politicians listen to? Someone who controls an industry and affects millions of people (like Microsoft) or Joe L33t who has no perspective beyond his own limited world?
It's kind of like when you advertise a job and get hundreds of resumes back that look basically the same. Personally, anyone who has misspelled words goes straight into the trash can to thin the herd. That may sound unfair to people who send resumes, but you have to use SOME method of thinning since you can't interview hundreds of people.
Politicians need some sort of method to thin the herd of people who give advice. I really think that's at the root of this, rather than simplistic corruption that many make this out to be. They have to choose SOMEBODY to talk to, so they might as well choose people who have been good to them in the past. In other words, it's loyalty at work, not bribery.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Please take not of who has the most lopsided and largest donations. Notice the movie studios at #1 and #3? Care about fair use at all?
I'm certainly not trying to make the Repubs out to be the good guys, but the Dems aren't going to save you from big money influence.
Real election reform
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
I found it funny that this article was on CNN.com, part of Time-Warner, one of the biggest corporations in the US. They themselves probably "donate" just as much money to politicains as they other corporations do.
CFR is probably probably one of the biggest jokes that our government has fooled most of us into believing. CFR isn't going to change ANYTHING! Both the DNC and the GOP have set up 'third party' organizations to funnel their money to. All CFR is doing is opening as many loopholes as it closes so that the money flow is even less visible to the public than it is now.
And the media moguls who hail CFR as a good and necessary thing are the biggest hypocrites in this deal. You don't think all those commercial spots are free, do you?
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
Considering that political contributions are often used to pay for advertising, why don't you geniuses ask yourself how much influence the media has? In other words, the mass media already owns what other industries are trying to buy. And if we carry your logic to its logical conclusion, shouldn't we regulate the media? Oh, wait a minute, that would violate the First Amendment, wouldn't it. Any of you geniuses ever heard of it?
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
Not that voting really means anything any more anyway, with both parties converged on a slightly fuzzy dot far to the right of center.
My favorite moment of political naivete from the original poster had to be this, however:
"How can we fight this? Write letters to the companies saying we won't buy their products because of their undue influence? You think the politicians will actually listen if we write them instead?"
You think the companies will listen any more than the corporations will?
Writing letters stating that you won't buy products doesn't mean a thing if you're at CompUSA tomorrow continuing to buy the products. NO ONE CARES about your letters. They only care about your money. And until you can find a way to actually release yourselves from the corporate teat, you will have no voice.
No voice. None.
There is no war on terror. There is no "government by the people, for the people." There are no elections. There is no "Homeland Security."
There is only money.
Its great to see that McCain still is fighting for campaign finance reform. If only he had gotten the GOP nomination... I would have voted for him in a heartbeat, and he would have "beat Gore like a drum" as he once said. Sadly, I think the man had too many ideals of his own, and that isn't what the GOP was looking for. Rather, they were looking for a Bush.
I'm sorry that you believe your employer shapes your beliefs for you. My employer does NOT represent me, nor should they ever say they do.
Smaller companies often do not have the money, because of larger companies, to buy themselves politicians. Microsoft may support thousands of people, but this country contains MILLIONS of people and there's no reason a company that supports only thousands should have enough sway to negatively affect the MILLIONS it doesn't support.
many private lobbying organizations do this. That is how YOU get YOUR voice heard. Both sides of the aisle do this, from NRA to AARP to the Sierra club. I don't think what they do is wrong any more than it is for a corporation. So there are ways for you joe public to get your voice heard.
Instead, I have to read this thread full of knee jerk us/republican/bush/cheney bashing that gets modded up as insightful. Think a little before you bitch. Corporations do this, but guess what, you can too. I know bush doesnt have time to have dinner at my place to discuss my views on the environment, but if I were to join the Sierra club it would help, no? Okay, go ahead and mod me down now cause I didn't slam bush...
Simple. Stop voting for the people who accept donations from people you do not want influence from in the government. Narrows down your voting choices alot, but remember. No vote is thrown away. Every vote is a message. If everyone votes the same way, then their message is the one heard. So, if you vote for the person who is not as bad in your opinion and might actually win, and so does everyone else, then the cycle continues. But when EVERYONE begins to vote their conscience, and doesn't just vote for the major candidates then things might begin to change.
Derek Greene
Oh, BS. There's no reason to believe that Microsoft really "represents" the interests of the people it employs. It represents the interest of the top management, or -- if you are really magnaminous -- of the shareholders. Each of those Microsoft employees and investors has exactly the same right to vote (and to donate time, energy, or money) as I do -- but they have no greater right just because they work for Microsoft or own its stock.
It'd be nice if we'd all remember that corporations are not people -- not even the oft-misquoted Taney decisions say that they are -- and they have fewer rights than the individual. Or at least, they do under the theory of government to which we allegedly subscribe.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
... and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation...
(Score: -1, Stupid)
What can we do about it? Nothing! What do you think you're going to do, overthrow the system or something? Force policicians to be honest?
In a market system the market rules. I agree that we should try to stop this sort of thing of course, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
The good thing about corruption is that it accelerates the internal collapse and degradation of the system. Just give it time, it'll all fall apart eventually.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
Now, I know that's not going to happen so what I personally advocate is no limits but *FULL* disclosure of who gave the funds.
Although it is a nice idea. To let *foreign* countries have a say in what the U.S. does in the future, instead of the other way round :)
And only an American would see this as a bad thing. Most Danish parties are more or less socialists. This is a good thing.
Communisme isn't a bad thing either, just doesn't work well on humans.
"Money or not, they still need votes to get elected"
Do you really believe that "one person, one vote" is how the American political system actually works?
To paraphrase Stalin: "He who votes decides nothing. He who counts the votes decides everything."
And the votes are counted by corporations.
These solutions can't really be called "European" in the sense of the European Union: Switzerland isn't a member.
The Swiss (if I may generalise horribly) would see leveraging your wealth to get to voters to be a violation of free speech. You are, by merit of money alone, able to drown out others and dominate discussions. I'd be surprised if that same case couldn't be made in the U.S.
As for women and the vote, the earliest referenda on that were held although the Swiss voted in a referendum about giving women the vote as early as 1914 (if I recall correctly), it was simply, democratically, rejected. Discussions started in 1885 on the topic.
Things tend to move a little slowly over there... usually a good thing, I think.
So with that approach ultra-rich multi-national corporation could create a few hundred subsidiaries with obscure names that no citizen would ever notice and had owners that are legally hidden by the myriad of state laws that each would contribute the maximum allowed to a favored candidate that would then vote for the laws that would greatly favor the parent corporation.
This is what you want?
If not, then the only solution to limiting the influence of money is to limit the recipients in what and how much they are allowed to receive. There's far fewer of them than there are "creative solutions" to get around hiding the sources of funds.
As sad as this is, it is not a new thing. I recently have been reading Greg Palast's book The Best Democracy Money can Buy. A fascinating reading.
Greg Palast is an investigative reporter that researches and goes deep into various issues (he broke the news on the Florida ballot cleaning in 2000). The book covers a number of interesting topics from Enron and its alliances to the government and how they got preferential treatment and how they used this in the US and abroad to their advantage.
A few months ago, someone told me `Remember: all governments lie', which I figured, seems pretty acurrate, but not much to debate over dinner in that topic. I think there is a tacit agreement that governments lie.
The shocking news came from reading Daniel Ellsberg's Secrets book in which he details how five consecutive adminisrtrations lied to congress, and lie to the american people about what they were doing in Vietnam. An interesting interview with Daniel Ellsberg in Salon (here) gives a quick overview of the book. For those who do not know, Daniel took some secret documents from the government in the 70's and got them published by the New York Times. The documents exposed the lies from the five administrations. Although the government tried to stop the publication of the documents (known from then on as "The Pentagon Papers", google found this which gives you some context, as well as the history around the event).
So anyways, the short story is that democracy needs to be revamped with new technology. Hundreds of years ago it was perfectly possible to elect a leader/representative, trust him to do what he promised on behalf of the voters and revisit the issue on an upcoming election.
But today's leader's loyalty is not to the voters, but to those who allow them to get the votes, people with enough funds to drive the agenda in any direction they please. Greg Palast's book points out that the current administration unlike previous administrations no longer has to deal with external lobbysts, the lobby now has got offices right in the White House (he goes on detail about the Enron's hand-picked policy makers and those who reverted Clinton's decisions regarding Enron's involvement in California).
With the technology available today, democracy could be referendum-based, through electronic voting on key issues.
Miguel.
... Is the day democracy died. Corporation aren't people. You may want to take them into account *as a side effect* of taking care of people, as in , taking care of the economy, but they should never take stake before people. Remmember. The governement is here for the *whole* not for special interrest. That is the theory. The practice is that people are "forgotten" and corporation rules. And I thougth that Gibson's neuromancer was too far away, or all this cyberpunk roman where corporation rules...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
It should be noted that most of the top contributors are from labor unions...
You're right to note that. It's a very, very good thing that there are some organizations who actually do represent real people right there at the top. Now, if we could get more social organizations up there, we might see some positive change in government.
(Score: -1, Stupid)
Many people have proposed we ban political advertising on TV and radio. While this would have the desired effect, it would also be a violation of the right to free speech.
The solution is to get rid of or drastically scale back the FCC. This would allow many people to set up TV channels at relatively low costs. Minor political parties could set up local and national TV stations, as could organizations or other groups of individuals. All of the sudden, getting your political point accross (via TV) wouldn't cost millions and would be relatively cheap.
What we need is to turn TV and the radio into something more like the internet. On the internet, anyone can set up their own website for a relatively low cost; you can even set one up from your PC. Thus, what we need to do is work towards a situation where, just as anyone can set up their own web-site at a relatively low cost, so too should anyone be able to set up their own TV channel or radio station at a relatively low cost. Part of this could be transient and random, allowing people to "grab" a certain space when they wanted it and then relinquish it.
This gets into another point regarding the corrupt ICANN and their fraudulent "selling" of domain-names, as if it actually costs anything to add www.site.com to a list of sites correlated to IP addresses (you can side-step this by using OpenNIC).
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
While corperate bribery is pretty damn bad, do not forget that peoples' own 'grassroots' groups (special interest groups) such as the "Christian Colition", NRA, and such are not corperate entities but can hold just as much, if not more sway. How? They do the exact same thing as corperations: hand over large chunks of cash to politicians via donations from members.
If geeks want to fight, they need a special interest group, likc the EFF (which doesnt do this sorta thing, but thats the idea) that is a conduit between washington and all the geeks involved. Money sacrifice is required; as has already been stated, politicians listen to the people stocking their wallets. I know it sucks, but to change the system you need to work it from the inside; expecting huge changes just because you do not like it is not very likely. And like anything else, everything takes time. Geeks' short attention spans work against us as these types of battles take months/years.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
The law is a shell of what it could have been. There is also the standing court challenge against the BCRA that is currently in Federal appeals court. It WILL go to the supreme court as soon as this formality is through.
It's pretty telling that the only time Congress cares about the Bill of Rights is when their paychecks are in jeopardy.
The two issues might be one if, as rumoured, US oil companies are likely to be major beneficiaries of a war, and French and Russian oil companies the beneficiaries of this particular villain staying in power.
You don't have to be totally paranoid or totally cynical to feel that it's more likely that governments foreign policies will tend to benefit their own major corporations than those of other countries.
Having some kind of separation of powers between governments and commerce might help those of us who like the comfort of our illusions.
I'm sorry, you do not count as much as an entity representing thousands of people.
You make the fatal assumption that those in charge of the business cares about its employees as much as their own interests.
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Frightening that in this day of continual, free information, elections are still basically a popularity contest.
And to think, you're not considered an apathetic voter if you see a candidate on television. Sad.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Aren't corporations supposed to, in law, have the rights of an individual? Shouldn't they be subject to that limit the same as an individual?
Absolutely not. That would render individual limits pointless as anyone could start up 10,000 corporations and donate $25K with each.
Aside from the overwhelming constitutional problem, to ban advertising would be to forbid the candidate from speaking to the polity except through official state channels. Actually, that last idea scares the hell out of me. We do have some limitations on fundraising, much more so with McCain-Feingold, but the proposed level of state-enforced structure is disturbing to me, and most Americans.
:)
The other point I'd raise is: Do we want to be Switzerland? On the serious side, Switzerland failed to ask itself hard questions about its involvement in WWII, a war that it is of questionable honor to sit out, and far more questionable to remain neutral and even profit through laundering Nazi gold.
On the lighter side it the old joke: What has 500 years of Swiss peace brought us? The cuckoo clock.
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economies of scale are good, but they break down at the point of conglomeratization. then you just get products that are priced outside the regular microeconomic supply/demand graphs so that the company (who has the resources to ignore the minor forces of a market) can increase prices, decrease costs and make more money. they do this by adding something to the product that is percieaved as a big deal but costs very little to add.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Of course this would lead to full employment. In the stone age we had full employment, too. (Unconditional) full employment is not good per se. We have only partial employment because our economy is so efficient that we do not NEED full employment to sustain the extremely high living standard. The Green now want to reduce efficiency to old levels to reach full employment again. I think this is the wrong way. The correct way is to look either for mechanisms to distribute the work more equally over the population (i.e. encourage part-time work or opening up new fields of economy with need for manpower) or to assist the few people that have no work (i.e. welfare).
I think the first option is the better one, because welfare has some drawbacks: it's expensive above a certain unemployment level and to have no work at all has also severe psychological consequences for the affected people and their families. That does not mean that welfare should be eliminated completely - it should just be a last hope for difficult cases.
I have yet to understand how it is that a two-party system can be touted as a model democracy? Being a Canadian it is unfathomable for me that every person in a country as large as the U.S. could either be a Democrat or Republican. Granted you have the Green Party, some Independents, and the "miscellaneous" parties in the U.S. but both are treated as fringe elements with only the Democratic party and GOP considered mainstream.
I think it's the two party system that is the fundamental problem. We saw it during the last election where Ralph Nader wasn't allowed in the debates for no other reason other than that it would have showed a different/fresh point of view that did NOT conform to either the Democratic/Republican agenda. Both parties are so well bought out by industry that neither one could afford to allow Nader to speak. The sooner people realize that both the Democrats and Republicans share a mutual agenda that is formed and funded by the same set of corporations, foreign governments, and interest groups the sooner they will understand that the two-party system is only a pretext for a ONE-party system.
The fact is that it's a lot easier to pay off two political camps on a regular basis than it is three, four, or more. The two party system is a way to ensure the illusion of diversity while making sure bribery is as easy as (American) pie. Paying off the Democratic party to put aside its convictions on a Republican bill/resolution (or vice versa) is a lot easier than paying off several parties at once.
Given the current state of politics in the U.S. there is very little hope for campaign finance reform laws that will outlaw the shameless "donations" both parties so heavily rely on. Asking the gremlins in congress/senate to ratify such laws would be like you asking your employer to stop giving you such large bonuses to help the company- it ain't never gonna happen.
The challenge is to have more political parties that do NOT toe the line. There is strength in numbers and the more we have the less merry "donaters" will be.
"As you recall in our conversation some weeks ago, you agreed to upgrade your Team 100 membership to the Regent program ($250,000) when the merger was approved," Republican Party fund-raiser Mel Sembler wrote in 2000 to the chief of the now-bankrupt Global Crossing telecommunications company, which had already given $100,000.
"Thankfully this has now been approved, so I am taking the liberty of enclosing an invoice for the additional upgrade," Sembler added in one of dozens of fund-raising memos the political parties turned over to a court hearing the first legal challenge of the nation's new campaign finance law.
Many people (myself included) believe in capitalism because they believe that economics has proven it to be an efficient system. Economics assumes a level playing field. When that field is unleveled, capitalism is not efficient (or, if you prefer, it is not capitalism).
If one accepts free market economics, it is reasonable to believe that it is in the public interest to pursue wealth. If, however, it is practical to use acquired wealth to unlevel the playing field and as a result acquire more wealth than was expended, this belief is not reasonable.
The US chose capitalism because it is believed, under the tenets of free market economics, to be efficient and in the public interest. If that prerequisite assumption is invalid, then the conclusion is invalid. If the US ceases to target efficient economic growth, then it will decline relative to its potential.
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If someone has the power of life or death (metaphorically or literally), then those they have power over will seek to influence them. No matter how many rules, regulations, or how much more power you give that person or persons.
Just about every solution I hear involves more restrictions on specific cases of influence. Maybe you ban donations, so they donate indirectly. Then you ban indirect donations, so they form PACs. Then you ban PACs, so they hire 10,000 people to march with signs or whatever.
The core of the problem is the concentration of power. When the U.S. Constitution was written, it wasn't worth buying a politician because they really couldn't do much for you.
Pretty much every election since, the power of the politicians and appointed bureaucrats has been increasing.
Not that we ever had a Golden Age, but we've gone from the land of free speech to the land where you can go to jail for saying "prohibited words" in a private conversation in a public place. Weve gone from a land of entrepreneurs to a land where you can get busted for "hairdressing without a license."
If I still owned a business, I'd be desperate for an ally within the government that had the power to shut me down or put me in jail for any of thousands of violations or regulations that would take me ten years just to read.
I'm frankly scared that we're getting to the point that life becomes so uncertain and dangerous for anyone who actually tries to do anything interesting that no one will try to do anything interesting anymore except for bureaucrats and criminals. How many more laws will it take, or have we got enough for that already?
One thing's for sure. There's free speech, and then there's the modern mass media. TV and radio, and the new economies of broadcast that come with them, didn't exist until long after the Constitution began to yellow. You can stick your head in the sand and pretend that we should leave the mass media as uncontrolled as regular speech, but then you'll get an awful mess as a result... like we have!
Not only that, but there is a startlingly common hypocrisy by those who claim that "Dan Heskett" on a street corner, the local paper, the local radio station, and the TV networks, should all receive equal treatment in our society. Everyone knows that what goes on TV has immense effects. Yet there's this smarmy doublethink surrounding it. You have ideologues who claim the sanctity of the current political system vis a vis TV under the umbrella of the venerable Fourth Estate, but who can within minutes (and without considering it strange) rabidly campaign to censor "harmful" and "dangerous" images like a stray nipple or a proscribed word. But I'm sure you believe nudity, cursing, and graphic violence on TV is fine, because, after all, this is America.
And it's easy for us to not examine that thoroughly because it's scary to most people that, yes, really, what we see on TV affects our beliefs, behaviors, and decisions, often in the most literal and pedantic way. In fact, directly. Massively. The whole advertising industry is a 12-figure testimony to this fact. TV and radio have supplanted the community culture that came before them, and replaced it with a uniform source, and that has big consequences. And unlike newspapers, I cannot start a TV station if I'm unhappy with the local coverage. In fact, I think as an exercise, before you start going on about the sacredness of your press and its speech, you should go figure out what it takes to start your own radio station.
Or what the penalties are for "unauthorized" broadcasts.
It turns out, "we" take threats to the current broadcaster's hegemony with the most deadly seriousness. Perhaps because... "unregulated" broadcasting is... in the words of the FCC: dangerous.
This is one reason why the Internet is such a positive invention. But I digress.
New systems, new playing field, new rules. Right now the rules are that you have to pay astronomical sums to the broadcast trust for a few seconds of airtime. They can refuse your business, or not. If one of the broadcast trust members wants to devote an entire channel to Republican propaganda and call it "Fox News", hey, it's good to be the king.
You can hypothesize bad new rules - straw men of censorship and totalitarianism that you hold up when your fundamentalist take on the First Amendment is questioned, but you can't abdicate responsibility for thinking of a better way to have a mass-media embued democracy. In other words, rather than hiding your head in the sand, or crying about the wrong way to do things, consider what good alternatives there are to having political control go to those with the best ties, financial and otherwise, to the media.
The Swiss simply said, if I understand it correctly from another poster here, no political ads allowed on TV and radio. If they didn't, let's consider it hypothetically anyway. You don't quite know how to level the modern playing field, so you just go back to the system the Framers understood - one where all political speech is far more equal, because anyone can afford newsprint, and practically anyone can become their own publisher. Censorship, as another responder pointed out, can take many forms. You are invoking the specter of Soviet Russia where the real danger is more that of the Highway Patroll. You just can't drive faster that 65 MPH, sir. No, no one can. Not even if they're His Majesty Rupert Murdoch the First.
Dan Heskett can curse on the street. In New York, "Danette Heskett" can even walk around on the street topless. Yet we think that broadcasting curses and nipples is so dangerous that the thought of it ending up on NBC where a parent might somehow momentarily lapse in their parental supervision and allow their child to see it sends us into conniptions. And yet we can simultaneously believe that laissez fair is a good idea for political speech in the media.
Astounding, isn't it?
One of the few "conservative" beliefs I harbor is a faith in the right to self-defense. I believe that if we truly grant that ordinary men and women can bear the responsibility to vote, or to raise children without supervision, we have no choice but to assume they are up to the trivial (and millenia old) right of owning and carrying a weapon. Yet, just as with driver's licenses, we acknowledge that for the general safety of all, some basic prudence is in order, and we do some paperwork, and we have some simple ground rules.
In advocating "free speech" as your only guiding principle when discussing politics and the mass media, you are like a pro-weapon extremist who believes that nuclear weapons should be unregulated.
Actually, writing as you are, today, in America, you're like a pro-weapon extremist making a speach on how regulating nuclear weapons is wrong from inside a gigantic, smoking, eerily luminescent blast crater.
Still, from one admirer of the Constitution to another, I hope you will take my arguments in the spirit of good faith and respect with which they are intended.
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Early Amererica was based on the "work or starve" concept. There were more jobs than people so there wasn't any excuse for not finding work.
The Green Party may be a bit too liberal for most, but it's real problem is that the people who get -press- for the GP tend to be the fruitcakes. The "normal" or moderate GP candidates are usually ignored by the press.
Since they don't take major corporate funding, there is no easy way for a moderate GP candidate to get press. The Libertarian party suffers the exact same problem of the press only paying attention to marginalized extreme members of the party.
The only way I've seen around this so far are donation caps and mandated equal media coverage for all registered candidates. Not just "free press", some places have that to some extent, but "equal press". Very hard to mandate such a thing in a democracy/republic/etc.
Until we somehow have a constituency who will make up their minds based on issues on a per-candidate basis, we'll always have problems like this while we have parties. Participate in each election and read up on your candidates and their issues beforehand (for instance, I voted Libertarian on a couple of ballots where I thought I would vote Democrat because I couldn't find the publicly posted opinions of the Democratic candidate anywhere and I don't consider N/A a valid opinion).
Which is going to be easier: do away with parties or get an educated and ACTIVE constituency? That's a toughie.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
That was before the dark time, before the Supreme Court decided that bribery was protected by the first amendment.
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I advise you in your current situation to please ignore the following:
-White van always parked across the street
-The guy on the bench reading a paper that always seems to be looking at you.
-The extra 3 day delay in your email.
-The beaten up and soiled mail that seems to have been opened an re-sealed.
-That strange noise on the phone.
-That unexplained periodic upload from your computer.
And please ignore the fact that Dubya gave the CIA the permission to exterminate suspected terrorists that live in the US, no pesky judicial red tape necessary.
Okay, here are the problems I have with this idea:
So how are they going to pay for services (the Mounties, locks & canals, etc.)? With a wink and a smile?
In other words, the solution for a corrupt political system is to force the individual citizen to support the system? This is not what the founders had in mind when they created our country. The answer is to enforce strict limits on the size and scope of government. If government wasn't so deeply entangled in private business in the first place (a problem with government, not private business), then private business would have no need to appeal to government to achieve the "competitive advantage". Simple as that: Reduce the size of government, and we reduce the incentive for corruption.
...huge import tariffs. ...they plan on taxing the hell out of property owners. ...and unofficially, don't worry; computer technology is considered as necessary as a phone. ;)
Not huge, but a little less USA-influenced.
Yes, to an extent, but it involves a complete income tax system revamp. It also, more importantly, means that you can reduce your taxation when you're only paying for necessities, as opposed to the luxuries for which people who can afford taxes would be willing to pay.
This would reduce welfare strain, for example.