patrick.net

Vincente, I've been suggesting this for years as a way to end corporate and rich elite ownership of candidates and subsequently our government. And it does have the added possible benefit of less insipid and omnipresent political advertising during a shorter election cycle.

Definitely, if campaigns were publicly financed, we'd have a government that would me more free to work for the people instead of the corporations and the few elite who own most of the capital of our country.

I would like to see those $3 that you can elect to send to the presidential campaign fund spread out equally to all the candidates who choose to run including congress members. If every candidate had the same amount of money to work with, we may actually see campaigns of actual substance instead of marketing gimmicks and emotionally charged fear mongering.

Of course, we'd have to have an extra tax or fee placed on us to fund campaigns. And there'd have to be a regulatory agency that would be able to have strict oversight of campaign spending ensuring that candidates accept and spend no money beyond the money allocated to them by the public campaign trust.

But I'd gladly pay the fee or the tax so that we could rid our government of the heavy handed influence of the corporations and the few elite who own most of the capital of our country.

Also I'd like to see a blanket moratorium on corporate spending and rich elite spending on current office holders. Trips to the Carribean, golf course memberships, perks, etc. are nothing more than blatant bribes by the corporations and the rich elite to buy legislative votes and power. Public officials should be forbidden to accept anything beyond what they are paid by the public in the form of salary and benefits. That would also clean things up in our government.

poor don't necessarily make good politicians either.

Vicente says

Imagine a world where campaigns were publicly financed.

That might lead to true democracy. That's way too risky. Way too scary.

This is the #1 problem with politics today. If I could fix one thing, it would be campaign finance.

shrekgrinch says

I love how do-gooders constantly like to piss all over our constitutional free speech protections.
And yes, spending money to get your message out is ‘free speech related’. How could it not be?

Interesting. So if go piss on your car, is that free speech? Or if I vandalize your house? Still free speech?