Dan Walters, the Sacramento Bee’s veteran politics reporter and columnist, writes here that it would be good policy to repeal limits on how much individuals may contribute to candidates. AB 1146, which has a hearing in the Senate Elections Committee on July 3, would repeal limits on how much individuals may contribute to candidates for state and local office. Instead, all contributions above $200 would need to be reported within 24 hours.
AB 1146 was introduced last year, and originally it merely doubled from $100 to $200 the amount of money that may be contributed without having to be reported. In that form, the bill passed the Assembly. Now that it has been revamped, it needs to pass both houses.
Tired of reading about how BAN and all the people involved are continually chasing their tails year after year after year?
Try pure proportional representation, where 1/1001ths (or .999%) plus one vote, elect each of the 1000 members of parliament (MPs), with a total satisfaction level of 99.9% plus 1000 votes.
The 8th USA Parliament Election of 2012!
http://usparliament.org/votehere.php
Est. August 6th, 1995 when we tore up our non-profit corporate bylaws and the ruling coalition elects one set of consecutively ranked rules (currently at 36 rules) year after year, we’re always trying to improve and we welcome ALL people!
http://usparliament.org/rules.php
Try pure proportional representation (PR), where 1/1001ths (or .999%) plus one vote, elects each of the 1000 members of parliament (MPs), with a guaranteed total voter satisfaction level of 99.9% plus 1000 votes.
In my opinion, this paragraph from Walters’s piece says it all:
“One is that seemingly massive campaign spending is really minuscule in comparison to the financial stakes in political decision-making. Contributors may spend millions, but the decisions that politicians make can mean billions.”
For-profit corporations do not engage in “free speech.” They engage only in commercial transactions. They do not form thoughts. They seek profits. They have no other reason for being other than to maximize their shareholders’ wealth. Everything a corporation does is, and should be, done to support that objective. Even support of a charitable cause is a commercial transaction because the underlying purpose for doing so is to improve the image of the corporation, thereby increasing their ability to sell their goods or services at a profit. Corporations do not feel pity, they do not feel guilt…they do not “feel” anything.
Corporate support of a politicians is therefore nothing more than a commercial transaction, and Walters succinctly underscores that truth.
Now, we as a society can and do ROUTINELY proscribe a wide range of commercial transactions for the betterment of our society. There is no valid reason why we cannot prohibit corporations from directly OR “indirectly” supporting a candidacy even if the support is not coordinated with the campaign of that candidate (which…let’s be blunt here…is total horseshit, and the USSC and everybody else with a brain that works knows that distinction is horseshit). Just as we (you, Richard, included) do not think we are impinging on an individual’s first amendment rights by telling him he will go to jail if he is caught selling heroin, we do not impinge on a corporation’s first amendment right to free speech if we proscribe one more type of commercial transaction for the betterment of our society.
It’s particularly ironic that we have completely unshackled corporations’ rights to purchase candidates, while still maintaining limits on how much an individual flesh-bearing person can contribute to a campaign. If there’s any doubt that we still collectively reserve a right to curtail free speech expressed in the form of political contributions, if indeed a contribution to a candidacy is an expression of frees speech, those legal limits should put paid that fiction.
So how, and under what bizarre, twisted form of fascist thinking, can one conclude that it’s just fine to allow corporations and the fabulously wealthy to “indirectly” support a candidacy in unlimited amounts and without public disclosure, while putting a cap (and a miniscule one by comparison) on the amount that an individual can contribute directly to a campaign?