On February 2, the Federal Election Commission announced that for the next two years, individuals can give $3,300 to a candidate for federal office. The limit rises with inflation. The new limit on how much an individual may donate to a national committee of a political party rises to $41,300. See the announcement here.
MORE $$$ NEEDED TO BRIBE EACH GERRYMANDER MONSTER ???
To AZ:
NO $$ LIMIT IN A1 !!
And, BTW, continuing a discussion from the previous thread, increasing the size of the House of Reps will make it harder for contributors to bribe all of them.
Walter,
That’s a dubious statement. It could mean instead that contributors would get shaken down for an ever larger of their income to go to politicians. Or alternatively it could mean that relatively lesser plutocrats and relatively more minor special interests would be priced out of the political shakedown game, leaving only the wealthiest of the wealthy and the biggest and most entrenched special interests in a position to tilt the playing field even further in the direction of their pig troths. Or on the other hand that even smaller business interests would get pulled into paying political donations as protection money against a larger number of political predators out on the hunt, lest that find themselves caught in some politicians sights.
Given that there are still, despite the best efforts of the politicians, still many relatively untapped sources of potential graft, why would you be so optimistic as to assume that more politicians would somehow translate to less of it?
NOW — NEED ONLY TO BRIBE THE TOP HACKS — SPEAKERS / MAJORITY LEADERS / SOME TOP COMM CHAIRS.
SEE RECENT OH REPS SPEAKER CASE
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PR – MORE DIFFICULT TO BRIBE ALL IN THE MAJORITY ???
APPV
TOTSOP
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ANY BODY SEE THE RED CHINA SPY / WEAPON BALLOON — BEFORE MORE COME AND DESTROY NORTH AMERICA ???
SEE FU-GO WIKI JAPAN WW II BALLOON WEAPONS
Vadim:
As I have mentioned before, I am a Madison conservative. I believe that Madison was right in federalist 10: the best way to make sure that no party or person gets too much power is to distribute the power as much as possible. IMO, in the current context, this translates into
1 MORE members of Congress,
2 creating MORE states,
3 which have MORE control over their members in Congress,
4 and encouraging MORE candidates and parties to run,
5 by, among other things, removing ballot access making it easier for them to run,
6 and blowing off campaign finance limits which, no matter how cleverly written, are ALWAYS crafted to benefit the incumbents and established parties, at the expense of outsiders and new parties.
So that I don’t have to repeat myself needlessly, please see my last post in the discussion over the number of members of Congress. Please consider real world examples in addition to just theoretical platitudes in explaining why any given policy changes would not backfire when it comes to achieving your stated goals. This would include the current discussion here.
Vadim:
Outside of the US, the one country that comes closest to my ideal is Switzerland:
Unlike many countries in Europe, Switzerland has
1 A true federal system of divided sovereignty.
2 A full bicameral legislature
3 A full fledged multi party system
4 A joint executive council, instead of a single President, in which all major parties take part
5 An independent judiciary
6 FREEDOM, and
7 PEACE.
S land –
too small and full of mountains for the adjacent olde Dark Age regimes to conquer — Germany / France / Italy.
Beacon of freedom in the olde DARK AGE for about 300 plus years — before *liberal* Britland got going in mid 1600s.
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also now — voters voting directly on all sorts of stuff — inits
The presence of mountains isn’t generally a formula for greater peace or independence in world history. To take present day examples, the Himalayan and Caucasus regions are some of the world’s hotspots for border disputes and wars. The Andes mountains have also seen their share of violence and war, and so on. The area that currently makes up Switzerland has also not always been free of invasion and war, although it has in recent centuries.
There are probably a few things about the Swiss system which are worth emulating, for example privacy in banking (although sadly Switzerland is itself doing away with that) and neutrality in foreign wars. Some people may also think the Swiss system of universal military service and citizen civil defense is a good example to follow. Whatever the Swiss “secret sauce” is, it’s not likely to be their mediocre #60 position on the list of members of parliament per nation at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legislatures_by_number_of_members .
Who knows, maybe it’s the cheese? Yodeling? Walter did allude to cultural differences to explain the comparative effects of policies between nations in another discussion here, so maybe we should not exclude anything too rashly as we search for useful explanations which would allow us to find which things one country ought to emulate from which others.
Vadim said:
“Whatever the Swiss “secret sauce” is, it’s not likely to be their mediocre #60 position on the list of members of parliament per nation at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legislatures_by_number_of_members”
With 1 legislative seat per 32,770 people, Switzerland’s citizens are STILL better represented than the 596,060 people that have to share 1 seat in the US Congress.
Let’s expand Congress.
The chart linked above is sortable by politicians per capita. Sorting the list in that manner puts Switzerland at #125 of 239 nations (and arguably nations), bracketed to either side by the Republic of Georgia and Somalia. Whatever the secret sauce is, I’d venture that is still not it. Currently my money is still on the cheese. Or maybe yodeling.
It seems to me that the idea that the political success of Switzerland is due to the cheese has holes in it.
Indeed, the holes may have more to do with it than the cheese itself. Holey cow, I think we may have found the answer! (Don’t tell ex-Soviet Georgia or Somalia. They might not understand).
SEE SWISSLAND IN OUTLINE OF HISTORY BY H.G. WELLS
Nevertheless, Switzerland is a country that works, literally and figuratively.