Campaign Finance Reform

The goal of real Campaign Finance Reform is to limit the influence that corporations have on the political system. Currently, there is a limit of $1000 per election that can be given to a candidate, $5000 per year to a Political Action Committee (PAC), and $20,000 per year to a political party. Corporations cannot directly make donations to a candidate, but corporation create PACs. Consequently, corporate PACs collect millions of dollars, which can be spent during political campaigns, as long as it isn’t aimed towards a particular candidate. That means that they can run a million dollar TV ad campaign talking about national security, with favorable comments about one candidate, and unfavorable comments about the opponenet, as long as they don’t tell you to vote for one of them. PACs can use millions of dollars to run extensive investigations to find any speck of dirt that they can magnify until it becomes a political issue. They regularly use dirty tactics like innuendos, implication by association, leading questions, etc., because negative political ads (smearing the opponent’s credibility) is the most common way to get votes for their candidate.

Every politician knows that PACs are clearly being used to circumvent the Federal campaign spending limits, which results in a hugely disproportionate amount of influence given to corporations, but almost every politician takes the money anyway. With three out of four elections won by the candidate who spent the most, money is a major corrupter of politicians. Several politicians have tried to get some Campaign Finance Reform legislation passed, but Congress just lets the bills die without a vote. Unless it becomes a real political issue, political campaigns and elections will continue to be heavily influence by PACs and their corporate donors. The concept of free (not for the candidates) and fair (not with disproportionate influence) elections is dying.

Since a much larger portion of corporate contributions go to Republicans, campaign finance reform will take away their financial advantage in elections. Consequently, no Republican (except the most politically secure in his/her state) would support campaign finance reform. With money such a huge factor in campaigns, any Republican who does not vote as instructed will not receive Party support in the next election. Many Democrats are also opposed to campaign finance reform, since they have become dependent on and addicted to corporate donations.

Greed is a major social disease in our nation, which is eating away at our nation’s very foundation. If we can eliminate greed with an income limit, it would be a tremendous boast to restoring democracy (see Greed). But, the income limit I propose would only effect individuals. CEOs would have their income controlled, but the corporations would not. Since the CEOs would not like their income limited, they might use their corporation’s financial influence to remove that limit. Without some control on how corporations use their money to influence the government, PACs and Neo-con think tank propaganda will become an even larger problem (see Neo-cons). 

We need real Campaign Finance Reform to help stop the damage caused by PACs. 

If it is possible, we also need to establish a bipartisan, impartial, government funded think tank that can be used for polling, surveys, research, and reports. It will cost in the hundreds of millions to support, but it will supply impartial/accurate information to assist the various branches of government in their policy/decision making. It will counter the propaganda that Neo-con think tanks produce, which invariably leads to billion dollar mistakes. Enron, Worldcom, and the Northeast Blackout could have been avoided with impartial analysis of potential problems. An honest evaluation of the status and dangers of Global Warming would assist in establishing an intelligent energy policy, potentially saving trillions of dollars and millions of lives. If this think tank existed today, we could use it to make an assessment of the overall effects of an income limit and real Campaign Finance Reform. Without this impartial think tank, the Neo-con think tanks will unleash a flood of polls, reports, news articles, ads, debates, and speeches condemning anything they dislike. Neo-con think tanks will use their billion dollar budgets to essentially “manufacture consent” (see Psychology).