Ha. You’re suspicious enough to think that McCain supporting campaign funding regulations is somehow proof that it’s evil, but not to question exactly who are the main backers for cutting government spending and control?
Because for some strange reason, it tends the very corporate influences you imagine that would deter. For instance the Cato Institute, one of the best-known libertarian think-tanks, was actually founded by this self-same Koch family. Never thought to ask why they might endorse taking this “carrot” away from themselves, I take it?
Not well, and precisely because of the distortion of influence by corporate funding, the crap you are defending as safer than voting. But hold up: do you actually think that the happiest, healthiest, best educated countries means the United States? The one “democracy, actually a republic” is all there is to go on here?
Because while you speculate it can be improved on, it sounds like it doesn’t occurred to you other countries might have done better, or how. Again, it involves democracy promoting the public interest, just the sort of thing you ignorantly dismiss out of hand here. It involves spending and controls to counter attacks on that interest. So no, it sounds like you have no clue what has actually been tried or accomplished in the world.
Just a suggestion, but you might profit more by trying to learn about that. Because otherwise your claims that there is no way to protect or even define the public interest besides limitless spending by the rich are never going to impress anyone who has.
Should Senators be banned from associating with certain people, in violation of the First Amendment?
No, and I haven’t suggested anything remotely like that. You’re just letting your imagination run wild to stoke more distracting, false arguments.
Should media campaigns be banned if the people behind them prefer to remain anonymous?
Political media campaigns involving funding and support from corporations should be forced to be transparent. There was a better time in American history were there was vastly less wealth and income disparity and that’s when corporations were mostly still a public trust with proper charters.
Go ahead and scream “socialism” like every other dolt that thinks it’s a dirty word, but by doing little or nothing to protect the public from powerful corporations we’re now living under the rule of corporate communism.
Reasonable restrictions in the name of fostering and promoting a representative democracy within our republic is what scumbags like the Koch brothers fear and they are injecting that fear into people like you.
The question is, how do you stop the influence of the wealthy and powerful without compromising your principles?
I don’t want to stop the influence of the wealthy. I just want thier influence on a more equal playing field with the rest of the public so they stop subverting our democratic process in the name of thier own personal greed.
What’s compromised our principles as a nation is letting modern day, corrupt robber barons run roughshod over and stamp out what’s left of a representative democracy within our republic.
Look at who you are protecting and who you are destroying and then get back with me on your so-called “principles”.
I have no problem passing laws designed to prevent too much wealth and power from accumulating in any one place. Once the disparity between the very rich and everyone else gets past a certain point you’re no longer living in a “Democracy” (or Democratic Republic) so much as a Plutocracy.
The rich few have intentionally broke the US political system so that they could control it exclusively in their favor, the majority don’t really have any political representation anymore. This wasn’t an accident and was 100% intentional. This is the cause of the fastest growing wealth gap in history.
The only way to fix the system is to gut the wholesale purchasing of politics and remove the financial incentives that buy policy makers. The difficult part is getting these policy makers to enact a reform that takes away their cash cow, as it stands they benefit from the corruption.
I wish the system wasn’t totally corrupt and broken, we’d see a lot more fair laws and the country as a whole would be in a lot better shape if it wasn’t. Many of the issues we all face today are a direct result of this broken system and could have been avoided. A real shame.
I agree with most of your sentiment except for a few parts…
… majority don’t really have any political representation anymore… I wish the system wasn’t totally corrupt and broken
There’s is some small, but vital avenues for representation left. The one place the most corrupt parts of our system exposes its weakness is with voter disenfranchisement. Voting still matters and there is a concerted effort to get many Americans to not realize that fact and give up. If they didn’t still fear the power of a voting public they would never spend so much time, money and effort on voter disenfranchisement, outright gerrymandering and general, crafty redistricting.
I agree that the situation is horrible, but there’s still some avenues to take and that involves voting. The fact that so many people are convinced not to vote is not an accident and is also 100% intentional as well.
This is a critical point. Despite everything that is wrong with our political system, we still have the good fortune of living in a country where the candidate who gets the most legitimate votes generally wins (2000 Presidential election notwithstanding). To take the “voting doesn’t matter” approach is to throw out one of the most important weapons left in our arsenal.
Here’s a news article reporting that North Korea just had its first election since Kim Jung Un became ruler through inheritance and – surprise, surprise – he won with 100% of the vote, 99% to 100% of the voting populace having voted. Apparently even those who have fled the country are required to return and vote or else things get ugly for any family members left behind.
