Why I Care About Campaign Finance Reform

The majority of people in this country don’t have any idea of how the political game is played. Some people are experts in polls and issues and reading a politician’s chances of winning an election. These are the people that we look up to, the ones we expect to let us know when our political system is failing us. We take it for granted that warning bells would go off if something were amiss. Well, consider this your warning bell. I’m not the best expert on political campaigns, but I have been digging for awhile now, and I believe I have a pretty good insight into how this political game is played.

First of all, let me tell you how I got on the subject of Campaign Finance Reform. It isn’t a very glamorous subject, and there are some people ask me why I am so interested in it. Well, the reason I am so interested, is because the people that contribute to political campaigns, are the people that control politicians. I have come to realize that political campaigns and their funding have produced the largest group of pimps and whore in this nation’s history. Do you wonder why I claim that? Well, as Sherlock Holmes would say, it’s elementary. In fact it is so elementary that people don’t stop to look at campaign financing. This is the root of all evil and its right under everyone’s nose, but we’re too damn busy looking for complicated mechanizations to politics.

I started a political party. I tried to get people to join, and I did. My plans for the party were just to get like-minded people together and to influence politicians at first. I figured that later on, we could move into the area of fielding our own candidates when we got more support. The more I tried to get us listed on websites and the more I tried to get us recognized, the money part of it hit me right on the head. To get a political party registered in most states, you have to come up with about ten thousand signatures with names and addresses of them all. Remember, not all states operate the same way, I’m generalizing. I tried to figure how much it would cost me to get ten thousand signatures, and the answer was much more than I could come up with. I started to dig a little deeper and I started looking at how much money it cost to run a campaign.

This is the part where I had an epiphany of sorts. I went to the web site “opensecrets.org” and found out how much President Bush spent on his campaign. The answer was about 360 million dollars. That’s right, 360 million dollars. Think about it. We have just gone over 300 million people living in the United States. Take away the people under voting age, the people incarcerated, the people that don’t register to vote and the people that are registered and just don’t vote. When you get down to it we are talking about $6.00 dollars a vote. Six dollars each from sixty two million people! That was how many votes it took and how much money. $360,000,000.00 for a job that pays $400,000.00 a year, not too shabby! The President could have taken matching Federal Funds, but that would have given him only 78 Million dollars. He refused the money until the primaries were over. After the primaries he received $74.6 million dollars and therefore could not raise any more money after the nomination. That meant that he raised approximately $292,000,000.00 from contributors.

Who are these contributors you ask? Well a large part of these contributors are corporations, Unions and Special Interest groups. They are called Political Action Committees (PAC’S). When I looked into who financed the Presidents campaign, it was very revealing. I started looking into Senator’s and Congressman’s campaigns, and what I found there was even worse. I found out that the majority of money for Congress is from PAC’s. Those individuals don’t make up the majority of the donors.

It works like this. Before the primaries, a candidate has to fund his or her own campaign. That could run into millions. In order to win the primary either the candidate has to find very rich donors and a lot of them, or tale money from PAC’s. Election campaigns have gotten so expensive that unless you are “sponsored” by corporations, you don’t have a chance. It’s almost like NASCAR. For every corporate donation to the race, there is probably another favor attached to it. Do you think that these corporations just donate out of patriotism? How would you explain that to a Corporate Board?

So this is where we are at. Let me say this, there are a few states that have limits on campaign donations and a few states that fund their political campaigns. There are more judicial elections that are state funded than legislative seats. States consider corporate and special interest funding for judges to be too risky. A judge might well rule in a defendants or plaintiffs favor if they happened to fund their campaigns. So if they feel that way about judicial candidates, why not legislative candidates? Don’t you believe a legislator would pass laws in a campaign contributors best interests? Especially if he had to hit that same company up for the next election.

So think about it. Is this why we don’t have National Heath Insurance? Would you like to know how much the American Medical Associations give to politicians? There are associations of Doctors, Surgeons, Heart Surgeons, ect., ect. Get the point? There are so many medical and lawyer and insurance PAC’s out there you wouldn’t believe. We have Timber Associations, Agricultural Pac’s, Oil producer Pac’s, you name it and we’ve got it.

I’m going to tell you one simple thing that could change your entire outlook on American Politics. These Corporations and Special Interest PAC’s are the donors that finance our elected officials. Our Congress is bought before they reach the halls of the Capitol Building. Think about it. They do not work for the people, they work for corporations. The only time that they legislate for the people is when it doesn’t conflict with their corporate and Special Interest supporters. Doesn’t that make you sick? It sure makes me sick.

Let’s do something about it. Tell everyone that will listen. Call your elected officials. Write them. If you are rich and want to do something, find a Campaign Finance Reform outfit and donate. Scream bloody murder. This is the root of our problems in this country! The people’s government is no longer the people’s government. Corporations are recognized by the Federal government as individuals, as “people”. Tell them to overturn that old case Santa Clara Co. vs. Southern Pacific RR. From 1896 that recognized corporations as people. They should not have the same rights as people. Hell, most corporations are multi-national. Should foreigners have the same rights as citizens?

Can you see why I’m interested? This problem needs to be addressed. It permeates everything Congress does. No law is beyond suspicion as long as this political se-up is in place. We are second-class citizens in our own country. The politicians don’t want to move against the Status Quo. Would you want to be the first politician to point all of this out? If the whole of Congress didn’t buy it, then say goodbye to the seat you have, because you are not going to run an effective campaign next election with no corporate money. This HAS to be a grassroots thing. Let’s do it.