So now we're getting our best policy recommendations from hip-hop artists. Hip-hop artist Russell Simmons said the following yesterday: "And what we’d like is for the people to control their future," Simmons said, describing the constitutional amendment he is supporting that would ban private donations for U.S. politicians running for federal office. "We want to believe that the politicians are making decisions on the part of the people who elected them. And that’s what’s the flaw, fundamental flaw, in our democracy."
That kind of sums up the problem in a nutshell doesn't it. You would never hear anything like it from our bought and sold national politicians. But here's the problem. The public doesn't buy it either! I have some experience with this having talked to many people about it during a congressional campaign I worked on 20 yrs ago. We advocated public financing of elections and free air time too. Here's what people said more or less, "I don't want any of my tax money going to those no good politicians."
It's kinda like global warming. The enemy is us. We don't want to give up all our conveniences and we don't want to fund election campaigns. Let someone else solve it. Here's the problem with the "I don't want my tax money going to the politicians argument":
We already fund the entire government including executive, legislative, and judicial branches from tax money. We fund all their salaries, all their expenses, all their offices, all their staff, and we fund their retirement when they quit. The average member of Congress serves for about 8 years if I remember correctly, and then collects a pension for the rest of their life perhaps 20 or more years. We fund that too. So the idea that we shouldn't also fund a six month election campaigns is absurd. I put it on a timeline for reference:
The campaign is such a trivial period of time compared to the rest of what we pay for, and perhaps the most important, since this is where big money doners make an investment that returns many times over. And the fact is, we don't have to pay for it out of our pockets anyway. The broadcast airwaves belong to us, and the media companies don't pay us any rent which would be worth about $800 billion per year. Some of this revenue could fund campaigns, and free airtime for ballot qualified candidates would take care of most of it anyway.
I have mixed feelings about supporting a reform like this. It might allow the empire to operate a little bit longer and be more responsive to the citizenry. The best thing would be for the empire to go bankrupt and end the whole insane unnacountable national experiment and go back to our individual states and regions.